One Very Big Finish

I have a really big FO to share with you today. It really deserves a great photo shoot, but sadly it is dark and gloomy here today. I did try to edit my photos to brighten them a bit, but I'm not an expert in digital photo editing and I fear these photos will not do this project justice. I promise that the next time the sun comes out, I'll try again.

In any case, thanks to all the comfort that my crocheting has brought me since this public health crisis started, I am delighted to tell you that my granny square blanket is officially DONE.

According to my Ravelry project page, I started this blanket on August 11, 2019. I had grand plans of finishing it by the end of the year, but of course that didn't happen. I didn't really use a pattern for this, just found instructions for starting a granny square online and kept adding on to it. It's made entirely of Fibernymph Dye Works yarn. The very inside is leftover Bedazzled (75% superwash Merino/20% nylon/5% Stellina), but the rest is Lisa's Bounce base (30% superwash Merino/20% nylon). I started out using leftovers from previous sock projects and eventually also incorporated Lisa's holiday mini skein set from last year and some other mini skeins I'd collected, either from sets or that came as contrast skeins with sock sets.

As I ran out of each leftover or mini skein, I used a Russian join to connect the next one. This meant a little bit of bulk as I came to each join but only two ends to weave in at the end, and when you consider just how many small bits of yarn I used, that's a lot of finishing work I eliminated!

I finished off the outer edge by doing a more solid round of double crochet and then working the final two rounds in single crochet. It's still curling up a bit, even after going through the washer and dryer, but I really don't care.

So how big is it? That's a little hard to say because this stitch is so stretchy that I could measure the blanket's dimensions and come up with different measurements each time, but for scale, here it is on top of our queen-size bed:

I thought this was big enough given that it's mostly likely going to be used as a throw (the Mister runs warm and never needs an extra blanket on top of the bed).

There are certainly a number of mistakes in the blanket, many of which I "fixed" in ways that are clearly visible, but this wasn't meant to be a show piece. This was meant to be a comfort project in every sense of the word, and I can tell you now, as I sit with it draped around my shoulders, that it is just that. It's cozy and cheerful and provided just the comfort I needed as this very anxious time in the world started. It also used a whopping 3,502 yards of yarn -- yes, you read that correctly! I pretty much depleted all my FDW sock yarn scraps, and that feels very good.

And I haven't gotten the crochet bug out of my system just yet. Rainbow has already tried to steal the blanket several times, so later today I'm going to be starting a new one for her. I'm joining in on the 100 Day Project for the first time because it's very much looking like we'll be staying at home for the foreseeable future and I know I could use a little comfort from crochet to get me through each day. Last night she picked out yarn to get me started:

The blanket will start with the leftovers of my I've Got Sunshine socks and then move through eight skeins of Knit Picks Felici I already had in stash. Once I get through those, we will decide if the blanket is big enough and, if not, dig through the stash for something appropriate to add. Rainbow has requested a tighter fabric for her blanket, so I'll be doing pretty much solid double crochets around, more or less like Casapinka's Blanket of Calm pattern. I really can't think of a better name for a project right now!