wise craft

clearing my brain with crochet

granny circle squares

As many of these granny squares as I have crocheted and I've never stuck to such a strict color palette. Fun change!

what i'm working on in the studio today

granny square sampler completed!

After all those weeks of crocheting all different kinds of granny squares, in all different colors, its finally done. I finished it over a week ago, but spent a few evenings weaving in tails.

There were a lot of tails-

I'm so happy I kept with this project! I hope those of you that did it with me are too! I plan to take a full picture in better light to put on the project page and the ravelry page, etc. I'm also still adding links to everyone's granny on the project page. 

One last question- did anyone add an interesting border around their afghan they could link to? I'm undecided about adding another round to mine, but thought seeing others might help me decide.

Added 10/29/12- The finished dimensions of this afghan (without any additional borders I may add) is 36" x 46". There were about 7 various granny squares that I did not use in the finished piece. I certainly could have used these, and made the afghan bigger, but the end use I had in mind for this one was as a lap blanket.

random

I'm not gonna lie, its been a weird week. Kinda good, I mean Fall! I love Fall... but kinda blah... maybe cause that rain they told us to expect never came. Maybe I just need more chocolate. I know I really need to get myself organized. If I do that over the weekend, next week will automatically start out better.

I am still finishing my granny square sampler. Every stitch I add makes me love this hodge podge of granny squares more than before. Well. Except for the thousand tails I have to weave in. Good lord. Its like its own pompom.

 In the meantime, here are some links that are making me less blah today:

I have been on a mission to find the perfect sweater. This may be it.

 

Amy Karol on Creativebug! If anyone could ever convince me I needed to make my own underwear, if would be Chicken. And seeing her on video is the next best thing to visiting her in Portland, so I'll take what I can get, go check her out!

 

I love everything about this quilt.

 

My favorite sketch from last week was this one. Why is it so fun to draw pens? I'm trying to challenge myself to draw more representation things, because they're hard for me.

I will announce a winner of the custom crochet hook giveaway on Sunday evening or Monday. There's still time to enter.

And lastly, I treated myself to this book and this weekend, I plan to make something from it to tell my own self that I am awesome.

Have a lovely weekend everyone!

 

 

granny square sampler afghan- week 18, progress

I just looked at the Flickr group at the finished afghans, GORGEOUS! Wow! I am so glad you guys kept going with it and didn't wait for me to post. I love how different each one is!

After a busy couple of weeks that left me painfully short on crochet time, I was finally able to pick my sampler back up this week. I've now joined and completed the inner rectangle portion of the sampler, and am now on to adding the rest of the squares around the rectangle. For anyone who is still working on joining their squares, I thought it might be helpful to share a few joining tips that worked for me, in case they might help anyone who is still joining. If you're done, you just go pour yourself a glass of champagne and don't mind us!

• In week 16, at the bottom of that post, I linked to a tutorial on how to beautifully join the squares (keeping in mind you can join these together as you like, using any type of stitches). Adaiha did a fantastic job in the tutorial of joining the squares using evenly space 3 dc "clusters" by doing some math first. I joined mine using this method in almost every case, but instead of doing the math, I eyeballed where my clusters of stitches should go. I think that this worked out fine overall and what doesn't feel "square" I will coax into shape with blocking. (I discussed blocking in this post.)

• It has been so helpful to lay all these square out on a large piece of foamcore. I used a 20" x 30" piece and my finished sampler rectangle measures only slightly larger than that. It was great to be able to carry it, on the foamcore, to where I was working, then take the entire thing and put it in a safe place when I stopped for the night.

• Several times, I added a few extra 3 dc cluster rows in order to make up the size difference between the edges of two granny squares, like below (on the right, I have started to add rows of the oatmeal yarn). I had originally thought I would be doing all this "border" and "extra row" crocheting in cream, but I've changed my mind on that and am adding in several colors when it feels right.

• Once all the squares were joined together, I crocheted 2 complete rounds of 3 dc clusters around the entire rectangle (you can see the border in the top photo). One border round was gray, one was gold. In the original sampler, they have done 3 rounds, and used different stitches. Here is where you decide what you'd like to see in your sampler. Regardless, I think the border around this inside rectangle is a nice part of the overall design.

• You can see below that when I started crocheting the right border round, one square's edge actually ended where the border would go, so I just connected the two, tied off, jumped over that square, started again, and kept going.

 

• Another way to join squares is to whip stitch the squares together, and I do it very similar to this video. The photo below shows 4 of the small granny squares from week 3 joined together this way. I did this a couple other times throughout the rectangle.

 

Over the next week, I will play with placing my remaining squares around this rectangle, and deciding if I need to crochet more granny squares. There is an even border of squares around the inside rectangle on the original sampler, that's the look I'm aiming for.

At week 17, I put a call out to anyone that is doing this sampler with us to provide your links, which I am now adding to the project page. If you'd like to be added, just leave a comment in that post or here. 

 

Remember:

• post sampler photos to the Flickr group
• Instagram photos of samplers should have the hashtag #grannysquaresampler.
• All weeks of this project and other details are listed on the project page.
• As always, leave comments with your questions.

I'm really hoping to post a finished afghan next week! Wish me luck!

 

granny square sampler afghan- week 17, showing you off!

 

Hello fellow samplers! I am taking some unauthorized liberties today. I wanted to share some photos of some of the samplers that everyone is doing. One of the best parts of this granny square sampler project is, although we all crocheted basically the same squares, each afghan is so unique to its designer. So much color and pattern out there! There were times I was constructing this afghan that I started to wonder if it would end up one hot mess (you may have wondered that too!), but that couldn't be further than what we're ending up with. Just beautiful. Take a look at some of the in-progress afghan shots from our Flickr group-

 

From Grace B1, I love all the white space on this one.

And then I absolutely love the explosion of color (the pinks, cranberries, and reds really pop) in Melissa's-

And in all of Daniela's squares

And Lisa's-

There are lots of colorful pictures on Instagram, by using our hashtag #grannysquaresampler you can view them and get more color injected into your Friday.

I don't say it often enough, but I have really enjoyed crocheting this project with all of you. It has resulted in some often funny exchanges on twitter and instragram from folks who are learning to crochet along with this project. (Oh goodness, I really hope you have learned or relearned something, and that I just haven't confused you to frustration.)

Please leave a link to your blog, flickr photostream, etc in the comments on this post, I would love to compile a list of permanent links on this page of everyone who has been working on this project with us this summer.

We are nearly done! Next week we will start joining the rest of the granny squares.

Enjoy your weekend!

 

granny square sampler afghan- week 16, joining the inside rectangle

 

Okay, let's do this! (Just a disclaimer before we start, there are a lot of pictures and a video in this post.)

In the original granny square sampler afghan, there was a visually distinct inner rectangle in the center. Here's the original-

tiny thread and hook

As I challenged myself a few posts ago, these latest little evening hand-busy crocheted rocks were done using a smaller hook, US9/1.25mm, and smaller thread, size 20. I can't believe I'm saying this, but I actually like using these small components even better.

I nearly finished blocking all my granny squares for the sampler. Ready to start joining tomorrow? You may be as relieved as I am to know that it's not as hard as I thought it would be!

And lastly, here's what's playing in my studio today. I just love Camera Obscura. Enjoy!

 

granny square sampler afghan- week 15, blocking your squares

I am getting excited now that we're nearing the point where we are starting to join our squares together. We've worked all summer towards this right?

I jumped the gun last week when I said let's start joining our squares. Because it we are good crocheters (and we are) we must block them first.

Some of you may be asking what exactly is blocking? Blocking means setting your squares by pinning them into the desired square shape, steaming them, misting them with a spray bottle, adding the heat of an iron, and allowing the squares to "set". I consider it an important step, but one that I always forget until I get to that part of the project. But make no mistake, I block everything I crochet or knit. The reasons? ... the steaming of the pieces allows the stitches to relax and smooth into a nice uniform placement, the stitch pattern is set evenly, the size of the piece is set, my work always look better when I block it, and I'll be honest, I love the smell of wet wool.

Here's a visual of what blocking does for our squares-

        

See how happy and proud those blocks look after blocking?

I use the same method I learned in my knitting class 12 years ago and it has never failed me. This method works for natural fiber yarns like cotton or wool (not mohair or any furry natural yarns, I'm told). As for acrylic yarns, I did a little research online and it seems like there are folks who say its unnecessary, and others who say you must. I will let those of you using acrylic yarns decide for yourself.

So, before joining squares, I will task you this week with blocking your squares. You may decide not to do this step and that is entirely up to you. Those of you who are old pros at this, carry onward. Those who are learning, here's how I block.

To block granny squares- instructions and supplies are for cotton or wool squares, (acrylic instructions are in parenthesis).

Supplies:

- Your granny squares.

- An ironing board or a stack of towels to pin your squares to.

- An iron with steam (not needed for acrylic squares).

- A spray bottle with water.

- A good supply of rust proof pins that don't have plastic heads (the plastic will melt). I use short T pins, but you can also use glasshead pins.

- (Clean damp towels for acrylic squares only).

 

To block squares:

1. Start pinning the smallest squares on the smallest end of your ironing board. You will want to pin at each corner first, then add 2-3 pins down each the sides evening. Don't pull or tug the square, you're just straightening and smoothing it out to its correct size.

2. (If you have acrylic squares, skip to Step 4). With your spray bottle or using the spray button on your iron, lightly spray the squares. The goal is not to saturate, but to dampen it evenly.

3. Using your iron (I use a high heat setting with full steam), iron over all the squares without touching them, keep the iron 1" or so from the surface of the squares, just allowing the steam to hit and penetrate the squares. Again, just an even steaming, no need to saturate.

4. (Acrylic squares only. Lay a damp towel over your squares, covering them all completely.)

5. Leave them to dry overnight, and remove them the next morning.

Next week we will begin joining some of our squares. I am playing around with a couple of different methods of joining and will share what I come up with. I realize some of you are still scrambling to catch up and I'm hoping this week will give you time to do that as well.

Happy blocking!

Blair