Oh look, I changed my mind again!

I have mentioned a couple of times that I had started crocheting a blanket for the guest bedroom but was getting distracted by other things to make.  Well, even though I had made a good start, I came to the conclusion that actually I wasn't keen on how said blanket was turning out.  I had decided to follow Lucy's (Attic 24) Cosy Stripe Blanket pattern and headed over to Wool Warehouse, my favourite online yarn store, to immerse myself in all their yarny goodies.  Even though I was pretty sure I'd end up with Stylecraft Special DK, my favourite go-to yarn for blankets, there's no harm in having a look at all the other yummy stuff available, eh 😉

Lucy's pattern calls for 15 different colours and I'm quite partial to a strongly multi-coloured design as the above stash-busting chevron blanket shows, but I wanted softer colours for the guest bedroom..... 

....so these are the shades I selected: raspberry, pistachio, duck egg, camel, apricot, violet, cloud blue, cream, wisteria, silver, pale rose, meadow, stone, spring green and parchment.

I duly set to and started working on the blanket but by the time I'd completed 7 or 8 rows, it was starting to dawn on me that I really wasn't happy with either my choice of pattern or the number of different colours.  I think what I wasn't keen on were the rows of plain trebles between the granny stitch rows, so with the benefit of hindsight perhaps Lucy's straightforward Granny Stripe Blanket might have been a better choice.

In the end, though, I decided to make the blanket using basic granny squares ~ something I haven't done in a very long time.  I suspect that, like me, this is most folks first introduction to crochet.  I was taught by my paternal Grandma when I was a child, during one of our annual summer holidays at her house, and appropriately enough the granny square was the first thing she taught me 😊

The only "problem" with granny squares is that when you are designing off-the-cuff there is a little bit of mathematics involved in deciding how many will be needed ~ so thank goodness for calculators as maths definitely isn't one of my strong points 😉

The photo above is my test square, which came out at about 12.5cm, using the Stylecraft yarn and a 4.5mm hook.  The blanket only needs to be large enough to lay over the top of the duvet if our guests need a little extra warmth, so I am planning to make it 11 squares wide by 12 squares long.  This should come out at approximately 137.5cm wide by 150cm long; I will then add a border all around the blanket, most likely to about the same depth as the size of an individual square.  So in theory I should end up with a blanket approximately 162.5cm wide by 175cm long, which should be fine for the double (4'6") bed in the room.  

 I also decided to just use 9 different colours in the blanket: duck egg, pale rose, meadow, cream, raspberry, stone, pistachio, camel and parchment. Every square will have six different colours, with the final round of each one in parchment.  I will also be using parchment for joining the squares at the end, and for the border.  I'll use the leftover colours in due course as I have a number of blankets that I'd like to make as gifts. 

Then I had to decide how to mix up the colours in the squares, i.e. whether to go totally random or somewhat more organised.  In the end I chose the "more organised" route and once I've got a nice little pile of squares done, I'll show you what I mean!