Tuesday, January 10, 2012

Crocheted Granny Square Blanket


Although I have been taking a little social sojourn lately, I have been busy crocheting Granny Squares. I was hoping to finish my blanket before I left for my New Zealand trip but there was too much to do before year's end. I've always wanted to learn how to crochet and eventually got my head around Meet Me At Mike's tutorial. To me, crocheting was confusing with lots of loops and holes everywhere, and my first squares were cylindrical rather than square!


I persevered, so 6 months and 280 square later, here is my blanket! I've been so excited about this project and looked forward to crocheting every evening after work while watching TV shows on my laptop. I've crocheted so much I have sore fingers but it was well worth it!


I used 8ply wool from Bendigo Woolen Mills and it must be noted that crocheting uses more yarn than knitting. This blanket measures 155cm x 110cm used 1kg of Almond Classic and over 1.2 kg of worsted wool - Pale Eucalyptus, Columbine, Cherry, Sky, Chamois, Lipstick and Blossom (the later 6 yarns have been discontinued so I must have taken a long break from knitting!). Although the colours I chose to wear is quite sedate, my craft projects are always a burst of colour. I wonder what this says about me?


Although I enjoy knitting, I've caught the crochet bug and I'm looking forward to more crochet projects in the future. My least favourite aspect of crocheting is sewing the ends (urgh!), and with so many colour changes there were a lot of ends to sew (could this be outsourced?).

4 comments:

  1. It might be outsourced, but then, you might not get your pretty blanket back!

    ReplyDelete
  2. Just how I thought it would look while we watched you crochet so many squares. Beautiful.

    ReplyDelete
  3. How much would you charge to make me one? It's gorgeous!

    ReplyDelete
  4. Hi Anonymous - Thank you! I'm sure you can make one and you'll be addicted to crochet in no time! This project, like most hand made items, is a labour of love and it's difficult to put a monetary value on it. The yarn cost around A$160 but it was the time taken to complete it. I worked on it for 6 months after work each day; say it took me 180 days at 3 hours per day which works out to be 540 hours (gee I should get out more)! The 2012 minimum wage in Australia is A$15.96 per hour so that works out to be A$8618! Yikes! Check out: http://www.littlebluebell.com/2011/09/600-baby-quilt.html about the value of hand made. Many thanks for reading my blog! :)

    ReplyDelete