A tale of two grannies

As I mentioned in my post 'Fingers in Pies' I've been having a lot of fun with granny squares lately.  Or 'grannie' as we seem to call them in my family for some reason.

I've already shown you my Eclectic Grannie.  So now it's time to show you the next grannie in the series, my Giant Grannie.

I'm sure you, like me, have seen many of these giant grannie square blankets around and about in blogland.  I've coveted them for a long time, but I wasn't sure that I would ever be able to face an ever increasing round which took longer and longer and looonnnnggggeeeerrrr to go around.  Daunting.

But after getting to row 28 of my Eclectic Grannie, loving the look of it and really, really wishing I had enough to go further, I thought maybe I should go for the blanket size after all.

As I mentioned before ('Finger in Pies' post linked above),  I struggled with the colours of this one quite a bit.  I knew I wanted some quirky and slightly more unexpected colour combinations than I've been used to but I was finding it a fine line between quirky and mismatched.  But, as the blanket grew, so did my confidence.  Plus, the photos I took for that last post looked so lovely I started to be convinced that I'd made the right choices after all.

I used a total of 14 colours, all random yarn that that I had in stash already.  So this is a blanket of quirky colours and very mismatched yarn.  I've got acrylic, wool blends, bamboo and cotton blends in here.  I'll give you all the details at the end in my 'factual' section but there's a few older yarns in here that it's been great to use up and it means that I'm very nearly, almost done using up the old yarny bits and bobs that I've been wanting to get used up and be rid of.  Hooray for stashbusting!

My favourite thing about this blanket is the random, vintage, 'using up scraps' style of the colours.  I tried to never have a similar shade or tone next to each other.  So that each colour would show up as much a possible.

And apart from a couple of 'errors' early on, which I'm glad to say seem to be nicely lost in the general scheme now the blanket is bigger.  I think I managed to get a pretty good contrast between each colour.  Love that picture above, it's one of my favourites!

It's always hard to get the 'whole blanket' shot.  I decided to lay it out on the bed.

Ooh, that looks good.  But really, I do prefer the closer shots where you can see all the individual colours better.

Of course, the other big decision is the border.  I decided on the one I was going to use very quickly, so the only problem was which colour to use.  I had a nice lot of the darkish 'airforce' blue that I could use but was worried that it'd be too dark at first.  But I planned to end with a nice colour sequence to end on to compliment the darker border and I'm pretty happy with it.  What do you think?

I used my trusty 'Around the Corner Crochet Borders' by Edie Eckman, a book I adore and have talked about on this blog many times before.  Don't worry, I'm not sponsored to rave about it, it's just that I love it and can't recommend it enough!

Then it was all done.  Just in time too, because it's turned a little more nippy in the last few days and I've been very glad of it's snuggly company.  Not that I'm short of a snuggly blanket or too, but a new blanket is always that much more snuggly I find.

Now let's give you all the...

Facts of the matter

Blanket Pattern:  I've actually written a pattern for this blanket now:

Grannie Goes Large by Sandra Paul

You can also find a photo tutorial to show you how I make my grannies here: Classic Granny Square

Border Pattern:  Now included together with the blanket pattern.

(The original blanket used border No. 45 from Around the Corner Crochet Borders by Edie Eckman)

Rounds before border: 69

Size:  160 cm / 64 inches square

Yards used:  approx 4100

Weight: 1370 grams

Number of Colours: 14

Hook Size: 4mm (USA G)

Yarn used:
Stylecraft Special DK:
1026 - Apricot
1080 - Pale Rose
1240 - Soft Peach

Stylecraft Life:
2342 - Mint
2311 - Fern

Hayfield/Sirdar Bonus DK:
836 - Airforce Blue
838 - Silver
855 - Cream (Baby Bonus)

Knit Shop Simply Wool DK:
2082-111 - Cream
2097-172 - Duck Egg

Jarol Heritage DK:
132 - Rusty Brown

Rowan Wool Cotton:
971 - Goldilocks

Sirdar Juicy:
420 - Foam

Mirasol Contanani:
403 - Burgandy (but it looks purple)


Wow, that's a lot of yarn.

When I set out to make this blanket I wanted it to be really traditional and have a Like Grannie Used to Make feel to it.   I think I did that, it feels nicely oldy worldy to me and I do love it that's for sure.

Update

Granny Goes Large Pattern now available!


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