Talk about a labor of love.
I started this blanket in January of 2014.
I had only been crocheting for about 7 months and I got it in my head to make a full size blanket. I had made two baby blankets up to that point, but not an adult sized one.
A friend had started a granny square project around that time so that inspired me to try out the granny square. I had honestly avoided it because I was new to crochet and...well...it's called a granny square. It made me think of old lady blankets. But when I started looking around on Pinterest I saw that I was so very wrong! Oh, how naive my newbie crochet self was.
In January of 2014 I started out with this.
I knew I wanted gray and bright colors.
At that point we thought we were moving (*spoiler - we were wrong) so I was planning on living in a rental house with white walls that I wasn't allowed to paint.
This blanket was going to be my splash of color against the white walls.
I had no plan when I started except dark gray background, light gray with sparkle in the middle, and a color. I just pulled whatever colors I had in my ever-growing stash and started making more squares.
Eventually I had a whole lot of squares. Like stacks. I laid them all out on my bed, got a pencil and paper and mapped out a plan. I came up with diagonal stripes of each color. I originally wanted to do spontaneous/sporadic colors everywhere, but I was trying so hard to make it spontaneous it was looking very calculated. Backfire.
I decided stripes were better.
Over the next two years, these squares went back and forth between sitting in organized stacks on a shelf and actually being added to. At some point I realized I had to figure out how the heck to connect them. I tried a couple different methods I found online and finally settled on just slip stitching them together. I love how easy it was and how the finished product looks with the slip stitch join.
This blanket has spent the majority of it's life either folded up behind the couch or laying on the back of the couch half stitched together.
I added a couple more rows last year when I was pregnant and quickly realized that if I wanted it to be a full size blanket....I had a lot of work left to do. So back behind the couch it went.
In the last few months I've made some progress with my little crochet hobby/business. I was inspired by all the fabulous people on Instagram to make a ripple blanket with my yarn stash. (I'll post that another day) I finished it surprisingly fast and after I was done I had a thought of "oh yeah....maybe I should finish that other blanket...".
I made the executive decision to join the rest of it, slap a border on it and call it good.
I found the perfect border...and then the pattern turned out to be a complete pain. It may have been ripped out a couple times.
Remember when I said "labor of love"?
But finally I figured it out.
It was a great day when I weaved in the last end on this project.
Two years and 4 months later.
And now it can lay on the back of my couch fully finished.
Granny Square Pattern ~ Sunburst Granny Square
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