A New Crochet Blanket. Circles in Squares.

Circles In Squares Baby Blanket

I finished this little crochet blanket about a month ago. It’s bold and colourful crochet circles in squares. It now belongs to a baby. It is not my baby, but a new cousin for my boys. I’m pleased that she has already had snuggles in her lovely new crochet blanket.

I haven’t written up a pattern for this one, but I will share some pics of playing with the squares, and attempts to block them!

I chose to make the blanket with Scheepjes yarn.  I really wanted to get my mitts on this brand. A couple of months ago, it seemed like loads of people were using it, and I wanted to join the fun. I liked all the colours, and I wanted something super soft, so I went with the Merino Soft (which also has microfibre in it).

It is the softest, squishiest yarn. It is also quite splitty, which surprised me. I find that once I get into a crochet rhythm, I can avoid most of the splittiness, whichever kind of yarn it is. However, it’s still disappointing when it happens.

Crochet Circles in Squares

When I heard that there was to be a new human on the horizon, I asked my sister-in-law what sort of thing she fancied. I knew I wanted to crochet a blanket, but I didn’t want to make one that wouldn’t fit in with her tastes. All that effort, and they don’t like it? No thanks.

She gave me a photo of a cushion that fitted with the nursery colour scheme. The cushion had a bunch of bright circles on it. That was enough inspiration for me; off I went, designing a new crochet baby blanket.

I blocked it (badly). It didn’t work. They all pinged back after 5 minutes. I thought they’d be good because of the merino, but I’m guessing microfibre does funny things.

These crochet squares were about as flat as they got, and they quickly started to curl at the edges again. Oh well.

Laying Out Crochet Squares

Each time I make a crochet blanket that’s lots of squares, I have great fun laying them all out. Once I have more than a few squares, I do it over and over, each time adding a handful more of newly stitched squares. I think I had another row to go at this point, but I couldn’t wait to see what was going on.

Sewing Crochet Squares & Running Out of Yarn

I had to be quite boring with the construction. I had next to no grey wool left. I sewed the crocheted squares together with a whip stitch as I reckoned this wouldn’t use as much of the remaining yarn as crocheting them. I also stuck to a very plain border.

I jumped online to try and order another ball or two, but I couldn’t find it anywhere. Sold out! So the border had to remain plain. In an attempt to add some interest, a couple of rows were Back Loop Only. Thinking about it now, I could’ve done some post stitches or something. Not that that would have been much better. I wanted to have a proper, fancypants border. 🙁

I got one ball of each colour for the inner circles and thought six balls would be enough for the main colour. Note to self: get eight balls. Eight balls next time!

I’m finding it increasingly difficult to take new and interesting pictures of blankets. They all end up draped on the same two chairs in the same locations!

I can tell you that I never spot wires, plug sockets and other such things in Pinterest pictures. They jump out a mile in all my photo’s no matter how hard I try to avoid them.

Photoshop! We used to have a very early version of Photoshop (not that I knew how to use it) on the old Mac but the Mac choked to death on carpet fluff. Be mindful of computers when getting new carpet!

A Made Up Crochet Pattern

I made up the pattern, although I know many similar ones exist. I’m afraid to say I have not written it down yet. Sooo at some point in the near future, I will come back with a post about how I made the squares. I did some experimenting with starting the rows, as I wasn’t happy with a messy 3-chain start. I think it’d be interesting to do some comparisons, etc., but it’ll have to wait until another day.

Anyway, I must go and wake up the little one, he fell asleep in the car on the way home from food shopping. He didn’t even wake up when I moved him to the sofa. Silly boy has been up since 5.40am.

 

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