I have had a lot of questions about the last blanket that I made, so I thought I would share how I made it!

A couple of years ago I purchased approximately 6 months worth of a subscription box of mini skeins of sock yarn from Vicki Brown Designs.  Each box had three mini skeins (approx 25g each skein) of hand-dyed merino/nylon blend that were designed to fade together.  I found out afterwards that I do not enjoy making socks, so the yarn has been a display piece for all that time.

At one stage I did wind a few of the skeins and made a mini ipad cover from them.  The rest have just been sitting there staring at me, waiting to be made into something.

And then someone in my facebook group for help and ideas asked me to demonstrate blocking.  That meant that I had to make squares to demonstrate with and it was with one of the partly used balls from this collection that I made a square.  Making and blocking the square sparked the idea to turn them all into squares for a blanket!

This also started me on my journey of making a square a day too!  I started off by winding a few of the skeins at a time until eventually I took the time one Sunday to wind them all.  Then at the start of each week I would put three of the balls into a large yarn bowl and would start working my way through them.

I also set up a blocking station.  So as I made each square, I wove in the ends and put them on a blocking board and blocked them.  I would make at least one square each morning and made sure that I finished all three balls before the start of the next week.  It took me close to 3 months to complete the blanket from start to finish.  It didn’t feel like a lot of work either as each square was a quick win!

I didn’t count the balls before I started, but I ended up with 137 squares all up!  I used 132 of them to make the blanket by joining them to make 12 rows, each containing 11 squares.  I placed them randomly by selecting 11 at t time and trying to ensure that there were no similar or same coloured squares touching at any side or diagonal from another.

To join the squares, I purchased a full skein of yarn from the same dyer – Vicki Brown Designs.  I joined them together using single crochet (double crochet in UK terms) and then added a simple border.  The first round of the border was in single crochet, the second round in double crochet and the last round was single crochet, but working between (and not in to) the double crochet of the round before.

I really love the end result.  Being sock yarn it is nice and light but super warm!

Below is a grid for the square that I used.  It’s a relatively simple square and was fun to create them all.

I am quite pleased too to see that the subscription box still exists!  I had originally purchased from etsy and only just discovered now that it is still being done, but on her website instead.

I am now making another blanket by making a square a day.  This one is being created with the traditional grannie square in a 100% cotton in pretty pastel colours.  Follow my instagram or facebook stories if you want to see each square as it is being made!

Seona x