Since I learned how to knit socks a few years back I have become slightly obsessed with hand dyed yarn. I have come across many amazing hand dyers over the last few years and after making my Loki blanket which you can read about here I really wanted to make another mini skein blanket but in a different style.
I fell in love with Sherry Iris Yarns in particular a couple of years ago. Sherry puts together such beautiful colours and presents them in such a lovely way and I really look forward to seeing her images on socials. I decided at the end of 2022 that I would sign up to one of her yarn clubs, the first time I had collected yarn in this way, and was really drawn to her Botanist Club she had running for 2023. Each instalment would have a bundle of five mystery 20g mini skeins on a botanical theme such as snowdrops, roses, trees etc. I really enjoyed receiving them in the post each month, a little surprise gift to myself!
A few people have lets just say ‘passed comment’ on the cost of hand dyed yarn. As I mentioned in my Loki blog post, hand dyed yarn isn’t cheap however I don’t smoke, very rarely drink, don’t go to big music concerts and am far from a fashion victim so this yarn club was my little treat to myself and collecting via a club is a good way to spread the cost. This is a special project specifically for me and I wanted the yarn to also be special. You don’t have to use hand dyed yarn, use whichever yarn suits your budget at the time, or just use your scraps, it’s a great scraps project.
The club finished at the end of 2023 and by then I had collected 65 mini skeins! Now I needed to decide what to do with them all! I had a vision of making a patchwork style blanket and I considered standard granny squares and solid granny squares before settling on little C2C (corner to corner) squares. Here's my video tutorial showing you how to make a little C2C square......
I dislike sewing squares together immensely so I am joining my C2C squares as I make them, it's very simple once you get the hang of it! Here's my video tutorial showing you how......
Join as you go for C2C squares
I don't know yet how big my blanket will end up or how many squares there will be. I get asked often questions like 'how many squares do I need for a particular size blanket?' or 'how many squares can I make out of a particular amount of yarn?' and I'm afraid I'm not generally one to do all these analytics, I often just go with the flow and with this blanket I will just keep making and joining squares until I run out of yarn!
If you are a planner and want to work out how many squares to make for a given size then the best thing to do is make one out of your chosen yarn, measure it and weigh it and you'll then know roughly how many to make and how much yarn you'll need.
I'm thoroughly enjoying working on this blanket! Some days I make one square, some days I make more, it's so easy to just pick up and put down and I'm excited to see it develop over the coming months.......I will update the blog as things progress
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Happy crocheting!
Faye x
