Granny Arrows Scrap Blanket

This blanket I finished last week was originally going to be a Christmas present, but luckily I had enough sense at some point to realize it wasn't going to get finished in time if I still wanted to work on all my other Christmas projects...  So here's a late Christmas present for my sister and brother-in-law.



Before they moved to Brooklyn, they had Ugly (my scrapghan you can see in this post) on their bed for the longest time.  So when they moved to Brooklyn I wanted them to have a similar blanket.



And what better opportunity to make a blanket with a square I designed myself?!  I used my Granny Arrows pattern for this bad boy with some scrap worsted weight yarn (actually, the yarn that was previously my scary snaggle monster), and a size J hook.



With the scrap yarn, I made 100, four round Granny Arrow squares, and joined them all (ten rows of ten squares each) with a linen colored yarn (took 7 skeins of vanna's choice for the joins and the border) using the join-as-you-go method.



I love using only scrap yarn because you get to play with so many different color combinations!  Even if you say "ok, for this square, I'm going to pick four colors that will probably look awful together," it still ends up looking great!  (Does that sound crazy?)



Green and purple are Ginny and Jarrod's colors, so I tried using those colors a lot.  Oh!  I didn't even mean to take a picture of it, but above you can see a green and purple square with a center that is the same color as the joining yarn...  If I'm making a blanket like this with several colors, for fun I like to make the first round of one square the same color as the joining color... just for fun.  Kind of like a "where's waldo" thing. (Ok, that probably sounds crazy!  Moving on. [Did a couple of you out there just run to check your blankets I made you? Haha!])



Once all of the squares were joined, for the border I did one round of "Granny Arrows," one round of single crochet (1 sc in each stitch and ch 1 space, 2 sc in each ch 2 space, and 3 sc in each corner), and one round of reverse single crochet (which I think is sometimes called the Crab Stitch).  I love the look of the reverse single crochet even if it is a pain in the butt to crochet backwards!  It makes a nice simple edge with a bit of texture.



It's amazing how much you can get out of a bunch of little bits of scrap yarn!  The lesson here today is:  save your scraps, because just like saving your change, it all adds up!!  (Yes!  I knew I was going to be able to fit that adorable owl piggy [that would be a strange hybrid] bank in a blog post somehow!!  My friend gave it to me as a thank you gift for helping out with her wedding back in August.  If you like looking at beautiful weddings, you can see hers on her wedding photographer's website, kristinpartin.com.  You might even be able to spot some doilies and cake toppers made by yours truly...)