FO: Babette Blanket

Like so many knitters, I had accumulated a really large amount of scraps since I've started knitting.  Hopefully, you end a project and still have a bit left and don't have to put a funky contrasting stripe in.  Ahem.  What to do, with all those odd balls and leftovers?  A bit of color-work here and there fits the bill nicely, but it still won't put a dent in my scrappy stash.

Since moving abroad and starting fresh three years ago, I managed to knit enough to once again get an overflowing bin of leftover odds and ends.  Sigh.  I resolved to do something with them instead of cramming yet another partial skein into the bin.  Searching the vast crafty pages of the internet, I ruled out loads of ideas before starting to drift towards blankets.  I have never made one of those before!  My fully-furnished rental flat had a decor scheme of white and beige and zzzzzz I'm sick of that.  

Finally:

The Babette blanket, a crochet calliphony of different sized squares, all cobbled together and tied up with a border.  It is a sight to behold.   All my sport, sock and robust laceweight yarn scraps...every last bit used up.

If you have received a knitted gift from me in the past few years, chances are you can possibly play a game of I-spy and find your leftovers.  wow, much pink.

It's kind of a hot mess of whatever I could grab and crochet into a square.  I tried to mix it up as best I could without too many similar colors grouped together, but that was really all the planning I did.  I've seen other people's blankets where they actually planned out their color scheme, and it looks fantastic.  However, I am not that color coordinated and I really just wanted all the stash gone.

I did have a small moment of cheating as a friend of mine brought a bag of scraps of Wollmeise to knit night and was just giving it away, so I got a much-needed boost of someone else's stash.  Otherwise, I would have run out of scraps, the horror of it all!

I tried to seam it up as I went along just to save myself the mega headache of getting this all together.  This didn't work really well:  after washing and hanging to dry, the weight of it all unravled many, many seams of the slippery superwash wool.  I spend a whole afternoon piecing it all back together again.  

It really was so simple, and not so huge where it didn't drive me mad.  It's a good scrap-busting project, and it adds a much-needed pop of color to my world of beige.

It's throw sized, so it's nice to curl up on the couch with it with a cuppa.

Since I had never crocheted a square before, a found this tutorial quite helpful:

It took me three or four watches and then I was motoring along like a pro.

 I am quite pleased with it.  No awkward bin of scraps, some cheerful warmth, and self-satisfaction all in one project.