GRANNY STASH BUSTERS!!!

I'm not really big on making New Years resolutions, but this year I'm trying something new.  I promised my husband (hope I don't regret it) that I wouldn't buy ANY new yarn until I've worked down my stash.  The first week of the new year didn't see me making much progress.  But just this past week motivation hit!!! BIG TIME!!!  I came across a bag of chunky yarns in my craft shed (yes I have a craft shed....since we haven't had an extra room my husband allowed me to have the shed in the back yard to store all of my craft stuff in.  It is nice except there is no electricity out there....so if I get an urge to craft after dark I have to use a flashlight to find what I'm looking for.  We have recently acquired a room inside (son moved to college) and I am taking that room over slowly!!)  Anyways....back to the chunky yarn.  I found a bag of random colors of chunky yarn that I had used for making beanies a few years back....so I set to work making a Granny Square lap blanket.

 After that I found some fingering weight baby yarn that I had started making granny squares with last summer and finished a baby blanket with that. 

Next I pulled out some blue and white and yes....another granny square blanket has emerged. 

Because I do a lot of crochet for charity, I quite often have people give me their left over yarn, or they will find a bag of yarn at a yard sale and buy it for me.  Sometimes in those bags of yard sale finds are already completed granny squares!!!  I am now working on a black, red and white granny square lap blanket made with some donated squares.  But I only had 9 squares and I needed 10 for the blanket I had in mind, soooo I dug through my stash and found some yarn that was close enough to make the last granny square....it's taking shape quite nicely if I say so myself.  (that blank spot in the middle with eventually be filled with black crochet!!!)

  All of this stash busting effort was begun this past Wednesday (today is Saturday!!)  Needless to say, my house is surely not as clean as I would like for it to be....but I'm definitely Bustin' some Stash!!!! 

The basic granny square is not something I ever really think about needing a pattern for.  Once you learn it you can do up variations of it without much thought at all.  But for those of you looking for patterns I have provided my basic granny pattern at the end of this blog. 

Connecting, connecting, connecting....how to connect those squares?!?!?   There are many ways to connect your granny squares.  You can use needle and thread method and just whip stitch them together.  But I find that this takes a long time and if the blanket you are making gets a lot of use it can come undone.  Although I DO prefer this method for assembling squares for clothing because the seams lie flat. 

I actually prefer to slip stitch my squares together as I crochet the last round, doing a slip stitch in between each set of 3 dc.  (shown below) 

Sometimes I am working up squares made by others.  In this case I like to do a chain type slip stich (shown in the blue and white baby blanket below)

So I hope you've been motivated to "Bust some Stash" as you've read through this blog.  Please feel free to comment and post your own progress.!!!

BASIC GRANNY SQUARE PATTERN

Rnd 1:  Ch 4, working in 4^th ch from hook, 2 dc, ch 3, [3 dc, ch 3] 3 times.  Sl st in top of beg ch 4 to join. 

Rnd 2: Ch 3, turn.  (2 dc, ch 3, 3 dc) in first ch 3 sp.  Skip next 3 dc, working in next ch 3 sp [3 dc, ch 3, 3 dc] 3 times.  Sl st in top of beg ch 3 to join. 

Rnd 3:  Ch 3, turn.  2 dc in sp below beg ch 3.  *Skip next 3 dc, (3 dc, ch 3, 3 dc) in next ch 3 sp **.  Skip next 3 dc, 3 dc in next sp.  Repeat from * two more times.  Repeat one more time ending at **.  Finish off  (or if you want a larger

Granny Square

, just keep going on in the same format).