Granny's Not so Square

This past Sunday, two wonderful ladies (Randy and Barbara) taught the Brooklyn Fiber Arts Guild about granny squares.  Now, I can do a granny square.  But of course I was going to watch two well known, respected, educated, and professional women teach it.  Plus, I helped Camille, who was sitting next to me and isn't a big crocheter.

I learned to crochet the summer of 1997 at 12 years old.  My aunt taught me and a cousin, probably to keep us busy at the farm while the boys ran around like maniacs.  I don't believe my cousin kept with it, but I loved it.  I still remember that beige acrylic swatch I made first.  I probably ripped it out to make the blanket-that-never-was.  This blanket is still sitting half made in a storage bin in my room.  I no longer feel the need to make a 250 st single crochet acrylic blanket with terrible fringe on the edges.  It will be ripped out soon and made into charity blankets.

When I finally got bored of making single crochet rows, I started designing dresses for my American Girl dolls.  I chained maybe 20 or so sts (not really sure anymore....1997 was quite a while ago) and then just started crocheting in a circle.  No slip stitch.  All I knew how to do was single crochet and chain.  And so it went until 2006/7ish, but more on that in a minute.  Now these dresses- they were tubes (ha! of course) up to Kristina and Josefina's armpits, at which I stopped working in the round and made a front to the dress.  When this reached a satisfactory height, I started working on a 5-stitch shoulder strap.  I bound this to the back of the dress and repeated for the other shoulder.  When I was done, I also made a headband for my dolls- chain some sts and then crochet a row.  This was the beginning of my fiber life and designing career.

Such things went until 2003.  I wanted to make Nicole a Harry Potter themed scarf, but I did not like the feel of crochet for it.  Don't forget that I never used anything other than Red Heart at this point and could only single crochet (no granny squares for me yet).  I decided to learn to knit since it seemed to come out "softer." Thank you CYC for teaching me wrong because of the terrible drawings on learntoknit.com.

I stopped crocheting completely at this point.  Knitting took over my life!  But then in either 2006 or 2007 I bought Stitch 'N Bitch Crochet: The Happy Hooker and learned how to make a granny square, flowers, and shell stitch. I could finally do more than a single crochet!  I made one of the Garden Scarf and at least two of the One Skein Scarf.

I still don't crochet very much.  I just prefer knitting but sometimes the ease of crocheting is just nice, especially after a really big knitting project.

I have a love/hate relationship with granny squares.  They can be so tacky and kitschy looking sometimes, but then sometimes they can be awesome, great for using stash, great for spreading limited stash, and just fun to make.

Here is a granny square blanket I made for the Guild's charity project from November (yes, I'm so very behind).  I used leftover Caron acrylic and some random grey acrylic.  The maroon and yellow are leftovers from Harry Potter projects of course.

This was also yesterday's 365 photo.  I forgot to take pictures of my other projects during the daylight so this was the best I could do.

Here is a baby blankie I'm working on just trying to use up some stash.  It was some Moda Dea I had bought forever ago to make a sweater with, but I never bought as much as I needed and then they discontinued the yarn.  I tried to use it up last year by knitting a hat, but still had a skein and then some leftover.  So far I've used the mini-ball leftovers and am working on using up the full ball I had.  I think it'll come out to a decent size, but my fingers are still crossed for this one.

Can you believe I only started this Sunday at the Guild meeting?  That's another great thing about crochet- it goes so fast!

So, how do you all feel about crocheting?