Except for the joining, I have completed thirty squares of a new blanket!

Five months ago, I stumbled upon the Nuts About Squares CAL.   (A CAL is a “crochet along” in which the instructor releases different parts of the pattern each week or two.)  Esther, from ItsAllInANutshell.com, brought together a number of patterns from different yarn designers. These are the squares that make up the CAL project. If you are interested in the information for each designer, I have included it below each photo.  I didn’t crop the first photo because it contains my favorite coffee mug and some of my favorite knick-knacks I keep in my workspace.

 

I decided to make a blanket for my parents.  The instructions call for a DK weight yarn, which is a thinner, lighter-weight yarn. To go along with the thinner yarn, it requires a smaller crochet hook. However, the colors I chose were all in a Medium 4 weight yarn. To make it even MORE confusing, I used four different brands of yarn within that larger weight. So I ended up modifying the crochet hook sizes, as well as the number of squares I completed. If I had made three of each square, I would have ended up with a blanket that was 7 feet by 8 feet! Yikes!

I love the intricacy of the stitches in these squares. The reason I wanted to learn how to crochet was to make colorful granny squares with multiple kinds of stitches just like these squares.  Can you guess which squares contain these close-ups?

Here are a few more glimpses from the the journey:

 

I added a new process to my crochet journey with this project. I purchased a hand-held steamer and used it to block some of these squares. I tried “wet blocking” before, in which I completely immersed the square in water and then pinned it and let it dry. I found that this wasn’t working for me. Since I used so many different size yarns and hooks, it was necessary to block many of my squares in order to make them all into a uniform size.  Here is a before and after shot of two squares to show you the effects of steam blocking acrylic yarn squares:

 I hope you have a good day! Happy crocheting!