Square Dancing

I noticed the other day that I have made a lot of afghans and quilts out of squares. I have only begun to scratch the surface. It is amazing how much room blankets take up, yet there are a ton of them in my house. I think every bed has about five of them on, all year 'round. There are big ones for king size beds, and little ones for the kids to drag around, and everything in between. So today I decided to show some I had made out of yarn.

About ten and a half years ago I decided to reteach myself how to crochet. The first thing I did was a very, very large granny square, big enough to fit the king size bed. I'll show that tomorrow because I have to unmake my bed to get it; I think it is the third one down. I call that one the ugly blanket that should never see the light of day, but it works for added warmth. The second blanket, afghan, I made was small granny squares. When I was a little kid my Vavo had one that I just loved to crawl under on Saturday afternoons to watch Sci-fi theater and Kung-fu theater. Don't ask me why, but I watched those every Saturday afternoon as a kid. The sun would come through the window and land right on the couch and I would curl up under a blanket it was just so warm and toasty it was all I could do to stay awake to watch. As soon as the shows ended I would fall asleep for a great nap, loved that. So I made the black afghan to remind me of that. Too bad it is made out of acrylic yarn; the one from my youth was wool. However, when I was relearning to crochet all I could afford was thrift store yarn so that is what I bought except for the black; that was purposely added so it would look like the one from my youth.The next one was made on the vintage weave-it rug looms. It was the only loom made by weave-it that had the wood pegs; the rest have metal pegs. The yarn is Aunt Lydia's rug yarn that was purchased at thrift stores; this time not because I had to, but because I wanted to. Every time I found a skein I would make more squares. After a while I had enough squares to make an afghan and this was born. It does have a black crocheted edging to hold the blocks together and around the outside edges, too. If you can believe it, the edge is made from the scraps from the black granny square blanket from 10 years prior. Yep, things have a hard time making it to the garbage at my house. If it usable yarn, it will be saved; even one that is only 2 feet long -- you can make crazy daises with those, and they can be used to make a blanket or used as an embellishment on an item. Another tool from the 30's to 50's.

Lastly we have one that took me about two years to make, not because it was hard, it wasn't. It was that it was a class that I was teaching and every week I had to design a new block for the students to learn. Because it took awhile to create and draft patterns, and I only had to do one a week, that is all I did; one a week. This one is made out of wool. NO two squares are the exact same block; some have similar stitches, but in different configurations. The yarn was a gift. Because I was teaching the class at Heindselman's, they just gave me the wool from left overs from projects that the employees had made as store samples. The bonus was, I got to keep it in the end.
I hope you had fun going to the square dance with me; maybe you have a few of your own.