I'm on vacation!

...kinda... My mother is dragging myself and my aunt to Oslo, the capitol of Norway for a few days, so I won't be able to get much updated in the upcomming week. We're only staying there until thursday, but I'm not bringing my laptop, only my phone and tablet, which aren't the best mediums to blog on. So instead of me going quiet again, you'll now have a little warning. Ain't that neat?

But to keep things yarn related, I'll give you guys a little update on the Granny Bacon scrap blanket. It's slowly growing. It's pretty much the only thing I'm working on right now, it's easy to work on and easy to put down if I need to do something. It's pretty much mindless, even though I need my eyes, so I've started listening to podcasts again!

 

I can't use my smallest scraps, that's for certain, so it'll be heartbreaking having to throw them all out when I finally get to them. I've also managed to save four more huge scraps. For the record, I'm only saving scraps of a certain weight and fiber. There's several scraps in the picture above here that's way too long for my tasting, but they're odds and ends of different fibers and thickness (I work the thinner ones double if you were wondering) so I don't have much use for them.

On a different note. While I was roaming through the bedroom, looking for my bag and also my summer dress, I found the missing watermelon colored skein for my mindless shawl! I thought this was lost forever or atleast still at Oppdal somewhere, but all along, it was hiding behind my gigantic trunk.

 While I was winding this up, my yarn winder broke while winding it up though...which sucked! Took me forever to get to the problem. You see, there's a bolt keeping the cogs in place inside the machine. But there's so many things in the way so it's pretty much impossible to get to where it's supposed to be. Took me forever to get it taken appart, but putting it back together was a quick fix. It even stopped wobbling!

GREAT SUCCESS!!!

Granny square scrap blanket?

Hello everybody! Thought I'd do a little update on the scrap blanket after my kinda grumpy and frustrating blogentry from yesterday.

As I did mention, I was tempted to just say "fuck it" and do the scrap blanket in granny square so that I could get it more or less evenly no matter what I did. The normal back and forth one did not go so well...at all. Actually, I haven't told you guys that I did try out two other stitches before going back to single crochet again. I did half double and slip stitch and also a combination of the two, but I did eventually decide against that because the edges looked too jagged for my taste.

Please, don't pay tpp much attention to my keyboard. It's not dirty, it's actually yarn dust from when I frogged the blanket in the first place.

So yeah, I scrapped that idea and went back to single crochet, which didn't go that well if you've read my previous blogentry. I don't know what caused it, might be just my horrible crochet "talent". I did pay a lot of attention to my tention and the stitches that time around though...

I ended up having to give granny square a try. More precisely, rectangular solid granny square. I found this one guy on Youtube that had a little tutorial up about it, and I decided to give it a try to see how it went. And after a few tries and one frogging, I think I've got a result that I'm pretty happy with.

I've yet to frog the previous attempt, so I ended up just winding up a new yarn cake and start with that one istead of going back to the very start. Lucky for me, there's longer scraps here, so I've got a good beginning. These are also long enough for russian joining, so I'm trying my best to keep knots and ends at bay. I did have to work with one scrap that I couldn't do the russian join with though, but since I'm doing solid granny square, it's easier to hide the ends than with normal granny square by just crocheting over them. I'm still not 100% sure, but I will most likely work up this whole yarn cake and see how it progresses and then make a decision.

Also, I decided to give it a nickname. It'll still be called eternity scrap blanket, cause that's what it is in reality, but I just can't decide on what to call this thing otherwise. Rectangular solid granny square scrap blanket is too much of a mouthfull, so just to cram another reference into everybody's faces, it's now called Granny Bacon! Cookie if you get the reference.

We'll see how it goes from here! I might have to toss out a bunch of the smallest scraps if they can't be worked into this one...which I'll be pretty sad about, and will set me back a little. But I'm already cutting out some of the biggest scraps that I added at the very beginning of this blanket, scraps that I can work into ugly scrap socks instead. Here's two examples of what I've taken out already, expecially the blue one. These are way too big for this blanket in my opinion and could easily work several rounds on a pair of socks instead.

Frogging the eternity scrap blanket!

I've talked about my eternity scrap blanket several times already, so lets talk about it some more, shall we?

For some time now, I've noticed that the scrap blanked started to curve in on itself a little bit. I first didn't pay much attention to this as I was (and still am) a big crochet n00b and figured it would work itself out. Turns out, it just gets worse! Either my tention has changed somewhere, or I've messed up some stitches somewhere about a year ago.

One thing is sure though...it takes FOREVER to frog down! Expecially since the yarn has gotten tangeled here and there and the hook might have gone a bit wrong... I feel like I'm ripping every inch, tearing it appart rather than gently unravel the whole thing...

And the skein is MASSIVE! This is only about half way through! The ball measures a little over 50cm around now (19,5"). Can't wait to see it all done, but I'm starting to feel the weight and sice in my elbows.

The plan is to wind it up into smaller yarn cakes when I'm done and work from there. I've wanted a lazy kind of mindless project while I wait for some new inspiration to strike, and here it is! Just need to work out how I'm about to do it this time. I'm kinda over single crochet and want to try something new, but since I'm using small scraps (down to 10cm/4") there's not much I can do. It would look horrible if the stitch was kinda lacy or made a lot of holes. Currently, people have been suggesting half double crochet and slip stitch...the latter I've never thought about working as a stitch like this.

If you as my reader know of a good and compact stitch for a scrap blanket, let me know in the comments!