My Finished Object: Granny Squares
Made in 2023: Project 10

Each week Chris calls his Mum and they talk about what’s been going happening here and there. I nearly always end up talking about whatever project is on the go at the moment. A conversation recently turned to granny squares and making blankets for charity. Rather than this being a whole project, this was making Granny Squares for a project my Mother in Law was working on. So here’s my finished object.

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Granny Squares

Pattern: Basic Granny Square (pattern)
Hook Size: 4mm
Yarn: Mystery grey DK yarn from stash – white borders are in Stylecraft Special DK
2023g Challenge: 230g/2023g

My MIL had been working on gloves, scarves and blankets for a charity that she supports. My MIL had been talking about being given squares by a friend of hers and she’d been sewing them together into a blanket. Another blanket she’d been working on had arrived as a pile of squares and when her friend saw the end product, she adopted the finished blanket back. Well granny squares are easy to pick up and put down when I’m riding the bus or train around the city. So as something to alternate with the Time Team Jumper, I offered to make my MIL some squares.

I grabbed my scraps and got started. I went for the pattern I use for a lot of baby blankets which is to have a couple of rounds of colour in the middle, then for it to be bordered with a few rounds of white to bring the squares together. Some squares ended up being multicoloured rather than specifically one colour but it helped to use up odd bits that would have been completely useless for other things.

Pile of pink granny squares on a dark desk

When Chris left to go to the Vineyard Leaders Conference just before my birthday, I was able to hand over 11ish squares that he could drop off to his Mum while he was back in the UK. Then I carried on, when I then went back to the UK last weekend, I took my bag of bits and my crochet hook and kept going, I needed to finish the Time Team Jumper and get as many granny squares finished as I could. In the end, I posted the squares to my MIL but forgot to count them! I made little piles when I was trying to pack them into the envelope I was recycling but didn’t count them properly. 

I got a message from my MIL, yesterday to say that the envelope had arrived and she really appreciated it. I then asked her to count how many squares were in there because I forgot. She had a total of 46 squares. 

I love that granny squares are so flexible. You can create all sorts like the Yes You Cardi-Can Cardigan from The Pigeon’s Nest or with a bit of tweaking that basic square you can create a sunflower pattern like The 1976 Crochet Bag also from The Pigeon’s Nest.

So, to update the 2023g Challenge info, one square is 5g (it’s possible that there is variation but this is the weight I settled on per square). 5g x 46 squares = 230g.