My mum taught me to crochet when I was around 8 years old. While her methods were anything but conventional, a few taps on the hand with her crochet hook soon made me get the hang of keeping my tension consistent!
I started making granny-square blankets- that’s as far as I got though! I never finished them… I actually finished my first blanket only 3 years ago.
After getting bored of making blankets, I soon decided that I needed something that would be finished quickly, so I moved on to toys. The first one I made was a bunny… though it looked more like Frankenstein. I don’t have any pictures as I think the less said about that, the better! And I insist you erase the image from your mind immediately. I then went on to make what felt like a million unicorns, Christmas mice and other animals. I even made a paramedic doll for my friend.
Despite loving every project I did, I was always unsure of what to do with the leftover wool. Most of the things I made left such a small amount of yarn that it wasn’t enough to use for anything major. Such a waste, and I’m ashamed to say, I often threw them away.
When I met Cathrene, I slowly became more mindful of waste. It really made me think of what I could do to use up my scrap yarn. While the smaller scraps could be used to stuff toys, the bigger balls of yarn could be used for something else… blankets!!
Cathrene introduced me to “Corner-to-corner” crochet something I’d never heard of before! She made the biggest bed throw, it took so long but looks lovely. It’s such a simple stitch, but looks really nice. There are loads of instructions and even videos online, so I am not going to reinvent the wheel here. I had crochet-envy so was keen to start my own, and what better way to use my new scraps from another blanket I’d been making?!
So, I started a corner-to-corner blanket with the leftovers. I usually get really caught up in choosing colours and their order in a blanket, so having tiny bits of completely random colours was a breath of fresh air! I just put them all in a bag and got cracking. Once one colour ran out, I grabbed the next, joined it and carried on.
I really enjoyed the randomness of the colours, there were obviously more of some than others, but that adds to the character of the blanket! It didn’t take that long, but I would use up yarn as I went along. It’s got yarn from so many projects, its like a scrapbook of my crochet creations which I love!
If like me, you’re sentimental, you’ll look at each colour and remember what project it was from, and what you were doing at the time of each project! It was my “in-between project”. Something I could pick up when I had some time between other things. As there is no pattern, I could just crochet away while watching TV. It ended up fairly big, but unlike other blankets, I didn’t get bored of making it because it was quite exciting to see which colour was next, and as each colour came along, remembering which project it was from!
I’m currently saving my scraps to make a knitted blanket this time. The majority of the yarn is from my Bavarian crochet blanket, it’s going to make a fantastic happy-scrappy blanket!
