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Quilt Crumbs and Granny Squares

I finished "Marion" a while ago, but simply never remembered it needed blocking until nighttime, and I prefer to do my blocking when there's plenty of daylight and I'm fully awake.  Last week, I finally remembered at an appropriate time, so the FO post for that should follow shortly.

Otherwise, I've been sewing more crumbs again.  It's slim pickings in my crumb box.  The box is by no means empty, but there's not a lot of variety, so I'll probably stop again, before long.  Time to work on something more structured and let the crumbs accumulate a bit.  Even without as much variety as I'd like, it's still fun to see what you can make out of practically nothing. 

(The seams didn't all meet in that star block on top.  I need practice!  --But since this is super casual scrappy/crumby piecing, I'm not that bothered.  It's plenty good enough for my crumb quilt.)

Crumb Block WIPs

My current crochet project is also scrappy.  It's something started in April 2016 and recently dug out of hibernation.  These are scrappy, three-round granny squares from the left-overs of various other projects.  The plan is to lay them out and settle on their final arrangement, then join them with a continuous join.  (It's similar to the join I used for these cushion covers, but this time I'm following a different pattern.  More details down the road!)

Scrappy Granny WIP

While these granny squares are scrappy, I've been a little pickier about color choice than in my last granny square scrapghan.  It's still plenty scrappy, but I've allowed myself to put some rules into place.  For instance, I pulled seven squares from the pile because a hot pink I used earlier in the project just didn't feel right to me, now.  I'd already worked in the ends, so I'll set those aside for a future "kitchen sink" afghan.  (I also pulled the hot pink yarn from the basket so I won't accidentally use it again for this project.)

Once I chose my joining color (a medium grey), I decided that two other colors I'd been using were too close to that shade to be "allowed" in the third round of any granny square.  That added another handful of squares to the "not now" stack.  Making 10-15 more squares was a small price to pay to get the color scheme the way I want it (even if no-one else would ever have noticed or cared).  And those reject squares will be fine for a future project, I'm sure.

Scrappy Granny WIP

I made a test run by joining four granny squares with the continuous join.  It refreshed my memory of how continuous join works, provided a chance to see how I like this slightly different pattern (it's great!), and gave me an idea of how much size the joining adds to the granny squares, so I could estimate how many more were needed to reach the desired afghan size.  All helpful-- and it showed me that because of the texture and thickness of the joining yarn, it might be wise to go up a hook size when I start joining "for real".  (I'll at least give that a try.)

I probably won't start joining the granny squares just yet, because I want to finish those hedgehog mittens for Kimberly.  I want to start them over again, because I think I can make the cuffs a bit neater than on my first try-- and I want to make them a little longer in the wrist/hand.  Getting started will be the hard part (as almost always).  It's a knitting pattern, so that should make a nice change from all the crocheting I've been doing, lately. 

"Marion" wrap-up post coming soon!