Crochet Station

It appears I'm in the process of going through various non-knitting crafts this summer! For a while I've wanted to crochet a blanket. I think there is only one blanket I've crocheted to completion so far, and among my crafting related hobbies it's out there among the ones I only get into sporadically, in contrast to knitting. I always have at least a couple of knitting projects on the needles, and only feel the need to venture into other territories every once in a while. Blankets are the kind of project where crocheting makes sense to me, while I'm probably never going to crochet a garment. I may have crocheted a shawl in the pre-Ravelry times, but for them I also prefer knitting as the technique.

While I enjoy large projects like blankets, what helps keep them interesting is the changing of colors. It's unlikely I'd knit or crochet a blanket in a single color, but I also don't like there to be too much fiddling, which is why I'm a bit concerned about projects that require a lot of smaller pieces to be seamed together. That's why blankets made in one piece, requiring only simple stitches but allowing for multiple color changes are ideal. I also love using up scraps of yarn, so something like the Granny Stripe pattern by Attic24 is pretty much the perfect project for me. I'm using fingering weight yarn and hook size 3 mm. I estimated around 300 stitches should make for a decent sized blanket, so I started with 300+2. I'm doing only one row per color because I quite like the look. The rows don't look as much as solid rows as interlocking rows of small colored squares. I'm trying to pick colors my sister would like, since this is going to be a blanket for her new home! I also like seeing how speckled or other multicolors yarns turn up when crocheted.