December 30, 2024

My Aran scrap basket runneth over! Literally -- if I don’t make something with them I’ll have to start a second basket. One of my 2025 goals will be to use up scraps. I’ve had this pattern in my queue for a few years since I watched Teri of the Yarnjoy Podcast on YouTube make it as her first Stitch Your Library project. She sized it down and shared the stitch multiple which isn’t in the pattern, and I am going to size it down as well.

I did a swatch in 5.5 mm and decided to size up to 6 mm. I did a starting chain of 138 and, after 8 rows (2 color stripes) it is 47” wide. I weighed my scrap ball before and after and it takes approximately 12 g per stripe (2 rows of SC).

January 1, 2025

3 color stripes = 3.25”

So, I’ll need 54-ish color stripes to make it 60” including the border.

This could be a good future temperature blanket idea -- I could do the average weekly temperature. But this year I want to use my scraps.

January 5, 2025

I finished my 6th color stripe yesterday. If I did 3 per week, that would be approximately 18 weeks to finish the body of the blanket. One of my 2025 goals is to be more casual about my crafting, so I’m not going to be strict about that of course. In 2024, I made a goal of being monogamous with my projects until I got through all my hibernating WIPs, and I followed that pretty well. But being monogamous would be pretty boring with a primarily SC project like this one! This year I want a larger variety of active projects so I can find one to suit my mood. But I also want to keep up the new policy of not letting projects slip into hibernation, since that’s what led to all those strict rules last year!

I went through my scrap container and pulled out all the balls that were > 12 g into a project basket. (Ignoring the ones that were too dark and erring on the side of bright colors.) I have quite a bit of the Big Twist black in my stash. I still need to go through my blanket chest in my bedroom where I have most of my 100 g Aran acrylic skeins to see if there are any scraps in there.

January 25, 2025

The blanket is now 18 color stripes, or 3 diamonds tall and 19”. So, I will need 9 diamonds tall to make the blanket roughly 60” with the border. 1/3 there and I’ve been doing about 1 color stripe per workday and 2 per day on the weekends. If I keep up that pace, I’ll be done some time in late February.

A few minutes later and I just noticed that I’ve lost some stitches at the end of my rows, so my blanket is not symmetrical. I’ll have to pull back four color stripes to fix it. Luckily those are the rows that I haven’t woven in ends yet. So, learn from my mistake and double check that you have the same number of ending SC as you had starting SC for that row.

March 8, 2025

I’ve got 40 color stripes now, so just over 6.5 diamonds high. I’ve been weaving my ends in as I go (and carrying my black yarn up the side), so it’s very functional blanket-wise as I work on it on these chilly winter nights. I’m running low on Aran scraps!

March 21, 2025

Only one diamond (24 rows) to go! It’s Friday night so I should be able to finish this blanket by the end of the weekend.

March 23, 2025

All done, including the 3 SC rounds in black for the border as per pattern. It’s a great size and a very good use of scraps!