When our latest yarn Billow first arrived to the office, I was in the same boat as all of my crafty coworkers: completely head-over-heels, need to have it in my life, in love with this yarn. Unfortunately, this caused me great anxiety as I am very much a one-at-a-time project kind of gal – but Billow was just so tempting! Considering I was going to break my “one project” rule for Billow (I have an in progress cowl on the needles), I methodically rummaged through my books and patterns looking for the perfect project.
my ultimate billow blanket, nestled nicely on top of my couch
Torn between a flurry of cowls, cardigans, and blankets, I unexpectedly decided on the idea to simply make a large granny square blanket. Lately, I’ve been honing in my crochet skills and figured that repetition would be the best approach to train my fingers to crochet. And since my finishing skills are rather lacking (ahem, or lacking the motivation to finish), I knew that making one single continuous granny square would be the way to go for me. By eliminating the need to sew lots and lots of small granny squares together, I knew that this was the project for me, my crochet hook, and Billow!
After I decided on my project, it was on to color planning. And oh my, this part might have been even more difficult that the pattern search! I simply adore the color palette for Billow. The colors are a bit more toned down, but the tightly curated shades really work so well together. I had a hard time deciding if I wanted to do: a natural with one pop of color, a gradient of cream to brown, or maybe experiment with combining the soft mauves and pinks with punches of mossy green and warm yellows. After playing around with many color combinations, I settled on Natural, Lichen, Gosling, Clarity, and Ash.
my billow blanket, made with: natural, lichen, gosling, clarity, and ash
For my blanket, I used a size K (6.5mm) crochet hook and I just did a simple granny square that I kept working around and around. I made the center in Natural for several rounds to balance out the striping I would be working in later on. Then, I worked two full rounds of each of the five colors until my blanket reached what I considered to be “giant” sized!
I used 4 balls of each color except for Ash (the dark blue), which I used 5 of. I ended up running out of yarn about 24” from the end of my last round, but it could have been made only doing one round of the last color as a finer border – which you would then only need 4 balls of each color.
My blanket turned out to be 70×70” total, and it is big enough to cover my bed. I couldn’t be happier! I really am so thrilled with how it turned out. Plus, Billow is so super soft – I know it’s going to keep me so very cozy. And I can say with confidence that I can pretty much crochet double chains with my eyes closed forever now!
And for anyone else looking to try their hands at crochet, I would recommend the book Crochet 101 by Deborah Burger. Not only does it cover the basics, but it also devotes an entire section the the classic granny square.
Do you have any big (or giant!) plans for Billow?
