Crochet mood blanket update

I know that I am now about 6 months after the point when the blanket should have been finished. It is still not done but I have made some progress recently. I have now fully dismantled the blanket that I started last year. I took apart each square one at a time.

I stacked up the colours that I had sets of 10 squares each. All of these colours gave me a full set of 10 of each.

It was obviously the colours that I liked the least that I ended up with less squares of so I then started to make these up to the 10 squares of each to make the sets.

Almost there...

I did have 3 colours that I already had 11 squares from the original blanket.

Here's the full set of 10 of each of the original colours. I think I got to this point on about Saturday this weekend.

I worked out that there are 16 colours and 10 of each colour making 160 squares in total. I am not the best with this kind of maths but I know enough to have realised that this is not a square number. As the shapes that I am making are squares I think I would like to make the whole finished blanket square ideally,

I then tried to make an extra square of each colour. This worked out ok until I got to the white. I had used a lot of this in the "special" squares and therefore there wasn't quite enough left to make up the extra.

I therefore started to work out what numbers of squares that I would need to make a full blanket. 12 x 12 = 144 (I already have more squares than this and I don't really want to waste any that I have made) 13 x 13 = 169 (maybe...I would only need 9 of the extras that I have started to make and I am not sure how I would decide which 9) 13 x 14 = 183 (I would rather the blanket be square I think - definitely at this stage then this is what I think I want anyway) so 14 x 14 = 196. 

I wasn't totally sure how these figures would work. I know that I have 160 squares made for definite at the minute with all of the colours being even numbers as well. So this means that I will need another 36. I thought that this was probably too many to make out of the same 16 colours that I had used this far, especially as some of these were starting to run out meaning that there would not be even amounts of each. I was however saving a final 2 colours to use as edging and joining colours when I had started my original blanket. These were only chosen originally as, out of the random, mixed bags of colours that I had ordered, these were the only 2 where I received duplicates of the same colour. Now though, there is no reason why I can't include these in the main pattern of the blanket as well. I'm sure that with the way that these are being arranged, much more uniformly that they were in the mood blanket, I will still be left with enough of these for edging.

10 squares of each of these colours will get my total up to 180 out of the 196 squares that I need in total. I now have 18 colours in total and 16 additional squares to make. I know that I don't have enough left to do an additional white square as I have already tried this and ran out of white yarn so that's an easy decision made to get rid of this one as an additional colour. The other that I know I really disliked throughout the making of the original blanket was the beige/brown as well so also, easy decision I will remove this from my additional list. 11 squares of each colour all except these 2 and I will have the perfect number for a nice square blanket.

I set to work over the rest of this weekend and this evening. Whilst watching Disney movies on Sunday I was making enough pink and yellow squares to complete the whole set and making sure that there are now 11 of each colour, all expect the white and beige. Here is the full set finally completed. Woohoo! Yey!

I am really pleased with all of them and I think that they will look lovely when they are all arranged. I can't wait now to start planning the order that they will appear and working out what is the best way to join the squares. That's the only shame about having undone the original blanket, they were all joined as I went along and I had been fairly good an sewing in all of the ends as well. They all have to be undone and refinished to separate them so all of that hard work was undone. It will all be worth it in the end I think - I'm sure that a plain squares blanket will look a lot better in the long run. Just please wish me luck with all of the ends! A few at a time perhaps and I will get there.

I think that this was about the extent of this weekend really from a crafty point of view. Other than this I also finally managed to see and catch up with some mates and went out for a nice meal from a friend and her husband that I used to work with in my old job. The new job is still going well and I am still really enjoying it - this Monday I have to say is the most I can honestly say I have ever actually looked forward to going to work. Well, defniitely in an office at least. I hope you all have a good week too.