I made big progress and got the whole Sunflower themed Granny Square blanket all attached (horizontal and vertical) using a single crochet stitch to join the squares in both directions.
Here it is on the “Design Carpet”:
Here is another photo:
Now I am adding a single crochet border around the whole thing, likely several rows of single crochet, I’ll decide as I go along.
And then it will be time to weave in all the thread tails that are hiding in the back!
Oh I did try to make finishing the granny square blanket a portable project on like to I did with the individual granny squares, where I would work on them while riding in the car…
But it was a disaster and we had the “Great Hunt for the Lost Crochet Hook” in the car as well yarn tangling and blanket in my feet tangling disasters. So I had to finish it in my living room sitting in a chair to limit the drama – ha!
House Holiday Decorating
After I got the blanket assembled I felt very industrious and with the help of John got the Christmas tree up and the fireplace mantle decorated for the holidays!
It was fun to pull out our ornaments and various decorations and see them again! I missed these three holiday bears that I’ve had for over 25 years – they’ve held up pretty well:
I also put up this copy of The Night Before Christmas that John has had since he was a child.
The pages are on the verge of falling apart but I like reread it every year.
I got all 11 rows of 12 sunflower granny squares each, connected vertically. I also began connecting them horizontally.
It seems like I am so close, but so far away from finishing. I have many horizontal rows to single crochet together and then I need to do a border around the whole thing to “square” it/neaten it up.
Then I have all the ends I did not already weave/crochet in to weave in 😦
But I try to focus on far how I have come and how much closer I am to being able to snuggle under my sunflower blanket!
Weather is weird in my part of Colorado and it is at time trying to be Spring, then Summer and then switches back to Fall. To encourage Fall to come to us in full force (bring on 40 degree days!) I made a batch of yummy Pumpkin Cream Cheese Muffins:
I think I’ve posted about these muffins before but here is the link to the recipe by Sally’s Baking Addiction:
The recipe looks tedious because you have to make 1) the streusel topping, 2) the cream cheese filling, and 3) the pumpkin muffin BUT it is totally worth it. I put on some good music and before I knew it I had to components assembled and they were baking the oven.
John was naughty and have two once they cooled down but they were VERY tasty with our coffee/tea!
Update on the post 48 Granny Squares Now Connected – I now have 84 sunflower granny squares joined together vertically! I am plugging along 🙂
So 7 out of the 11 rows of 12 granny square each, are done and just 4 more rows (48 granny squares) to go.
Then I am of course going to single crochet them together horizontally and add a single crochet border all the way around to anchor everything. After that I will decide if I want to make a fancy border, etc.
Revisiting a Hat I Started Last Winter
I made 137 sunflower granny squares while riding in cars, planes, trains and sitting at events beginning May 2024. Now that the making of the individual sunflower granny squares is done (and the blanket is finally being assembled) I needed another portable project.
I used a variegated ball of yarn I found thrifting with little idea of what the different colors would be since it was already rolled into a ball and I could only see a little of the color changes!
It was my leap of faith hat!
So on Friday John’s son Z was visiting and we took him to the Denver Film Festival and saw the premiere of the film Wake Up Dead Man: A Knives Out Mystery, starring Danile Craig, I brought my hat and worked on it in the car on the way to the event and at the event before the film showing began (we arrived early to get good seats and had a bit of a wait before the movie started).
Here’s some additional images from the festival including the lovely Chihuly chandelier that hangs in the Ellie Caulkins Opera House where the film was premiering.
The film was really fun and I recommend it when it premieres on Netflix in December.
I was so inspired by your awesome comments on my post 137 Sunflower Granny Squares Completed that I decided to make a big push yesterday to start getting the blanket assembled from a year’s+ of granny squares made while on the road (as a passenger of course, it’s difficult to crochet while driving, ha!).
“Fantastic! A truly graphic representation of the miles spent on the road”
“All those little squares of sunshine!”
“It will be so beautiful to sleep in a field of flowers!”
“Miles of travel and happy memories, a field of flowers to keep you warm.”
“A certain amount of serendipity seems to fit in with the carefree sunflower theme.”
I searched YouTube for the best method to put them together and decided to go with single crochet. I looked at a bunch of videos and went with this simple one:
So here are 48 of the blocks joined into 4 rows and laid upon the “Design Carpet”.
I have 137 as I mentioned in the previous post on this project, and I am thinking instead of using 120 for a 10 by 12 block layout, I should use 132 for a 11 by 12 block layout.
In case you are curious of what my plan is, first I am crocheting vertical rows and once all those are together, then I was connect the horizontal rows with single crochet. So it will be a bit unwieldy until that part but it will make less ends to weave in.
It was actually very relaxing once I got my rhythm to join the granny squares together. While joining them I fell into some sort of strange YouTube rabbit hole and ended up binge watching Barry Manilow performance videos.
Okay so I shared a little about this back in 2016 in this post Shameless “Thrifting” (wow I have been blogging so long) but when I was 12 or so I was OBSESSED with Barry Manilow.
While other kids of my demographic were obsessed with the Jackson 5/Michael Jackson, I was totally in love with Barry Manilow. I remember having a giant poster of him in my room (not sure where I got it) and my father walking into my room and being appalled (my parents were more traditional R&B and Jazz music people).
So I remember when I was around 12, Barry Manilow had his first TV special. It was like 1977 and there were no VCR, TiVo, etc. recording options and most things were not replayed from live telecasts. My parents made my sister (my brother wasn’t born yet) and I go to a party with them on the night on the Barry Manilow Special.
I had a complete meltdown and thought my world was ending because I had to miss the Barry Manilow Special. My parents were not understanding and I was made to go to the party.
(Note this is not me but image from web)
While working on the blanket last evening and falling into the “Barry Manilow Rabbit Hole”, I did search YouTube for any videos/clips from that special I missed back in 1977 (which Barry Manilow ended up winning at Grammy for so it must have been good!) and I found a couple but could not find the full special. That would have been fun to sit back all these years later and finally watch it.
My musical tastes have changed quite a bit over the years but whenever I hear Barry Manilow I get nostalgic for that innocence of a 12 year old girl who thought his songs were all that love and relationships were about.
Well I am sure that is more about me than you wanted to know but occasionally we overshare while blogging, ha!
After lots of time on the road during various roadtrips in 2025 I’ve exhausted my supply of “center flower” yarn for the Sunflower themed Granny Square blanket I’ve been crocheting while riding in the car.
So it is time to make it into a blanket!
There are a total of 137 granny squares!
This might seem tedious but I counted and photographed how many of each different mix of yarns squares (21 different versions of the square*) of the 137 squares I made (the count of each type in lower right hand corner):
I’m not using all 137 squares in the blanket. I figure I will make a 10 square by 12 square blanket and use 120 squares and save the rest (17) for a couple small projects like a pillow or something like that.
I decided not to use the “design carpet” to lay out the sunflower granny squares. Instead I separated them into VERY ARBITRARY “light” and “dark” piles, trying to make the piles as even as possible:
So I’ll post my progress as I crochet together alternating “light” and “dark” squares to make the blanket!
*(Why so many different versions for the granny squares? Well I was using up miscellaneous yarn I had thrifted over the years)
tierneycreates 