It's done!

Well folks, it only took 11 months but I finally finished my granny square blanket:



I'm happy that I actually followed through on it (credit must go to Mary, who recently finished hers and inspired me to keep going!), but there are a few things I wish I'd done differently. In fact I'm sort of inspired to make another one just so I can do it the right way.

If you happen to be interested in making one, here are some handy tips! Okay, who am I kidding. This is mostly for me, as a reminder in case I try again.

• The pattern came from the June 2010 Australian version of Better Homes & Gardens. Mary saw the blanket on this blog and wrote to the author, who graciously scanned her magazine and sent us the pattern. It's so fun following an international crochet pattern, guys. It's all in centimeters and their stitches all have different names.
• The original pattern calls for something like 13 different colors of yarn. There are essentially no yarn makers that make all the colors you need, but mixing yarn textures is not something I wanted to do. This meant I went way off track with my color choices. Looking at sites like Ravelry, where I can see what people have done on their own, I think sticking to one color family or just 3-4 colors would have been a nice idea.
• The bigger and blockier your colors, the better. I spent a lot of time switching colors in each square, and up close that looks great. But as a whole, the colors in my blanket look a little out of control. I wish I'd gone a little less detailed, because I think the overall look of the blanket would've been more polished.
• The directions also describe the squares in size, not in the amount of stitches. Because I am a novice crocheter, some of my stitches are bigger or smaller than they should be. That made it really hard to put the blanket together at the end - a lot of my squares are either stretched or squished into their spot, so the blanket can't really lay flat. I think next time I'll be more aware of the number of stitches (rounds for you crocheters) and less concerned about the actual size.