Blanketty Blank

I'm very aware of the fact I have been crocheting for a while now and I haven't yet tackled the Big One.  I've watched and admired as many other bloggers have showed the world their beautiful afghans and blankets.  I've felt slightly ashamed that I haven't yet done anything that takes such commitment and dedication - most of my projects are pretty quick to do. 

This has been in the back of my mind for several months and I knew I should really start a blanket of my very own.  But I seemed to hit a brick wall as I had no idea of what sort of blanket to make.  What colours would I choose?  Crochet or Knitted?  Stripes or Granny Squares?  Knowing that it was going to involve many hours of work I wanted to make sure it was going to be something I loved. 

Several weeks ago inspired by this pattern I finally worked out how my blanket was going to look.  It was going to be a patchwork sampler combining both knitting and crochet, making 6 inch squares of lots of different stitch designs.  I then had to work out a colour scheme so using the odds and ends from my stash I played around with the colours and settled on a scheme of 7 different colours plus cream.  The next step was to stock up on my chosen yarn so I went and bought all this lovely soft Stylecraft yarn. 

I then started making lots of lovely squares.  Some knitted, some crochet.  Some I liked.  Some I was not so happy with.  I reached a point when I'd done about 20 squares (my design was based on me making an 8 x 12 squares rectangle (i.e. 48" x 72" without a border) so I needed 96 squares in total). 

I started laying them out to see how the blanket was coming together.  I did not like what I saw :(   There was just too much going on; lots of colours and lots of different textures and I just wasn't happy with it.  Feeling dismayed at after all my planning that my design was not working out I thought there must be a way to salvage it.  I still liked the colours and I really like these knitted feathery squares:

 and these simple crochet ones of double clusters: 

I've now decided that I will make the blanket just out of the crochet clusters squares.  I am also going to keep the feathery knitted ones which I plan to use in a future project.  The others are sadly going to be unraveled and reworked into cluster squares so the yarn will not be wasted. 

Here are some of the squares that didn't make the cut:

I've obviously been set back a bit as I'm now back to only having made 5 squares but I'm feeling more positive about it now and hope to be back on track in no time.  I hope to have the project finished in time for winter.