Project Deconstruction... it's painful.

If you remember, I was working on the ugly awesome granny square blanket several months ago. School happened and it got thrown in my yarn box where it sat until two days ago. After finishing the giant granny lapghan and begrudgingly happily giving it as a wedding gift, I realized I wanted my own granny to snuggle. So I pulled out the ugly awesome granny. Whoa. If you ever want to realize just how much progress happens when you actually practice and improve a skill, forget about a crochet project for a few weeks.

The ugly awesome granny wasn't awesome. Well, the colors were. And the patterns. But I digress. It was horribly discombobulated. It was a not-so-happy granny.

If you notice my feet at the bottom, you'll realize just how far I had gotten on this project. Boo. If I had been attempting to make a ripple granny, I would have been spot on. Are there such things as ripple grannies? I think I just didn't pay as close attention to the joining as I should have. This attempt was done with the "join as you go" method. Easy in theory, but apparently it was not working out for me. I think  I'll try it again in the future with a smaller project. 

I've mentioned Attic 24 in the past and I'm going to do so again.

Lucy at Attic 24 is an amazing crochet lady. She has many fab tutorials. I'm currently working on a blind your eyes bright version of her crochet bag. Anyway, back on topic, she has a fantastic tutorial on how to join squares with single crochet after you have created all of them. (tutorial is here.) I think that's the method I'm going to try for this granny. That way if I screw it up, I can cut one string rather than a billion. One more side note: You should also read her non-crochet posts. She's an excellent writer.

So after huffing and puffing and asking my husband, "Do you think I should start over?" for the millionth time, I decided I couldn't go further. It was demo time. I wanted to save as many of the squares as I could because, hey, there's a lot of damn work and awesome ugliness there!

It took hours. Hours. I was trying to save squares and yarn. It was a painstaking process. I grumped at myself throughout the whole process. 

All that work wasted. But it was going to be better. It was going to be ugly awesome amazing. I managed to save most of my squares and quite a bit of the yarn for the rows I had to cut. 

Today, I spent quite a bit of time re-crocheting the rows I had to cut free. Now all but two grannies are five rows each. The other two are ten rows. I still like the idea of different sized squares, but I'm going to go at it less haphazardly this time. 

I still have about a gazillion ends to sew in as I didn't do that I as I went along either. Oh well. I'll get to it eventually. We really need to develop the technology to make ends sew in themselves. That's my least favorite part of this hobby. 

I WILL FINISH THIS AFGHAN THIS SUMMER. It will happen. After tearing it apart, I absolutely have to see it done again. The yarn demands it. Haha. Time also demands it, since I have several other projects promised to friends and family. I also want to finish my bag before too much longer. More about that later. 

Wish me luck! Here's to hoping round two does not end as painfully as round  one!