A new crochet WIP

For some time I've been pondering making a giant granny square blanket and then, more recently, I've been pondering making a granny stripe blanket (they are everywhere at the moment thanks to Attic24). But I couldn't make my mind up, so I've kind of combined the two ideas into a Granny Rectangle...

This blanket is destined to come with us when we go camping, so it's being made out of cheap and cheerful (and, importantly, washable) acrylic yarn. Yarn bought, incidentally, when we were camping in Dorset. Manchester is sadly lacking in yarn shops that deal in cheap acrylic - the £1.40 for a 100g ball kind of cheap acrylic at any rate.

I made up the pattern, such as it is, myself, but then having looked on the internet I can't claim it to be original. But anyways, if you're interested this is what I did (UK stitch names)...

Work 25 ch

into the 4th chain from hook work [2tr, 2ch, 3tr, 2ch, 3tr], 1ch,

*skip 2 chain, work 3tr into next chain, 1ch* repeat * * 5 times unitl until 3ch remain,

skip 2 chain and work [3tr, 2ch, 3tr, 2ch, 3tr] into the last chain, 1ch,

working along the other side of the chain...

*skip 2 chain, work 3tr into next chain, 1ch* repeat * * 5 times,

join with slst into 3rd of 3ch that form the first tr.

It's then just a case of adding rounds of granny 3tr clusters until the rectangle is the size you want it.

Does that make sense? I hope so.

If you wanted to make one with different dimensions, you just need to know that the starting chain needs to be a multiple of 3 plus 1 extra.

And look how the blanket's grown since I took that first picture...

Here's also a handy tip for finishing a round if you want to do a second round in the same colour...you know how you usually finish a granny square by working a last 1ch and then joining into the top of the starting 3ch with a slipstitch? And you then end up with your yarn on the left-hand side of that 1ch space and have to slst across to the next, don't you? Well, don't do the 1ch and slst - instead simply work a double crochet into the top of the starting 3ch. You then finish up at the right-hand side of the space you want to work your next 3tr cluster into*. Neat, isn't it? (I learned this from the 'Lacy Crochet' book.)

*Edited to add...If it's a 2ch space you finish up on you replace it with a htr, a 3ch space with a tr, etc And I'm aware I may not have explained this very well...may have to try again!