Fast & Fluffy

I was given a large bag of super chunky yarn from someone clearing out the yarn that they had not touched in years. It had been crocheted into half of a shawl, and I considered (though never got around to) finishing it. After sitting in a closet for several months and gathering dust, I finally decided that I would never use it even if I finished the shawl. Instead, I set about frogging the entire thing, leaving each 100g skein in its own little pile to help prevent knotting.

Using a 1 inch thick crochet hook, I started with a double crochet foundation row to add elasticity, and then crocheted the rest of the blanket with double crochet/chain, creating the box look. There are around 30 tiny skeins in this blanket, which means that I ended up knotting a lot of ends together (the yarn is one strand, which prevents a Russian join, and the stitch too loose to stay secure without tying the two ends together). Luckily, the knots hide pretty well in with the rest of the fluff.

A common assumption is that large equals time consuming, but this blanket (or perhaps I should say this yarn/hook/stitch combination) defies common wisdom. I was able to complete this blanket (large enough to fit on a double bed) in less than 4 hours. That 4 hours includes the time spent figuring out that I was making it too large for the amount of yarn that I had, frogging almost six inches, and starting over. It was also the first time that I had ever used a hook of that size, which slowed my progress quite a bit. You can do it!