All hail the crochet cushion

I want to crochet a blanket. Like really badly. It annoys me that I can’t do this but no matter how hard I try I haven’t been able to put anything aside each month to create a Yarn Fund. I had high hopes for next month but that’s been dashed because I’ll have to be paying out £100 for the second hen do of the year that’s taking place in May. Oh and then May will be out because I’ll have had to pay for the actual night out of the hen do. And then I believe the third hen do of the year is currently booked in for the end of June. You see a pattern emerging?

Sigh.

But I still have my scraps. Scraps which have kept me going for quite some time. Scraps from all the blankets I made last year. The sit in their glass jars, looking all colourful and stuff and I have tried to put them all to good use. They made The Beast remember and they made some crocheted flowers to put on some cards but I still had an urge to do more.

And then I remembered that I said I wanted to make a cushion cover so the hook came out and the jars came down and I made a start.

I quickly knocked up 9 granny squares to make one side of my cushion and then I came to a screeching halt. Didn’t I say I was going to do different kinds of crochet this year? Didn’t I say I was going to stop grannying so much? So I stopped grannying and picked up Jan Eaton and picked out Number 3 of her 200 blocks, the Square Target. It was fun to do something new and I only made a couple of modifications (she wanted me to do 4 chain to turn a corner and I felt that 3 was probably enough).

I felt proud and ever so smug. “Look at me, crocheting something different” I smirked to myself.

Only then it hit me that I could come up against a potential problem. Making sure both sides of the cushion were of equal size so that they could be sewn up together. Cue panic attacks and much sweating. What would happen if my tension was all different? Oh my goodness the horror THE HORROR.

Then I came up against the realisation that my magic scraps really were turning into scraps. Obviously the trouble with doing one massive square target is that for each round you need just that little bit more wool and I was getting to the point where my wool wasn’t going to go any further. I'm not sure why I didn't just do 9 squares targets like the granny squares on the other side but obviously at some point in my head I was going for broke and doing one massive one.

Cue more panicking and sweating.

Luckily the gods of crochet were smiling on me and I managed to a) get both sides to fit the cushion and each other and b) I managed to make the wool last, just.

Then it was just a case of taking my cushion and its cover to Stitch and Bitch and crocheting the sides together around the cushion. Yeah, this isn’t a cover you can remove I’m afraid, that would involve a sewing machine and I still have a morbid fear of those. And if I’m perfectly honest I don’t think I’ve washed a cushion cover in my life. I know. What a grebber. Worst comes to worst I will bung the whole lot in the washer and life will be tickety boo.

But stop ruining it all with practicalities. Instead just feast your eyes on its amazingness.

I love that it’s got 2 very different sides. I know that some would prefer symmetry but I really like that I can turn it around according to my whim and it looks like a completely different cushion.

Well done me. Now, what else can I cobble together with my scraps?....

Hmmmm when is crochet too much crochet?