Hip to be Square

I have a large basket that I use to store all yarn leftovers that I deem worth keeping. Things end up in the basket based on one or two criteria. The first criteria is the quantity left over. If there is enough yarn left after a project is completed to work into another project - into the basket it goes. The second criteria is simple - if I think the yarn is special in some way, I save the leftovers.

I noticed that the most common yarn in the leftovers basket were small balls of sock yarn. Most of the leftover balls aren't big enough to make one project - but if put them together I knew I'd be on to something. The only thing is that I wanted to keep it simple.

I figured a blanket of some type out of the scraps would be a reasonable idea. So I knit up some simple squares. The squares in the picture are all blocked to be 7 inches square. The nice thing is that they didn't take very much yarn at all and they were quick to knit.

The bottom two squares are from leftover Opal yarn and each square weighs about 12 grams. I've still got enough leftovers of those colors for another square each. The top left square is Koigu KPPPM and took 16 grams of yarn to complete. The center square is Socks That Rock medium weight and weighs in at a hefty 26 grams.

I'm just not sure I like the large squares. I originally thought about making squares in a much smaller size so the blanket would be similar to a postage square/charm quilt. If I ever do opt for that idea, I'll knit strips of garter ridge squares so that there is much less seaming.

Whatever I end up doing, sock yarn is will definitely make a light weight blanket. I'll wait until I get a blanket's worth of squares before I decide on how to put them together. I'm thinking that the heavier weight squares might need to be put into a separate blanket. Maybe I'll just do a small lap sized blanket with the large squares and then start a blanket based on my original idea.