Rebecca

Bookish crochet

In addition to all the other ways I track and record my reading, I’m doing something new this year. After being inundated with pictures of book blankets people have crocheted, and a little nudging from my mom, I decided to take the plunge. So far, at 9 books into the project, I am loving the way things are going. It’s helping me gain more confidence in my crochet – I finally figured out granny squares again! {Experienced crocheters: don’t judge, ha}. I had an excellent excuse to go buy lots of small skeins of yarn in all the colors, after my stash-busting afghan used up most of the variety. And figuring out how to best represent book covers in yarn is a wonderful creative exercise.

If you aren’t familiar with this idea, the basic concept is you crochet a granny square in the colors of the book cover. I’ve been going for as close a match to the overall vibes as I can get, and I think some of them are turning out really well {and maybe one or two are a stretch, ha}.

Beautiful Ugly
All’s Fair in Love and Treachery
Pride & Prejudice
The Favorites

It’s definitely easier to color-match and show examples of the physical books I’ve read. For those I read digitally, I pull up the cover on Goodreads and use it as a guide. Here are two of my favorite “digital covers” with a pseudo-kindle placeholder to show off the cover for comparison.

The Starlight Heir
The Queens of Crime

There is a luscious dark turquoise yarn I have pined over for months, but could not justify buying {it’s one of those enormous skeins}. I’ve decided I’m going to get that and use it for joining my individual squares together, as well as adding a single crochet border around each – to stabilize things a little before joining. I’ve seen blankets that use black or a neutral, to make the cover squares really *pop* … but this is the perfect reason to indulge in turquoise.

I’ve been tempted to start joining them together as I go, except I have no idea how many books I’ll read this year, and that final number will determine size/layout … so I must wait.

I’ve also seen so many people making temperature blankets – which I would like to try one day, but for now I’m just continuing to mark our high temperatures + rainfall on a paper graph.

Have you ever done something like this to track your reading? Or the temperature?

33 comments

    • The pictures others post always look so good, so I’m excited to see how mine turns out! So far, I am loving the squares 🙂 I like looking at crochet projects, but it takes me a while to get brave enough to try the “next level”, haha

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    • Crochet took me a lot of starts and stops and unraveling things to get back into figuring it out, lol … And I’m still going slow and not jumping into anything too advanced yet 🙂 I will definitely be sharing pictures when it’s done!

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  4. Ooh how fun, what a wonderful idea 🥰 I can’t wait to see the end result (and love the great excuse for treating yourself to a wool you’ve been after). The squares so far look amazing 😍 I look forward to seeing the rest of the squares over the year.

    I think I’ve seen something similiar before but it was a couple of years ago and I can’t remember if it was for crotchet or cross stitch now 🤔 I think it’s such a lovely way to track your yearly reads and get in some crotchet practice though. And I still need to get the hang of crotchet. I must do so this year. There’s so many wonderful things that you can create and I always adore the granny stitches designs that I see.

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    • Thank you 🥰🥰 I think it’s going to be a fun project! And can’t wait to see what kind of blanket I end up with, hehe

      I have seen a cross-stitch one where they stitched a bookshelf and then added book spines for every book – that was totally awesome too, but I’ve got to readjust to embroidery before I try that, lol 😉 🙂

      Granny squares are so fun to look at, and now that I’m figuring them out I’m starting to feel a little more ambitious 😀 When you start crocheting, definitely share your progress! ❤

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      • I imagine it is 🥰 I can’t wait to see it either. I bet it’ll look amazing.

        Ah it may have been that then. I know I’ve seen something similiar before and it does ring a bell. I haven’t tried embroidery as such but I love cross stitch 😅

        They really are. I’ve seen so many varying projects involving them too. Yay that you’re growing more confident. I can’t wait to see what you get up to altogether crotchet & craft wise. Will do ❤️ once I’m doing something more creative than chains at least 😂 initially I’d just gotten the hang of them when I stopped 🙈

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  8. I love this idea so much and I’m glad you got the little push you needed to dive into this project as it looks like so much fun and you’re doing so well! I am also currently working on a granny square blanket but all with the same colours (not bookish related at all lol). My favourite square from here is the Starlight Heir one 🤩 That colour combo is gorgeous! I’ve been tempted to do something like this except for the fact that my yarn stash is nowhere the size I’d need for this massive project. 😆

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    • Yay for granny squares! As I’m getting more comfortable with them, I definitely want to experiment with some of the fancier ones. And I totally “cheated” and bought a new stash for this project, lol … Ah well. It’s for a good cause! 😀 And yes, I absolutely love the way the Starlight Heir one turned out!

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      • haha Yess!! That’s so fun I love that you’re getting more comfortable with them and it’s my first project with them too although I picked an easy pattern that I have memorized by now after so many squares lol. hehe well it’s not cheating if you set the rules 😜 & if the cause is your coziness and growing your skills then it’s most certainly a good cause haha 😀

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  9. This is amazing! I love it! I wish I could crochet. There is a new store in my town that sells yarn and hosts crocheting classes, etc. I think a lot of people are enjoying it–wish I learned when my grandmother wanted to teach me! I look forward to seeing your progress.

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    • My mom showed me how, but I’ve had to curl up with books {and more recently YouTube} to fine-tune things – which is also how I taught myself to knit. It’s something that definitely takes practice, but it’s fun 🙂 I’m excited to share progress as it comes!

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  10. I love these! I’m a knitter, my crochet skills are almost nil. I’ve seen knitters knit book blankets instead of temperature blankets. There’s a lot of variety there. Maybe next year I’ll do something.

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