Break Month Blanket-Along!

Have I mentioned I'm working on a granny square blanket? ;) Our terms within the HPKCHC each last three months with a break month in between. This August is one of those break months. I'm about halfway done with my blanket but need to make a big push this break month. Why exactly? Because it's for my best friend's baby who is going to make her appearance sometime the end of October/beginning of November and odds are high the baby shower will be in September. Fortunately for me, Cyprienne also has a baby blanket to make this August so I am not alone in my goals.

Yes, I've been a-blanketing for a bebe as well!  Some other colleagues jumped the gun a little on her shower celebration earlier this month, so my blanket and I missed it, to my chagrin...  but I still have a good month or so before the urgency gets ramped up tenfold.

 

Should I Seam It As I Go? A Granny Square Discussion

It's a question as old as modular knitting itself:
should I sew blanket squares together as I go, spreading the work across the life of the project?
or should I save all the seaming for the end, benefiting from the focus of a single repeated task?

With our CAL in full swing, I've bitten the bullet and have begun the seaming on the massive granny pixel undertaking that is this blanket!  Over 1700 squares, each just over two square inches...
follow the yellow brick chart!

Present Me is now very very happy with Past Me for leaving a footlong tail at the end of each square; each tail is used to sew a square to its neighbors below and to the left.

I feel a bit more secure with the whole arrangement because each yarn tail is firmly attached at its origin, thanks to not breaking the yarn.  Added bonus: because all of the squares are oriented in exactly the same manner, it's that much easier to line them up and put in the necessary six or so stitches to each square before securely weaving and clipping the ends in assembly-line fashion.  Once I got used to the orientation from all sides, it's been fairly quick work (the seaming pictured took about three hours total).



If you remember correctly, I have a master plan. This plan involves color blocks and since I'm not a fan of seaming, I've been crocheting by color, then seaming by color, and then joining according to my master plan. And like Cyprienne I too left long tails on my squares for the purpose of seaming.

 

This has been working pretty well so far. A nice flow of alternating between what I consider the fun part of churning out squares and what I consider the not so fun part of seaming squares.