Thanks to the awful weather (Not that I’m happy about that. What kind of summer is this?) I managed to finish my kaleidoscope blanket already!
Only a couple of days ago I finished joining all the squares. I hadn’t even started with the border. But once I knew what I wanted, the border crocheted super fast.

Taking pictures of the whole wasn’t so simple, because the lighting was never good and using a flash made the white too bright. Luckily I managed to take advantage of one of the few times the sun came peeping through.

Front

Working with small granny squares was something I had been thinking about for a while now. And when it became clear that after my rainbow granny and hearts blanket I would still have plenty of yarn left, it seemed a perfect opportunity to use the sometimes small amounts of colour to crochet these tiny 2-rounds squares.

Back

My first intention was to make something smal, like a cushion cover, but it was quite clear that I had more than enough yarn to make several cushions. Therefore I opted to crochet another blanket, especially after seeing Sucrette’s Kaleidoscope.

Sucrette crocheted 160 squares for her blanket, which seemed do-able for me. My first square was crocheted back in March; the 160th and last square in May.

The joining of the squares was another matter all together.
I initial plan was to use Sucrette’s zig-zag joining, but in reality this didn’t look so good when I tried it on my squares. Thus, back to the drawing board. After some trial and error, I finally settled for a joining I thought of myself. This joining I have now dubbed the ministeck-join, because it reminds me a bit of the way the ministeck pixels are attached to their spine (ministeck official site).

At the front, this ministeck-join creates a sort of bridge between which the squares sort of float/hang.

At the back, you still get a sort of zig-zag effect, albeit different than Sucrette’s

For the border, I wanted something frivolous, something that would break the squareness and also something which would repeat the feel of the ministeck-join in the border.
I practised on some extra squares and finally I found what I was looking for.
In total, the border consists of 5 rounds. I will explain the exact way this was crocheted at a later time, together with the ministeck-join.
I really like how the border turned out. It does make the blanket curl a little bit, but for me that’s part of the charm.

I’m really, really, really happy with the end result. And I’m even more happy, because this time I didn’t blindly follow an existing pattern, but gave it my own twist

The details:

Yarn: 25 colours and white, all left overs from previous projects. Approximately 100gr of white yarn.
Crochet hook: 4,5mm for the squares. 4mm for the joining and border.
Amount: 160 squares
Measurements: Aprox. 65×105 cm. (10×16 squares)
Time: Crocheted sporadically over a 4-month-period.
DIY? Sucrette’s square chart – Ministeck join – Pattern border. (will be added)