This year, I decided to expand my capabilities and embark on little monthly challenges. Some of them are financed-based, some are fitness-based and some are just for fun. I really have no rhyme or reason for the challenges, I just wanted something to focus on for each month.
The challenge:
For June, the challenge was to crochet one granny square every day.
The parameters:
I’ve been wanting to crochet some granny squares, so I thought this would be the perfect challenge to do so. I found some instructions on Pinterest for the Sunburst Granny Square (there are loads of instructions out there for this pattern), rooted around in my yarn stash to find some cotton yarn, and grabbed a hook to start crocheting. You can use any color you like to make these squares, but I chose some brown and shades of yellow to make more of a sunflower sunburst.
How did I do?
The plan was to make one granny square a day. However, I quickly found out that changing the colors every round was going to take me longer than I thought. I found it easier to make the squares in stages, meaning make a bunch of first rounds with the brown color, and then add on the next color to all of them, and so on, so that I was only working with one color and one stitch at a time. I think if I had only used one color for the squares, it would have been so much easier to make one a day.
Because I was making the granny squares in stages, it was kind of disappointing because I didn’t have a finished object at the end of each day. My vision of a growing stack of granny squares didn’t really come to fruition. It was also a little hard to keep the momentum up, and in fact, I only ended up making 15 granny squares. Still, that is 15 more squares that I didn’t have at the beginning of the month.
I also got really good at the puff stitch and the bobble stitch. My first few tries at these stitches were not great and it took me a while to figure out the knack of these stitches. I just need to block the squares since they are all not exactly the same size. I also have so many ends to weave in! I don’t know what will end up taking longer – crocheting the granny squares or weaving in all the ends. I think I might turn the squares into a bag. Stay tuned.
Lessons learned:
Like last month, I am finding that it’s really challenging to do something every day. I know I did the sit-ups challenge in February and that one was not as hard because it literally took me 1 minute to do the sit-ups and I could do them at any time and in any room in my apartment. For this challenge, I had to sit down and gather all my tools and make sure I had time to work on my granny squares.
I’ll be back next month with a new challenge.
2025 Monthly challenges:
January: Food budgeting
February: Sit-ups
March: Decluttering
April: Puzzles
May: Cozy Journaling
June: Granny Squares
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