I’ve had a pattern for a blanket in my head for a while (actually I came up with this pattern and the pattern for my binary heart blanket around the same time), but I never knew quite how to pull it off, so the notion was saved in the dark recesses of my brain for a year. However, in the midst of my semi-successful attempt to use up all my yarn before I moved across the country, I pulled the idea out again as a stash buster. I used up quite a bit of yarn in this stash busting project, but then ended up having to buy more to finish it so I guess it doesn’t count as a stash buster anymore.

My original idea was to crochet each chemical symbol using tapestry crochet and I even have the charts I began to design for all the elements up to silicon. That idea got quickly scrapped when I realized it just didn’t look very nice when I tried crocheting letters. I also realized, I hated the idea of seaming all those squares together. However, once I started searching for alternative methods of seaming besides using a tapestry needle, I realized there are ways of seaming that might actually be fun. One particular method, the flat braid join appealed to me. I came up with the idea to simply color each element by group instead and crochet a 4.5 x 4.5 inch granny square for each. At the end I would join them together using a continuous 3 ch flat braid join.

For all the chemistry nerds out there, I realize ununseptium and ununoctium probably aren’t halogens or noble gases. But they’re still part of groups 17 and 18 because of some similar chemical properties, and so I labeled them as such.

I used a basic granny square pattern with 3 rounds of double crochet and a single crochet border. Because I was trying to use up my cheap acrylic yarn before I moved, all the squares are either made from Red Heart Super Saver yarn or Caron One Pound yarn.

Pattern:

Ch. 4. Sl st into first ch to form ring.

Rnd 1: Ch 3 (counts as first dc), 2 dc into ring. *Ch. 3, 3 dc into ring.* Repeat from * to * 2 more times.

Rnd 2: Sl st into next 2 dc and into ch 3 sp. Ch 3 (counts as first dc), 2 dc into ch 3 sp. *Ch. 3, 3 dc into ch. 3 sp.* Repeat in every ch. 3 sp around.

Rnd 3: Sl st into next 2 dc and into ch 3 sp. Ch 3 (counts as first dc), 2 dc into ch 3 sp. *Ch 3, 3 dc into ch 3 sp.* Repeat in every ch. 3 sp around.

Rnd. 4: Ch 1. 1 sc in every dc around. End with sl st into first ch. Bind off, and weave in tail.

Granny squares are super simple to make and very easy to learn. After making over 200 of these squares, I could make a granny square almost entirely by touch–making it very easy for me to multitask. Which is good. Because I was starting graduate work and crocheting made reading papers so much more interesting.

As for the flat braid join, there is a fantastic tutorial for a 5ch one on YouTube which I modified to be a 3ch in my project to get a tighter braid: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PoBG9W9rpog

When Mendeleev created the periodic table, he probably didn’t anticipate it turning out so cozy!

It’s slightly too large for my twin sized bed.