Granny Squares in Scarves for Homeless

I've been de-cluttering a few days a week this year. This leads to delightful discoveries like yarn stashes I've forgotten I had, among other things.

One happy discovery was a grocery bag of 5" granny squares, about 3 dozen of them. Colors are mostly brown, green (light, dark, olive), white, and variegated earth tones.

At one point, joining them had begun but it hadn't gone very far. With the winter desert chill in full force at night on the streets of Las Vegas, our Friday morning charity crafters are concentrating strongly on hats, scarves and gloves for the local homeless.

I needed a break from a project I'd been working on, so I grabbed the bag and dumped it next to me on the couch. I carefully disassembled the existing joining, and grouped the squares into color groups. The squares being 5", I took 8 of them and joined them to make a long strip. This gave me a skinny 40" scarf. It didn't make me happy. It would easily wrap around a cold neck, but I like them wider than 5" across.

I ran a row, up the long sides, of double crochets, with single crochets across the short ends, top and bottom. The double crochets on the sides were sort of flimsy and already had a tendency to roll. I decided I needed another row up the sides, but for stability. I alternated hdc's in the back loops with dc's in the front loops. It ended up with a really cute sort-of short-ribbed design.

I hope to take some photos over the next day or so, and post this edging. This really is a nicely stable edging for a flimsy scarf.

Maybe I'll write it up for a free pattern for Crochet Pattern Central, as a strong but pretty crochet edging, and include it here, on my blog.