Thanks to Pinterest, I stumbled upon a really cool Mario Brothers crocheted blanket that uses granny squares to make up the pixels. NERD ALERT! This is absolutely the coolest and most perfect geeky gift for my brothers! I am planning to make one for each of my little brothers (who are really 27 years old, but about 12 at heart) for Christmas. One Mario, one Luigi.
Each blanket requires 252 granny squares - seriously, why am I signing myself up for this? Yes, I am crazy to want to take on this many granny squares at once, and it may take me until Christmas 2014 or 2015 based on the rate that I crochet (and how easily I am distracted from projects with other projects.. oh look, something shiny on Pinterest...) but my brothers will LOVE them, so it's worth it (little buggers BETTER love them...).
I wasn't sure what colors I wanted to do, so I started playing in Excel (I'm a spreadsheet nerd) and came up with several options. Some are more old school colors, while some incorporate newer Mario color schemes into the old school 8-bit character.
I figure I might as well share the color options I came up with in order to hopefully save someone else the time it would take to do it themselves.
If you don't know how to crochet a granny square (it's simple), check out the great tutorial on The Purl Bee.
UPDATE 1/29/2014 ::
I've gotten a few questions about sizing of this blanket... my suggestion is to make a few granny squares of different sizes (2 row, 3 row, 4 row...) and then measure each square and multiply by 14 for the width and 18 for the length to see how large your finished blanket would be.
For a smaller throw, a 2 row granny would probably work fine. But if you want more of a bedspread size, you might need to go with a 4 row granny.
The size of your granny squares will depend on your hook choice and crocheting style (I crochet pretty tight, even when I remind myself to loosen up), so it really is a good idea to make a few samples and measure them to estimate your finished size.
Cheers!
>^..^<
