RockinLola’s mill end mystery yarn planned pooling shell

INFO on this YARN: michael’s mill end mystery yarn- 3 skeins to a bag; self-striping, about 12 inches per color, 6 colors in a sequence. a little rough to the touch, but can be softened. it’s pliable so you can work it loose or tight with different tension. it is similar to red heart super saver, but a tad bit more coarse.
while it is pretty, i know why it was in the mill end section. it’s very dirty and has lots of random fibers running through it, such as long black wirey hairs and strands of thin plastic feeling pieces. it’s almost like a Barbie doll got stuck in their machine. this piece will not be sold.

STITCH: shell stitch. each color in the sequence yielded me 7 shells.

STARTING CHAIN: i used a separate solid color yarn for the starting chain. in order for the border to cover the chain, i worked around the chain on the first row of shells on the sc and the middle dc stitch in the shell. this allows the border to properly cover the starting chain making it virtually invisible, and also anchored the stitches to the chain more so it won’t be too loose after adding the border.

PLANNED POOLING:

color sequence:
light pink
pink
yellow
light green
green
purple

row 1 is a half sequence - 21 shells across.
row 2 is 22 shells across.

1 skein measured 38” x 7”

i tried in granny stitch first but i didn’t like it because of the texture. all of the 6 colors are the same length, so i did the purple first and got 7 shells out of it. it measured a little over 12 inches, so making a whole color sequence would have been over 6 feet wide (too wide for a baby blanket). so i did half a sequence wide (21 full shells with a sc between each on the first row).
i put the stitch count for my shells in the calculator- 1) i am impatient and want to see what it looks like and 2) i plan exactly where i want to start the blanket. i started halfway through that purple so the purple is even in the corner.

i crocheted until the purple made it to the other corner of the blanket, matching up with the starting edge, a making a V shape.
i used a little less than 2 bags of the mystery yarn (6 skeins, 28 oz).

for the border, i used red heart super saver in ocean which is a purple and green variegated. it matched well with the colors in the striping yarn.
round 1: i started in the bottom corner. the bottom and sides were all done in hdc, with hdc, ch 2, hdc in corner. around the top was done like this: dc in sc below, hdc in next 2 dc, sc in the middle dc of shell, hdc in next 2 dc, dc in sc below, etc….
round 2: dc in each stitch around, 4dc in each corner. fasten off.

i’ve done shells a lot, first inspired by Brenda-Leigh Bennett’s planned pooling shell pattern here:
http://www.ravelry.com/patterns/library/game-day-lap-blanket

here is my first planned pooling shell project with extensive notes on how to do it.
http://www.ravelry.com/projects/RockinLola/game-day-lap-b...

PPWC Facebook posts:

https://m.facebook.com/groups/1585936391710370?view=perma...

https://www.facebook.com/groups/PlannedPooling/permalink/...

https://facebook.com/groups/1585936391710370?view=permali...

https://facebook.com/groups/1585936391710370?view=permali...

https://m.facebook.com/groups/1585936391710370?view=perma...