I was at my parent's house the other day, and my eighteen year old sister told me cheerfully that she had some extra yarn to give me. She brought out four different kinds of yarn in four different colors and four different textures. "Great!" I said. "I can start a new Ugly Blanket!"

Ah, the Ugly Blanket. My favorite handwork passtime. ^_^

I believe I've mentioned the Ugly Blankets before. I crochet a little - a very little - and all I know how to do are granny squares. So my method of making crocheted blankets is to crochet a giant granny square. When I was a kid and was involved in 4-H, I made a great baby blanket out of tons of granny squares stitched together. It was pale pink, had fringe and everything (I even got a blue ribbon at the fair with it), but since then I've become very lazy and can no longer be bothered to put that much effort into it. I can also seldom be bothered to actually go to the store and get my own yarn, especially in the days that the Ugly Blanket was first born, so I accepted partial skeins from my family.

The resulting blanket formed from laziness and donated yarn was hideous. And wonderful.

It was a gift for my dad, who loved its hideousness as much as I did. It was a good size to drape over yourself while sitting on a chair watching a movie. It was a myriad of different colors, but amazingly enough was all the same texture.

The second Ugly Blanket somehow got put into use before it was finished. I was planning to make the second one even bigger, but like I said, it was appropriated before it was ready. This one was not only many different colors, this one had different textures.

The next Ugly Blanket didn't begin until I had moved out. This Ugly Blanket was my masterpiece. It was tons and tons of different colors (no two colors the same!) and was big enough to drape over my queen size bed. Fantastic!

I'm excited about this latest Ugly Blanket, thugh it is still in the early stages of development. In the spirit of Ugliness, I have decided to post the rules of creating an Ugly Blanket, should anyone want to follow in my footsteps.

• The Ugly Blanket must be a giant granny square. If it is not a giant granny square, you were obviously not lazy enough for the blanket to be truly Ugly.
• As long as the blanket is only one granny square, it can be as big or small as you want. Baby Ugly Blankets are quite charming.
• Ugly Blankets can have as many different textures as you want, but keep in mind that transferring from thin, $2 yarn from Rite Aid to bulky expensive chenile yarn, while hideously ugly, can be kind of a pain.
• You are permitted to use the same color more than once, but there must be at least two rows of different colors between same colors.
• Matching colors may not be touching. If the blanket matched, it wouldn't be an Ugly Blanket, now would it? Try keeping a skein or two of bright solid colors to crochet in between matching colors.
• All the colors in use for the Ugly Blanket can of course be pretty colors that you enjoy and find aesthetically pleasing, as long as the end result is not aesthetically pleasing in the slightest.

Go wild with your Ugly Blanket! Experiment with different colors and types of yarn! The only bad Ugly Blanket is a matching Ugly Blanket, and that is not an Ugly Blanket at all!