Blanket Project Thursday - Weeks 1&2

I want this:

Shelly Kang's sock yarn blanket

More accurately, I want to make a version of this for myself. I saw this pattern about a year ago, and decided I needed to knit socks in order to be able to make a blanket from the scraps. I don't want to buy yarn specifically for the blanket, so that means I need to make a lot of socks, or things out of sock weight yarn. Maybe I can convince Becka's mom to give me her sock yarn leftovers?

Shelly Kang put the instructions to make a blanket like this on her blog.

Details on her blanket:

The finished dimensions are 53″ X 72.5″, or 134 X 184 cm (diamond point to diamond point.)

The finished weight is 2 lbs, 13 oz or 1.282 kg.

That’s about 5960 yards/5450 meters – or 3.3 miles/5.4 kilometers of yarn.

512 sts per square times 736 squares (counting each of the large squares as four) adds up to 376,832 stitches in the squares alone.

I want my blanket to be 60"x84". This will take 776 squares measuring 3 1/2" on the diagonal. The average weight of the squares I have made so far is 2.5g, so I estimate needing about 2kg of yarn.

My collection of sock yarn scraps so far is pretty small:

I have two pairs of socks on the needles right now:

and I am in a Personal Sock Yarn Club on ravelry where my goal is to make a pair of socks every month for the next year using stash - I had just enough sock yarn in my stash to do one pair a month for the next year.

My personal sock yarn club picks for the next year. The yarns on the left are for my mom, 
to be made before Christmas 2012. The yarn in the middle will make
 sporty socks for Becka, and the yarn on the right will all be for me!

I have a few skeins of sock yarn that are not enough to make a pair of socks on their own, but I am thinking of making a pair of helical stripe socks using coordinating colors. That will give me scraps in two more colorways, maybe three or four. I want my blanket to have squares in many colorways, like Shelly's. So far, I have made 15 squares (each large square counts as four). My goal is to make one square a day. If I keep up with that pace, my blanket will be done in a little over 2 years. I could probably finish it in less time, if I had all the sock yarn scraps needed. Hopefully 2 years will give me time to knit enough other sock weight projects to create the necessary leftovers.

How does all this fit into the theme for the week? I know it this is stretching the concept a little (or a lot), but since I am only using leftovers, I think I can rationalize this into the "make do" category. Some of the scraps I will be using are only a few yards long - not much good for projects other than this. Rather than throwing them out, I will be giving them purpose. Also, the scraps will not be sitting in the back of my stash, growing increasingly neglected and forlorn.

The "Make Do and Mend" movement came about during WWII, when not only food but also clothing was rationed. You can read more about this here and here. I was inspired by Cast-On series 8 to work on this theme for the week.