everybody's doing it...

Let me start by telling you that I DO NOT make polymer clay canes.

I totally don't have the patience.

I love the way they look, I have a lot of respect for people who do caning,
 but it's just not for me.

I do not have the patience.

I do crochet though.

I hear ya... What does that have to do with anything?????

Well, a few of the polymer blogs that I follow have been talking about
 this cool Granny Square cane.

I have been wanting to put a bit of a handle on my crochet hooks for a while now,

the hand can get a little 'crampy' holding onto those little suckers.

Especially since I do my crocheting in the evening, AFTER I am done

either working on the computer all day (my day job) and/or conditioning and sculpting with clay

or doing some sort of wire work.

Anyway, you get the idea...

my hands aren't as young as they used to be☺

And how cute would it be to have a handle of a crochet hook

made out of granny squares???

So I bought the tutorial and

I got the idea to use an extruder to make the different strips here.

The extruder idea made it seem like it would go so much quicker,

so I picked out my colors and got started.

The tutorial is nicely written and easy to follow.

They came together pretty quickly.



Awesome colors right??
These are about 2" square.



Then the trouble started:(

As I reduced my cane all of my nice roundy strips that I had so carefully

extruded just squared right up:(



Not very Granny Square-ish



Then I did a test bake and ended up with these



Even less Granny Square-ish



The colors darken so much that it was hard to tell there was even a pattern.

On the lower one the only way you could tell there was purple was to glaze it.

The glaze brings out the color better but granny squares aren't usually shiny:(

Next try:

I started out with much smaller cane.

I still used the extruder, I just used a much smaller die.

And I used much lighter colors.



The larger one is a little less than an inch across.



And that backfired.

My roundy bits stayed round but the gray and blue are so close in color

that there is no definition.

Soooo...

Next try:

New color choice.

I stayed with the lighter colors except I replaced the gray with black.

(Which I totally should have done in the first place)

And I came up with something 

I am happy with.



Much more Granny Square-ish



Cute and comfy to use.

And I will just admit it right now.

I plan on trying some more color combinations

and making a few more of these canes.

I'm thinking .... crochet stitch markers??