Nov 12, 2019 3 min read

I started to crochet a new blanket for our bed this month.

The first one I made is adequate, and it still goes into the rotation on our bed. It is a simple blue-and-green-block pattern. I think it took 14 skeins of yarn, one skein per block. The colors were chosen because they are the favorites of my husband and me. However, the color scheme doesn’t really go with our bedroom.

Maybe this shouldn’t matter enough for me to make a new one, but there is another issue with it as well. You see, it is just a touch too small for our queen-sized bed. It reaches the edges, but just barely. There is no room for either of us to roll over and leave the other one with blanket coverage. And this blanket is so nice and cozy that we both want to be covered by it.

At any rate, I decided to make a new blanket.

It is the time of year where there is too much day left with not enough light, so sinking into the couch after dinner with yarn and hook feels appropriate. It’s what generations of women have done with their wintertime evenings, and I’m so grateful to have the know-how and skill to continue the tradition.

This new blanket will be huge upon completion. It will be large enough to cover our bed with at least a foot of extra to hang down each side. We will each be able to sleep on our own edge of the bed, if we so desire, and remain completely covered. It will be able to be pulled completely up under our respective chins and not have to worry that our feet will pop out the bottom end. It will probably weigh forty pounds when it is finished.

And the color -oh, the color contained within.

In addition to over 20 full skeins of yarn are dozens and dozens of mini balls – leftover bits and bobs from previous projects – interspersed into the rows. No color runs for more than two rows consecutively. Some of the smaller bits only run a partial row.

Sometimes, I use two strands of thinner yarn together, even if they are not particularly complementary to one another, so that the thickness of the blanket remains consistent. Sometimes I ask someone else what color I should use next.

There aren’t many rules to it.

I can’t say I have left it all to chance, however. No, I struggle with control too much to leave it solidly up to fate. I admit that I look at the colors I have used, what my remaining choices are, and think long and hard about how I can make it seem random. I don’t want to have too many dark colors in a row, or too many pale colors. I also don’t want it to be too even of a change up between them either.

It’s hard to be inside my head. No matter what you’re thinking, you don’t know the half of it.

At the end of the day, it won’t matter.

From here on out, whatever size bed we have, this blanket will fit. From here on out, it won’t matter what color our bedroom is ever again. No matter what, this blanket will always match our décor.

And honestly, this is a big, beautiful, warm, colorful, snuggly work of love for my husband. He’ll love it just because I made it for him.