Okay, so somebody pinch me.  Is it really January 26th already?  Two days away from my making my fourth installment on my crochet mood blanket?  6 days from the end of the month?  I’m going to let you pinch me so I could wake up from this warp speed dream we’re in of what 2014 is going to be like.

The speed at which the year is moving being one of the factors, I made several changes to my original blanket plans.  Some have to do with time, others having to do with perception and others with aesthetics.

Let’s talk about the perception part of the change first: my colour choice red and what it represents. This in my mind is my most significant change hence the blog title.  Red was initially chosen to represent anger or being fearful.  When we think of anger, we in one of two camps — we either don’t like to express it then try to stifle it or we express it in ways that are not always healthy or appropriate for us to do.  In my mind, anger gets a bad rap.  I think it’s fine to express it appropriately and in a healthy way and I also think that anger, rather than being destructive, should be an impetus for change.  Whether that change is personal, professional, financial, psychological, social, emotional or mental.  Anger represents (to me) something which occurred that is hurtful or disappointing, that something inappropriate has happened, that something is out of sync.  But it doesn’t need to be feared. It needs to be acknowledged, embraced, expressed in a healthy way, then channeled into positive change.  And that’s what I want my blanket to represent — for every week I hook red, the representation should be of a week where there was anger present but was translated into positive, tangible change.  No longer fear or poorly represented anger.

Aesthetic wise, after I hooked the first week, I thought the beige borders / separators were a bit flat.  The actual end product looked different from what I imagined in my mind.   So I changed it.   The borders / separators will now be a crisp white.  Which brings me to another change.  I tell you, change happens whether we want it or not but we have to be ready for it or be flexible enough to create accommodating space when it comes.

This project has totally affected my cold-sheeping efforts for the year.  The point of cold-sheeping was to craft from only my stash this year.  However, after three rounds of white borders, I’m almost done with my first skein of white yarn.  And the rounds haven’t even gotten super long yet.

I wanted to do cold-sheeping for badges (30, 60, 90 days, then 6, 9, 12 months until I got a gold badge for one year of knitting from stash) but that’s not going to happen and I had to become okay with that.  I’m not going to pause this blanket for a badge, but I’m still going to be strict about my purchases.   That said, cold-sheeping this year will have the exception of only purchasing yarn to complete projects already on the way, not to start one.  Let’s see how that works, aye.

With regards to time, my initial goal was to see how many days I felt the predominant emotion and hook corresponding number of rounds, but this blanket is already growing like crazy:

Exhibit A: In a few more weeks, it’ll be hanging off the edges and foot of my full-sized bed.  To think of slogging through lengthy rounds without colour changes — woooo Nellie!  So I’ve made the additions more uniformed — two rounds of the emotion colour of the week then two rounds of the white separators.  Even with these changes, this beauty is destined to be a big girl!  As you can see, I started the first week’s colour using the old system, but I don’t think it detracts from the later additions, do you?

So that’s my update.  If you lasted to the end of the post, here’s some blanket glamor shots for you to enjoy!

Hope you all had a wonderful, crafty and productive week.  Watch this space for January’s update once I’m done adding the next four rounds and images of the other rabbit hole I got pushed down last week.  *shaking my head*  I tell you … 😉