Colour vomit

So, last month I finished my crochet ripple blanket. I’m so happy with it. It’s a glorious riot of random and beautiful colour combinations. I think the randomness is a feature; others in the household disagree.

I proudly displayed it to my beloved (also known, not coincidentally, as He Who Sits on His Taste Buds). His remarks were barely luke warm.

“You don’t like it, do you?”

“Too many colours,” he said. “It looks like you just vomited colour all over it.”

Fortunately, knowing his taste in clothes, his opinion did nothing to dent my happy feelings of achievement. A finished blanket! Warm and cuddly and beautiful! (Did I mention I actually managed to finish a whole big blanket-sized project? Go, me!)

Even better, I loved the whole process, from the picking out of wool:

and the first joyful colour combinations:

to seeing it grow:

 

And trying out new arrangements of colours:

  Adding in a new colour was my favourite part. It was hard to picture, just from holding a ball of wool against the blanket, exactly how that colour would look when it was stitched on. It was always exciting to see the new combination taking shape.

It was such a relaxing project. Whenever I needed to do something completely mindless, I could pick it up and do another row or two, and though I sometimes went months without touching it, it continued to grow steadily, till at last I decided it was long enough.

I loved how it looked with its ripply ends:

and I wasn’t sure whether I should add a border or not. In the end I decided to give it a go, as part of the learning experience. If I didn’t like it I could always undo it.

 First I added red up the long straight sides, so it had a border of red all around (I started and finished my regular ripple rows with red). This looked so good I almost stopped there.

But I’d chosen some other colours, so I added a gold border which straightened out the ripply ends. This also looked so good I almost stopped there! In fact, every time I added a new colour to the border it got better and better. Hello, my name is Marina and I’m addicted to colour.

Here it is after the third round:

Finally I had five colours on my border and decided that was enough (colours are a little weird here -- I've been waiting ages for a nice sunny day to photograph it but sadly the weather hasn't been cooperating!):

Ta-dah! I love it. Can’t wait to start another one! Just got to get that vomit ready …