Blanket Delusions - It won’t take that long…..
There’s a very specific kind of excitement that hits when you decide - out of nowhere - that today is the day you begin a new blanket. Not a washcloth. Not a scarf. A blanket. Maybe even a throw, because you’re being responsible and realistic this time. A throw is small. Manageable. Practically a weekend project, right?
You pick your colors with the confidence of someone who has forgotten everything about their last blanket-induced spiral. You wind your yarn, cue your show, position your snacks, and begin your journey like a heroic protagonist in a fantasy novel. Square one. Row one. The possibilities are endless.
A few days in, you’re thriving - flying through stitches, admiring your neat edges, imagining the dramatic reveal you'll do when you finally drape this masterpiece across your couch. You are artistic. You are unstoppable. You are… starting to realize this might take longer than you remembered.
Fast-forward two weeks.
Suddenly you’re trapped in a time loop: square after square, row after row. You swear you started this blanket sometime in 1998. Your hands ache - because your unbridled lust for stitch definition made you choose 100% cotton... Your enthusiasm wanes. You begin to think dangerous thoughts like: What if I just…start something else for a bit? I’ll come back to it in a day or so? Or, I could fake my own death and leave this blanket behind forever???
NO! Stop it! Press on. You are a crocheter! Crocheters DON’T QUIT! We are NOTHING if not stubborn!!
Then, after what feels like 50 years, one miraculous day, it happens. You pull the last loop through. Tie off the final stitch. Snip the yarn with the flourish of a victorious general. And suddenly - just like that - it’s over.
You lay your blanket out in all its glory and stare at it with a mixture of relief, pride, and shellshock. Like Frodo finally free of the One Ring standing in the fires of Mordor - you declare: It’s OVER It’s DONE. After weeks upon weeks, it exists. And for the next few days, you walk past it reverently - as if it might evaporate if you acknowledge it too loudly.
Then time passes. A week. A month. The blanket becomes part of the scenery.
And one morning, as you shuffle by with a cup of lukewarm coffee, you glance at it and feel… something. A tiny nostalgic tug. You remember the color changes. The brutalizing feel of the cotton yarn - was it really that bad? LOOK AT THOSE STITCHES!
Your eye twitches. It wanders to the new pile of yarn that appeared completely out of nowhere…
And you think:
“Shall we go again?”
And the cycle restarts…