Stix Journal

February has come and gone, and with it my delusion that I am not a control-freak. I've honestly never thought of myself that way, yet here we are.  Who would have thought that the undertaking of a simple crochet hexagon blanket project would teach me an important life-lesson?

February was an interesting month for me; one big rollercoaster of ups and downs. The kind of rollercoaster that travels around in one of those county fair carnival-type situations, when after you have bought your ticket and strapped yourself in, you try not to wonder how many important bolts are missing from the rails in the course of disassembly and reassembly from one county to the next. I won't bore you with the details, just suffice it to say that I felt a little out of control.

The one constant thing accompanying me on this ride was my temperature blanket. I have remained completely committed to this project, having not missed a single day of making and attaching a hexagon. That in itself is quite remarkable for me! I am very, very, very good at beginning a project, always with the best intentions of staying the course to completion, but generally wandering off pretty soon after beginning it. It was in trying to understand why this project is different that I discovered the aforementioned control issues.

Individually, I adore all of the colors I chose to use in the blanket. I felt the same way after heaping them all together and taking a photo of the pile for the initial post about this project. Many of them are leftover from treasured past (possibly completed) projects, some are skeins of a favorite shade of a favorite brand or fiber. However, once I had assigned them to months and temperature ranges, releasing control of how they would be placed, something happened. 

I woke up each day wondering if I was going to love the range or hate it. The hexie for February 1st was, to be blunt, hideous.

 Those colors together were just not doing it for me. What if the whole month turned out like that? EEEEWWWWW!

Side note: the little tick of multi red on the hexie above denotes the birthday of a cherished friend. I decided to demarcate all of the birthdays of those important to me with a little splash of color reminiscent of their personality or our relationship. Turns out I have many of those in February!

You can see three right in a row above. There are a few more in January and February not in the frame, but you'll see them throughout the blanket as I update it. 

Anyway, ugly or otherwise, I kept on doing as the weather and my assigned colors told me I must. I was so shocked at how badly I wanted to argue with the weather, to tell it it was not allowed to force me into making ugly hexagons. I don't think I have ever wanted to change the outcome of something this strongly, and it was such an odd sensation. To be sure, the ranges for some days were beautiful and I loved them and wished for more. 

I really like the icy aqua and white with the red centers.

As I worked each day on the blanket, while also riding my slightly nauseating rollercoaster, I began to learn how to let go. It was an educational experience learning how to let go of something I had just noticed about myself. I had to see it, acknowledge it, realize I didn't like it, and then see how to go about changing it.  I tried to just sit back and let the colors do their thing while at the same time letting life do its thing. I began to see the individual facets of both life and blanket were all blending together into a fabric of sometimes ugly parts that when looked at from a little distance, were actually quite interesting and overall lovely. When I woke up to make the hexie for February 29th, I was actually sort of hoping it would be another "ugly" one. And, you'll never guess.....

There it is! Except for the center, which I made its own special color to denote leap year, it is exactly the same colors as February 1st. 

Who knows how long my new-found self-awareness will last. As I mentioned before, I am great at starting things and then wandering off. Perhaps if my interest and dedication to this project remain constant, so will my attention to my inner workings. You just never know what will happen when you have yarn and hook in hand.

The centers for March are all ready to go! Since March is my birthday month, I used my all-time favorite yarn for them....Frank Ochre is the shade, Malabrigo Merino Worsted is the yarn. That ought to hold my interest for another month! See you in April for the next update.