…but it has to find you working!

It’s a slight paraphrase of a quote by Pablo Picasso. I’m not sure that he intended it to be used in relation to crochet – but it’s appropriate for me today.

An ex-student asked me if I still do my daily creative exercise. You may remember that I shared THIS with you a while ago. It included this video

I learnt a long time ago that just doing something sparked the imagination and so I made a habit of 15 minutes before anything else happened in my day. It meant that I ALWAYS got up first – and it became such an important part of my life that a bag of bits travelled with me everywhere – to hotels, cruise ships and more. There’s nothing better than creating while the world is quiet.

So the answer to her question is ‘yes’, but now the ‘early daily’ may also include a little crochet. I find it a good time to, for instance, catch up on yesterday’s temperature square which, this year, is just a couple of lengths.

And sometimes one inspires the other!

The problem with a Temperature Blanket is that size is a bit unpredictable.

This is a full year, and was made in the pattern of the seasons. Winter, Spring, summer and Autumn. It ran from December to end of November and was the first I made. The temperature colours are completely my own.

These seem to be the colours most people decide upon, but eight colours is SO restrictive! As usual I went for EXCESS and us one colour for every degree! It works!

However a large blanket is not always the way to go – so for many years I have made smaller representative blankets which I have called ‘Spirit of …’ These May have represented seasons of months.

Above and below are the same season – but one illustrates the ‘high’ and the other the ‘low’. I’m sure you can guess which is which.

Below represents a single month.

And so does the one below – but interpreted differently.

(I have discovered during this exercise that I am very bad at photographing finished objects! I have far more ‘in progress’ shots than anything else!)

These are just a few ways that you might be inspired. Later this year I thought it would be fun to have a ‘make-along’ along the above lines. However, it will be much easier to do it in ‘retrospect’ rather than day by day. If you’d like to join me I suggest you begin to record your daily temperatures. Gather them from a news broadcast, weather app, or of course there’s always a thermometer! If you need an app suggestion ask in the comments or on Instagram.

We’ll discuss colours another day!