Finished! Um, except for weaving in all the loose ends* (boy, are there a lot of them!) and blocking it, which you'll see the need for in the photos below, but still FINISHED!

"Before" pictures in last week's snippet entry, for those who want to compare.


Just before Sprout's birth, I came across this pattern to make a hexagon blanket** and fell in love with the vibrant colors and the spin on granny squares. I had just finished a blanket for my niece's baby, who was due a couple of weeks after Sprout, and had a bit of snuggly ivory yarn on hand. Unable to resist until I could buy a variety of colors, I began crocheting hexagons. You can see those first two white ones joined together in the middle of the blanket.

J likes to call this my "design mistake;" I call it a choice and accept it as a sign of impatience. After I picked out my color palette, I thought about undoing those two and recycling the yarn into other hexagons. I never did. Through the years, especially as the blanket began to take form and the two solid white hexagons stared at me from a sea of riotous color, I admit to having moments of regret. During this last stint of crocheting, though, I made peace with my choice and am now glad to have left well enough alone. It is a blanket begun in eagerness and finished through perseverance, a project that followed me through the carrying of two babies and three moves, one of them overseas.*** There's no moral there, just an observation.

With many blanket projects, you never know where you began, but with this one I do and always will, thanks to my impatience eagerness. Every story needs a beginning.

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* Personally, I believe this would be a great project for J. What do you think?
** I used this pattern and this one to double check my ideas about how to crochet a half-hexagon, and this lovely tutorial for my border.
*** I didn't take the blanket to Albania since we were only staying two months.