Retrospectively REWRITTEN DUE TO TECHNICAL Difficulties in 2026...
Some blankets begin as ideas. Others begin as feelings. Gaseous Giant began as a room: the one Rose McGowan used at the Edinburgh Festival that year, washed in deep blues, warm oranges, and that quiet sense of outer‑space vastness. I remember sitting there, noticing how the colours held the air, how they made the space feel both expansive and safe. Something in me recognised that palette instantly. Sci‑fi skies. Nebula edges. The kind of colours I’ve always gravitated toward without needing to explain why.
When I got home, I reached for leftover yarns and started with a simple square. Nothing ambitious. Just a way to hold onto the day. But the project shifted quickly. The yarn scraps didn’t feel right anymore. I found myself choosing sparkly yarns, tiny starbursts spun into fibre, and selecting each shade with more intention than I used to allow myself. It wasn’t about using what I had. It was about choosing what felt true.
Looking back, that shift mirrors something larger. For years, I accepted the bare minimum in other parts of life: the “it’ll do”, the “good enough”, the “don’t make a fuss”. This blanket marks the moment I stopped doing that. Each colour was chosen deliberately. Each row felt like a small act of valuing my own taste, my own contribution, my own right to beauty. Whilst still moving on, using my love and knowledge of popcorn stitch to make 3D star bobbles, first a full row, then in forms of random constellations.
Actually, when I checked back, this blanket did not make it to the beach.
YET!
Just imagine how the wind might catch the edges, the sparkles would glint, and imagine the whole thing looking like a tiny galaxy trying to lift off.
I feel I am talking myself into the next beach trip.
And, upon reflection, there have been star shapes within my blanket portfolio WAY before I discovered the 6-day STAR blanket pattern! So there is value in recording things as they happen, and the story of making each is piece IS very important to know and have and read and live and feel. AND there may be something in going back to an old, forgotten favourite, with the knowledge we have inquired since it had been put into it’s safe sleeping space, and putting things together, looking for patterns that were always there, and we may not have even known!
Nice! Thanks faffy me for whatever glitch it was that deleted the original post and made me look back it now, six years later.
And Thank You for reading!
