When my second born started the first grade, he got to sit next to his best friend from kindergarten for all of thirty minutes. That day I received the first of many notes that began “Simon doesn’t do his best work when he sits next to….” Each time there would be a new name. I am reminded, as I work on the Hello Kitty inspired great granny square blanket, that colors, like first graders, have personalities, and how those personalities are expressed changes with the colors they “sit” next to.

Since my front burner great granny square is supposed to be a companion blanket for a Hello Kitty book I acquired, after I finished this round of pink:

I was at a bit of a color impasse and decided it might be useful to consult the book for color inspiration. After serving several pages, I went with what felt like a somewhat bolder choice–saffron–that had a decidedly retro flair to it:

I wasn’t entirely comfortable with the choice, but I am 95% sure I am going in the right direction, but to assuage my five-percent doubt, I decided to sit with it bit before moving on which gave me the opportunity to do some much needed weaving in of ends:

Two hours later, most of the ends were woven in and trimmed:

but I still was not 100% committed to the color.

So I set the blanket aside and finished (at long last) Pekkle, the crochet tap-dancing duck:

Then I gave Pekkle and his friends some time to try out the ever increasing blanket to see that they thought:

And to the degree that stuffed toys can think, they seemed to think that the blanket is–so far–just fine.

There are still fourteen rounds of color decisions yet to be made, and I will continue forward, one stitch at a time.