Mood Blanket – 12 Square

Jennifer Norris Doyle’s mood blanket.

Jennifer Norris Doyle shared this monthly mood blanket. Here is what she said about how she created this blanket:

The mood blanket was done with a mitered crochet square pattern that I heavily modified. I went to 25 days, then worked in the round until the month ended. For the months with less days, I added rounds of my neutral color (navy). I concluded each square with a navy round, the birthstone color (or closest I could find), and then a final navy round. I think I finally chose a sc join. Then I added a simple border.

This turned out a lot bigger than I expected once I added the rounds. I went with this because I didn’t want to sew together a bunch of small squares, or work in rows and have a giant blanket at the end. It’s quite heavy, although I used an affordable worsted weight yarn (Red Heart Super Saver).

I picked the colors that suited my dominant mood for the day. I also included fatigue and pain, as I suffer from fibromyalgia and also had surgery with a very painful recovery during this year. Tracking my mood daily helped me be more mindful. I even found myself during the day thinking, I don’t want to have to put this in the blanket tonight, and then working to improve my mood by doing something about it instead of just going along being upset or stressed or whatever. It helped a lot!

Oh, and if I came across a mood I hadn’t planned for yet, I just chose a new color for it, and it went on the list. My list was fluid. Sometimes I ran out of scrap yarn I was trying to use up, so I had to substitute a different yarn and go with a new color. I think the only yarn I had to buy was navy. I used to make hats for my students when I taught Sunday school, so I had a lot of this yarn waiting to be used up.

(The photo was taken prior to being pieced together.)