Plaid crochet

I'm off on a new crochet adventure - a crocheted tartan blanket. A small lap blanket so it's done quicker than six months. I saw crocheted tartan on ravelry and places like this that tell you the very easy method. I mean really easy, anyone with a basic crochet knowledge could do this. It's essentially a mesh of 1 double crochet, 1 chain, repeat, then you make chains and weave them in lengthwise in through the mesh.
The hard part is figuring out the colours and sizes of the stripes. I started with this website which is nice but I never could get it to do what I wanted. In the end I just Microsoft Word, if you can believe it. I used the draw tool to draw rectangles, then set them to 75% transparency to get the plaid effect.

So this is the plan and colours I came up with. It's a little busy as patterns go, but I've started now, there's no going back. Besides, it's such a speedy project, that I can try a more sedate version next time. Here are my colours. I'm not one hundred percent convinced of this combination but it's quite bright and cheery and that's the main thing.

I just finished my second long paper (of two) for this term so I feel footloose and assignment-free. I wrote on conceptions of wilderness in a secular age. In all my term papers I try to sort of track a path towards a thesis topic. Actually the metaphor I have is that I'm circling the drain, but I'm trying to think of a more positive one. Anyway, that's a journey for 2013.