The beginnings of an idea.

I am not a creative person.

I can do crafty things, following a chart or a pattern, or adapting something someone else has created, but on the whole, I'm not an ideas person.

My brain just isn't hardwired to come up with original ideas....until now.

As per my Not Really Resolution to make an Elmer blanket a la Little Tin Bird, I've been steadily plugging away, building up my squares. It's been a good blanket to do for my current situation - space is limited for me at the moment as I'm in my sister's box-room, so I've been bringing a ball of yarn back from Preston and hooking up 20-odd squares before bringing back another.

It has become apparent this has the potential to be a pretty big blanket, and that makes me all kinds of excited.

Yesterday, once back at my sister's, I decided to see where I was in terms of numbers and how it was looking, so I just threw all my squares into lines to see where I was. This actually prompted a bit of a breakdown because all my colours look a bit mental at the moment because I've only done a few balls of wool. In the midst of flurry of e-mails to Heather freaking out about my inability to do anything right (who needs Call the Midwife when you have me around for a Sunday drama?) I had my first ever genuine strike of inspiration.

The blocks of colours all interlocking together - what did it remind me of?

(Don't mind the bad photo, or the weird colours - this was just a practice!)

TETRIS.

I do not do computer games. I lack both the coordination and the mental stamina for anything stressful. But me and Tetris? We go way back. I am bloody brilliant at that game. I didn't have a game console growing up so my exposure to games was limited to my Dad's PC. Yeah I played Lemmings and yeah I played Sim City, but all I really wanted to play was Tetris. Whole days during the holidays would be spent playing Tetris, ringing friends to share our latest high scores. It is a game I now avoid because if I start playing it, I genuinely find it difficult to stop.

It seems only right that I should make a blanket en homage to my favourite game.

Really crochet was made for Tetris (or the other way round?). Those little Tetronimos are begging to be crocheted together in a tessellation of awesomeness.

Once the idea was in my head it became all I could think about - all day I've had to push thoughts of falling shapes out of my head whilst the theme tune has played on a loop.

As soon as I could, I sat down to plan my baby out - and let me tell you, it was harder than I thought. When you're playing Tetris it doesn't really matter if you place 2 blocks of the same colour together, different matter in crochet-land. I also started by fitting everything together perfectly until I realised that would never do. Obviously once you've made a line in Tetris, it disappears, there's no space for inaccurate crochet thank you very much.

This means I was going to have to have at least one black square on each line and that was actually harder for me to do than it sounds. It basically leaves you with a Tetris blanket of a game that is basically bad - this blanket is not going to represent how you should play Tetris - that pains me a little if I'm honest.

So I did some experimenting and I've come up with 2 proposed layouts.

Layout 1

Layout 2

Layout 1 is the first I worked out and Layout 2 I thought was interesting because it shows the final piece falling into place to score the ultimate prize - a Tetris.

At the moment I'm leaning towards Layout 1 - but I welcome a voting situation here, please feel free to cast your vote.

The border isn't permanent - that was just me having a play. Also the colours won't be totally accurate in terms of the shades.

It has been a thrilling 24 hours since the idea came to me. I have so far avoided Googling Tetris Crochet because I know I won't be the first to have had the idea and there's probably much better out there. For now I'm living off the buzz of my very first experience of creativity. My one and only burst of inspiration that I can truly call my own.

What a thrilling life creative people must lead - this is a high I don't ever want to go away.