A couple weeks ago when I was sick, I spent a crazy amount of time in bed.  All I wanted to do was snuggle up in my comfy bed and sleep.  That's exactly what I did, too.  But in between sleeping and sleeping, I would daydream about how much more snugly it would be in my bed if I had a blanket I made myself.

At a certain point, I just couldn't sleep anymore, and I ended up sitting on the couch with a bucket of leftover yarn (from my chair covers) making swatches.

My first idea was to create some sort of peacock feather motif by doing surface crochet while making striped rows.  I think this idea has merit, but I didn't really do a good job of pulling it off here.

In the swatch on the  right, the blue, orange, and green all loop down from the top rows to meet the matching bottom row, and then go back up where they finish across.

Look at the crazy 3-D effect the surface single crochet makes.

Once I got frustrated with the peacocking, I pulled out my crochet stitch pattern books.  I really really want to make a striped blanket, so that's why there's a cacophony of color here.

I really love the motif center-top that looks like a big fat red flower with tan leaves.  But it's not stripes.  I want stripes.

None of these really light my fire.  I'm leaning toward this spiky ripple stitch, but it's not knocking my socks off either (although in the right colors, it could be phenomenal).

Do you have any striped blanket suggestions?