The start of a knitted blanket

After viewing all of the knitted blankets found here onTilkkusisko's blog. I felt totally inspired to start one of my own. To say that the quilts on her blog are awesome, just doesn't even come close ... they are truly AWESOME! ... all 107 of them! I tried to pick a favourite from them, and just couldn't.
I have heaps of thick red and orange yarn in my stash, so thought I would go with that as a sorta theme. The photo makes it look more brown than red, so I'll try to take my next photo outside in the sun (yes, spring will hit Australia on friday...yippee!!). The red yarn is a REALLY thick chenille, called Marcel by Lincraft. I bought it (as usual) when it was going out on special, but decided that it was far too thick to make anything to wear, so thought instead that it would be fantastic for blankets. It's knitting up really fast (but not SO fast that I'll complete 107 any day soon!). As you can see, I am knitting it modular in squares,( and possibly triangles and rectangles?) with some knitted heart applique. For the applique, I have just cut the basic shape out of newspaper, and used that as a template. For inspiration with modular knitting I use a brilliant book called No Pattern Knits by Pat Ashforth and Steve Plummer
I'm not sure how the rest of the blanket will look, but I will just decide what looks right as it grows..I kinda like not knowing :-)