Arts and Crafts Temperature Blanket

[SureAsLiz]

So a while back I posted about the Cinderella Castle blanket I was attempting, but I messed up somewhere and nothing was working out so I scrapped it and decided to start a new project.

For 2016, I am working on a temperature blanket!

The idea is that colors are assigned to a temperature range, and then a row is made based on that days temp. It's a year-long project that will result in a blanket mapping out the year!

Inspiration:



There's no ~correct way to make a scale. Being in Colorado when the blanket started, I wanted a wide range that was also easy to remember since we can be below 0 and over 100. I went with 10 degree increments from 19- to 100+ leaving me with 9 colors.



The next step was to decide on a stitch. With 366 rows, this blanket will probably be massive no matter what. I tried out a few swatches in different stitches, but every one would have resulted in a 15 ft long blanket. Finally I decided on doing a slip stitch. I've never done a slip stitch project, but why not try it out on this?


A few days in with the slip stitch:


This blanket is 300 stitches wide with a G/4.25 hook. About 55" wide

I'm not great at taking photos daily, but I do at milestones!

 

[SureAsLiz]

January complete!



After working on it, I wish I had chosen more contrasting blues, since the 30 degree range is really hard to see against the 40s, but I know I won't be using it for long.

January was a fairly cool month, but really warm compared to December. The last week of December was hovering in the teens, and then the year turned and it warmed up! So I'm probably never going to use my purple.

At this point it measures about 4 inches tall, which will make the blanket about 4 ft long. I personally prefer larger blankets, but this will be perfect for a couch blanket.


2/7
Broncos win the Super Bowl!
One idea that people do is mark special days on the blanket with a contrasting yarn. On my moms blanket, she is using a sparkly white crochet thread to carry through on birthdays.

Because I don't have any kids/anniversaries/other special days, and it would use most of my blanket to mark family birthdays (10 younger siblings and parents) I wasn't planning on marking any days.

But when the Broncos win the Super Bowl, it needs to be memorialized.
I decided to replace the days weather with orange, blue, and white embroidery floss (conveniently, three strands is close enough to WW weight yarn that they can be interchangeable)

So today got a Broncos themed row!

 

[Jeniferdwn]

I can't wait to see the whole thing! Its really pretty so far. Has anyone else finished one?

 

[SureAsLiz]

My mom is working on a historical blanket (1943 I think) for her mom's birthday. This one will go from May to May, and it's almost done

She's doing the linen stitch and a different color scale

 

[scrhsa]

Great idea!!! Living here in south Texas I think mine would mostly be red and orange with a few greens and even fewer blues

 

[SureAsLiz]

Great idea!!! Living here in south Texas I think mine would mostly be red and orange with a few greens and even fewer blues

I lived in Florida last year, and it would have been the same haha. The nice think about CO is the range of temperatures. I have seen others who are in warmer areas start their scale much higher and have smaller increments so there would be some variety.

I've even seen once scale (in Celsius) that had 40 different colors - one for each degree. Far too much to keep up with imo, but it does help with variety!

 

[Jeniferdwn]

Great! Now I have a new project that I want to do! But I have no more time!!!! Maybe when the kids are older and doing their own things, I can have time to do things like this. And maybe when I retire!!! I am so looking forward to that!!! LOL I have a ways to go though. I think to make mine unique, I would also add a variegated color for holidays like Christmas (red, white and green), Valentines (red and pink), St Patricks (green and white) etc. Then on DD's bday, a pink stripe, and DS a blue stripe etc. It would be slightly more than 365 rows, but I would love it. How wide are you all making your afghans?

 

[Jeniferdwn]

SureAs Liz, your afghan looks like it may have a fringe on it. Is that just the yarn waiting for the next row or are you making a fringe as you go? If so, how do you do that? Could you post a picture of the fringe?

 

[SureAsLiz]

The wonderful thing about this blanket is that if you are doing it in real time, it's only a row a day! Not too much time commitment.

My blanket is about 55" wide, and will be about that long depending on how my math works out (for some reason, even if I swatch the number never match up)

For the fringe, it's just the end of the yarn hanging off. Because I'm doing a slip stitch, I can't weave in the ends without adding a ton of bulk. I haven't decided if I just want to tie them off and leave the fringe, or add some sort of border. I've been thinking of binding the edges like you would a quilt, but there are 10 months left till I need to figure that out haha

 

[SureAsLiz]

And speaking of temperature scales for warm areas... I just found out I am going back to Florida!

I lived there last year I did a PI with Disney. If you've seen the posts about budget cuts across the parks, I was kind of a victim of that long before it made news here. My manager requested that a spot open for me to stay on full time, but it took months for approval to come through for anything, and we were pretty sure a new position was out of the question. So in December I moved back to Colorado and planned on living out here for a few years. But then in January I found out the budget was approved and eventually a new spot! Yesterday I officially accepted my offer and I leave this weekend!

I'm not sure what I am going to do about the scale now since Florida hovers in my top 3 colors pretty much all year, but I will probably rework the scale a bit. If I change the increments to 5, then I can add a few more colors for variety. I considered making a new blanket, so I would have 2 (2016 in CO and my first year at Disney), but I really want this to be my 2016 blanket so I will keep one and just see where it ends up

 

[SureAsLiz]

February is complete!

This has been a busy month - the Broncos Super Bowl win, my birthday, and a move to Florida

The only one of those I formally marked was the Super Bowl win - the move will be marked next Monday when I officially start.

Because of the move, I had to rework my colors. Florida doesn't experience quite the temperature range of Colorado. All it required was 1 new color, and I moved the purple to the 90+ range because I really wanted that to be used (and the only was the high in FL would be lower than 19 is if we were experiencing an apocalypse at which point my blanket would be the least of my worries)

New color code:


And Februaries blanket: