Temperature Blanket

October and November Temperatures from 2016

I first heard about the idea of a temperature blanket some where in the middle of last year. I vowed to begin one of these amazing blankets come the first of the 2018 year.

A temperature blanket is a knitting/crochet project where you assign a temperature range to a rainbow of colored yarns and each day you knit/crochet a row or 2 depending on the day's temperature.

There are so many variations that can be applied to this project, you can do a different stitch depending on if it's sunny or windy or raining that day. But in the end, you have something of a record of the temperatures for that year.

In the end, I decided instead of doing the coming year that I would knit the temperatures for my daughter Evelyn's first year in our hometown. She was born on October 5th, 2016 so that day's temperature is the first row in my blanket.

Temperature Range

I decided that each color would represent a 10 degree range going from sub zero to over 100 degrees. We live in Michigan, where all of these temperatures are a possibility. If you live in a climate that doesn't have a lot of variety in temperature you can do every 5 degrees, or even every degree.

Finding Yarn

It can be difficult to find a brand of yarn that carries such an assortment of colors. Choosing the colors was by far the hardest part of this project. I decided on the Lion Brand Heartland Yarn Collection. (yarn size 4) It's a beautiful soft yarn that is heathered, giving it a rustic homespun feel. I chose earthy- jewel tones, and as it knits up, it reminds me of the rock layers in the grand canyon.

 My yarn colors:

100+       Isle Royale #189
90-99      Redwood #113
80-89      Yosemite #135
70-79      Yellowstone #158
60-69      Everglades #173 (available online only)
50-59      Joshua Tree #174
40-49      Kings Canyon #180
30-39      Cuyahoga Valley #171
20-29      Olympic #109
10-19      Glacier Bay #305
0-9          Mount Rainier #150
sub 0       Katmai #151 (available online only)

Once I found all my yarn colors, I rolled the yarn in to balls pulling from both ends of the skein so I had a double ply (knitting 2 strands at once). I made little tags with the name of the yarn and the temperature that the color represented.

Pattern/Gauge

I wanted the pattern for my blanket to be as simplistic as possible. My goal was to really let the color variation stand out. In the end, I decided to use 10.5 circular needles and to double the yarn ply.

I've cast on 200 stitches and the blanket will be 365 rows long. This should be a good size blanket somewhere around 70" by 100".

I knitted the garter stitch for 5 rows, and am knitting the garter stitch for 5 stitches to start the row, then stockinette, and ending with 5 stitches of garter. This will keep the blanket from curling.

I'm also knitting in the previous color tail into the first 5 stitches. This will save me from having to tie in all the yarn tails at the end.

I'm at the 3 month mark here and the blanket it 20" long. (October, November and December 2016)

Finding your Temperatures

October 2016

You need to decide if you are going to take the high, low, or average for the day. I am knitting the high temperature. I feel like this will give me the most variation in colors.

I am doing the temperatures from October 5th, 2016 to October 4th, 2017.

October 2016

You can find a history of weather temperatures from Weather Underground. Just type in the year and city you want to see.

October 2016 through January 2017 4 months!

Check out our Facebook Page as I post updates as the blanket comes along.