Happy New Year friends! As you all know, 2022 was not my best year. In fact, as far as years go, I would rank 2022 right at the very bottom. If I were to write a retrospective on the year, it would consist of two words—Good and Riddance.
But since I am pathologically eternally an optimist, I am holding out lots of hope that 2023 will be much better, and although realistically things could get worse, the betting money is on the idea that 2023 can only go up from here. How’s that for a resounding endorsement!
One of my plans for this year is to get back into knitting. I used to knit a lot when the kids were little, especially while I was waiting on them at various activities and sports practices. I made all sorts of things—hats, scarves, sweaters, mittens, lace shawls—and I always had something on the needles. When the kids got older and their activities were after school at school so I didn’t have to wait on them, I knit less and less. Then I got a knitting injury—yes, those exist—and the break I took kind of continued on for longer than I intended. I’ve started a scarf or two in the interim, but I haven’t finished anything big in a while.
A couple of months ago, my friend, Ronna, sent me a message with a link to the temperature blanket she was planning to make this year and asked if I wanted to knit along with her. Of course, I said yes! I ordered the yarn and not quite patiently waited for the new year to start so I could put the blanket on the needles.
Here is how a temperature blanket works. You pick a weather related thing to track for the year—high temps, low temps, precipitation, whatever—and you assign different colors to different ranges of temperatures. Then each day you look at the weather history and knit two rows in that color. Some people get extra fancy and use a knitting/crocheting/quilting pattern that records both the highs and lows for each day, and they look amazing.
I’m going extra simple and just recording the high temperatures at our mountain house in Brevard, North Carolina. There is a weather collecting station on the dock at a small neighborhood lake that is a quarter mile as the crow flies from our house. The data is available online, and I use this website to gather weather history. I’m making this blanket pattern—cast on 252 stitches in a worsted weight yarn and work in garter stitch for 365 days—and I went ahead and bought the warm and cool kits from Modern Daily Knitting. This yarn is kind of pricey, but I’m planning to turn any leftover yarn into pillows, and the fact that it is 100 percent wool means I can splice the yarn at color changes instead of weaving in a bunch of yarn tails at the end. Typical Brevard high temperatures range from mid-30s to mid-80s, so I’ve assigned each color to a three degree temperature range. I’m working in garter stitch where you knit every row, so the knitting each day goes quickly. Here is my color card:
The big question is: who wants to join Ronna and me on our temperature blanket knit/crochet/quilt along? (Yes, temperature quilts are a thing too!) Here is how a knit along works in case you haven’t done one before. You say, “Hey, I want to do that too!” and you knit/crochet/quilt along with us. We can share in progress photos as we go along. Ronna and I are knitting this one. Noble Knits has a great explainer about knitting and crocheting temperature blankets and links to both knit and crochet patterns here. If quilting is your thing, Marie Bostwick has some lovely ideas for creating temperature quilts here. I’m using 21 colors which is . . . a lot, particularly since Brevard doesn’t have a wide yearly temperature range. You can use however many colors you want to because it’s your blanket.
Who’s in?
I hope you all had a lovely and relaxing holiday season! We started out with a week at Disney, which was more lovely than relaxing, and finished up with hosting several of Daniel’s fraternity brothers at the lake for New Years, which was both lovely and relaxing. The kids are heading back to school in the next few days, and I will miss them when they are gone. I wish you a happy and healthy 2023 and look forward to the places we will travel and food we will cook with Sweet Tea in the coming year.
Until next time,
Karla
PS: My amazingly talented daughter made me this beautiful cutting board for Christmas. :)