A Year in a Week

Is it going to confuse you right off the bat if I tell you that 365 days is going to add up to one week?  And one really REALLY GIANT blanket? 

Inspired by a couple of friends, my embracing 30 project, and mom’s and my decision to do a yarn post early on this year I decided to dive into a temperature blanket.  Have you seen those?  They end up pretty cool.  People do them different ways, but the gist of it is you crochet one row per day with the color used dependent on the temperature.  

Here are my twists:

• I divided up my colors into pretty small 5 degree increment ranges, starting at 20&below and ending at 91&above.  I realize in doing so there may be a couple colors, especially at the lower end that don’t ever get used, but that is OK.  I wanted the option for a lot of variety.
• My blanket is spanning my 30th year, so not 2017, but one year starting on my 30th birthday, Nov 19th 2016.  
• My colors are dependent on the day’s High Temperature.  Also, most of my days will be marked from my home location (including the random trips down to Oly because the weather isn’t that different.) But it is marking MY 30th year and some of that is trips we take and I want my blanket to reflect that.  So for example on our day trip up to the freezing cold Hamma Hamma, I’m going to use that high temp (yay for one in the 20s!).  And in my recent trip to Austin I’ll use their high temps which will be a fun lime/coral/purple strip amidst a sea of blue greens.
• My biggest twist is that I also wanted to mark the rain.  So on days that accumulated any rain I’m not only crocheting the color of the temp but a second strand along with it of a dark charcoal color.  

I’m really digging the second strand, which is good since most of my rows so far contain it… it was a rainy November.  I knew I would love the weight of the second strand though because one of my favorite blankets is a thick afghan made with double strands of yarn that my Dad made for me a few years ago.  I’ll be curious to see what it starts to look like when I get into some of the stretches that haven’t rained and see the comparison.  I think it’ll be a fun visual texture.  

So far (there’s only 10-15 rows done) there’s been only three temps and I have to remind myself that there are many more months for the variety to enter the picture.  But I planned that my favorite blues and greens are those middle temps because I knew a vast majority of my blanket would end up in those color blocks.

Did I mention how big this blanket is?  I’ll tie it all back together for you… I picked a wider stitch, so I made my blanket longer in order to make it more square in the end.  That being said, I didn’t really do the math. (oops) This blanket is going to be HUGE.  Bigger than king size blanket huge.  Aaron just laughed and made a comment about how we’ll all be able to snuggle under it.  It takes me a half hour to crochet just one row. ONE ROW=HALF AN HOUR?! That’s 180+ hours!! Which is where the week comes in… because if you do the math it’s going to take me over a week’s worth of solid hours to crochet this blanket!  HA.  Good thing I can crochet and watch tv.  ;)  

And let’s not talk about how many skeins of yarn I’m going to go through… especially the grey. <insert wide eyed emoji here>

And with that, I’m off to eat dinner with my fam and go crochet… I’ve got some catching up to do!  Excited to share more in the future with you of how this is going!

Sam