Knitted 'Year-in-Review' Temperature Blanket

In December 2020, I saw a blog post about a knitted 'temperature scarf' and I decided this would be an awesome project to take on for 2021. So, while this isn't an original idea, here are some things I've learned and my personal process for making this fun blanket.

I picked a pattern, chose my range of temperature colors and started knitting. I always had the intention of finishing, but somehow looking back, I am impressed that I actually managed to be consistent enough to do the whole year. Admittedly, I didn't knit every single day. Sometimes, I would fall behind, but the internet is an amazing thing and I was able to look back at the previous days' data to make up the days I missed.

Throughout the year, mistakes were made and yarn ran out, but that's okay. It was a fun, consistent (pardon the pun...) thread throughout 2021.

I hope that what I learned can inform your project if you too choose to catalogue a year (or any other length of time) in this way.

• Knitting Needles (appropriately sized for your yarn weight)
• Yarn:
• Temperature Indicator colors (I used 9)
• Weather Indicator colors (I used 4)
• Change Location color (optional)
• Stitch markers (if doing a pattern)
• Scissors
• Basket/bag to hold your yarn
• Weather Tracking Website: I used https://www.timeanddate.com/weather/usa/washington-dc/historic
• 1 Year (shorter or longer length of time is also acceptable) of consistent knitting fun!

First, even before you purchase yarn, figure out your temperature range and key. I did this by looking at the historical average temperatures using the timeanddate.com climate tab and my own knowledge of my local climate.

- Figure out how many different ranges you need for temperature:

1. List the monthly average highs and lows and identify the overall high (90ºF for me) and low (25ºF)
2. Decide how big a step you want between colors
3. I tried 5ºF steps:
4. (90º - 25º)/5º = 13 colors
5. Too many colors so I tried 10º steps:
6. (90º - 25º)/10º = 6.5 colors (I rounded up to 7 - giving me the range of 25º to 95º)
7. I added two for the "less than" and "greater than" options in case the weather got wacky. Spoiler alert: it occasionally did!

- Identify which colors go with which temperatures:

I went with the classic: Red = Hot, Blue/Gray = Cold, follow the rainbow to fill in the rest. You could do something super funky if you wanted though, might be interesting to do shades of grey and black.

Make sure you don't overlap your temperatures otherwise you won't know what to do on those cusp days.

- Add weather/sky quality indicators:

I went with Sunny, Overcast, Rain, and Snow for my location's climate.

Now that you know how many colors you need, it's the fun part where you pick colors.

Don't worry about estimating exactly how much you're going to need, you will likely run out of something at some point despite your best efforts. Get more of the climate indicator yarn than you think you'll need though, they will likely run out before the temperature ones do because there are fewer options of them to choose from.

If like me, you are using yarn from a personal yarn stash or reuse crafting store, you won't be able to find the exact same color to replace it when you run out (more on that in step 6) and hey, that's okay.

So, just make a really rough guess at how much you will need and just go for it.

You might be able to keep all of that straight in your head now, but can you keep it straight for a whole year?!

I couldn't, so once I had picked my ranges and chosen the yarn to go with each, I made a key.

I punched holes in a piece of cardboard, wrote down my identifiers (temperatures and weathers) and snipped a small piece of yarn to go through the hole next to each indicator.

You'd think that after a year of using the key everyday, I would have learned which color went with which temperature range, but I didn't. The key was key (sorry, not sorry).

For my pattern, I decided to do a Chevron Pattern to make the project a little more interesting than straight knitting.

Feel free to use any pattern you want. It's a good idea to pick a pattern which preserves distinct rows rather than something which is going to garble the row structure of the design.

Chevron Pattern:

Chevron pattern is fairly straight forward, but it helps to have stitch markers.

Decide how many chevrons you want across. Each chevron is 12 stitches. Cast on 12x the number of total chevrons you want per row.

Chevron Pattern:

• Knit 5 stitches
• Knit two stitches together
• Knit 4 stitches
• Knit two stitches in one stitch
• Place the stitch marker
• Repeat

Start working!

Each day I did two rows: one for the day's high temperature and one for the low temperature.

After about a week of waiting until the end of the day to knit, I decided to just start doing the previous day's knitting instead of the same day. That way I could look back and make sure I caught the real high and low temperature.

Every row has two yarns in it: one for the temperature and one for the weather.

To determine the weather, I just went with whatever felt more present the previous day. If it was rainy for a few hours in the morning, then got brilliantly sunny. If looking back on the previous day, I felt that the sun was the most influential on my day, I went with sunny, if the rain had the most impact, I said it was rainy. Just go with whatever feels best for you and remember you're making art!

The first time I ran out of yarn, I was really concerned about finding the exact same color and type of yarn to replace it. However, as I ran into more and more yarn shortages, I took a step back to remind myself that this is an art project not a scientific study.

I didn't need to get everything exactly right. Mistakes happened! Sometimes I did the low temperature before doing the high temperature. Sometimes I counted my stitches and had one too many or one too few. Being gracious with myself on this journey was really important to me and should be for you as well.

You're here to have fun and make art, not to be perfect.

So, when I ran out of a particular color, I replaced with with whatever I could in from the yarn stash at my local 'creative reuse center'.

If like me, you did more traveling during 2021 than you had anticipated at the start of the year, you may want to take the approach I did and add an indicator line in when you changed to a different climate.

I chose to use a single black line to represent a change in location. While I didn't indicate which location I was going to, it does provide an interesting map of my travels throughout the year.

By the time I got to the end of April, I decided it had gotten long enough to be a segment of the blanket. I cast off, still following the chevron pattern and in May, I started a new segment.

Looking back, I wish I had switched the pattern for the middle segment so that the chevrons would go the opposite direction and the months could snake back and forth instead of being in columns. To do this, I would have knit two in one stitch before the knit two together stitch.

Live an learn, and now you can learn from my mistakes as well!

Once you've reached the end of the year (or other length of time), it's time to finish off the blanket!

To make the ends line up, (since the segments probably won't be the same length) I found it helpful to line up the two segments and tie them together with a few pieces of fabric. Using fabric rather than yarn helps the ties stand out and are easier to untie when you finish.

These markers help keep the spacing since you'll probably need to stretch one segment and scrunch another.

Now sew them together with a very simple stitch: in one side, out the other. Don't over think it, just go for it.

I decided to keep the fringe on one side of the blanket so that one edge looks very finished while the other is a bit funkier.

Now you have a nice blanket which is quite a conversation starter. Go forth and be cozy!