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Check out this year’s blanket 2019 Temperature Blanket

***Update!!  I finally took pictures of the finished blanket!  It ended up being very close to the 50″ x 60″ I had planned on, even with my changes to how many days per row.  In the end I did have one per row, so easily could have done two per row for the entire blanket.  You can’t tell though and my daughter loves it!

I loved not weaving in the ends and having built-in fringe as I worked, so easy!!

Looks great folded at the foot of the bed, too!

I love, love, love the idea of adding some meaning into crochet projects, so the whole idea of a temperature blanket is perfect!   I also get bored easily, so I like the variety in it.  My youngest daughter wanted a blanket, so I chose to use the daily high temperatures from her first year.  She was born in May, so I went to weatherunderground.com, searched my city and date and started documenting the temps.  You can view it one month at a time to make it easier.  I also put it into a spreadsheet, so I could plug in the colors and print it on one page.

Once I had all 366 temperatures, I could see what the highest and lowest temperatures were, 95 and 13.  I knew she wanted it colorful, so I went with a rainbow, so we could easily remember the color scale.  I love others I have seen with various colors that are mixed up, too.  I plan to make one of those in the future!

I had fifteen colors (already in my stash) I wanted to use, so I set my scale up like this:

91-95 RHSS Perfect pink
86-90 DNE Really red
81-85 DNE Bittersweet (orange)
76-80 RHSS Pumpkin (orange)
71-75 VC Soft Pink (peach)
66-70 DNE Baby yellow
61-65 RHSS Bright yellow
56-60 DNE Kiwi
51-55 DNE Shamrock
46-50 DNE Azure
41-45 VC Sapphire
36-40 DNE Royal blue
31-35 DNE Baby blue
23-30 DNE Orchid (light purple)
13-22 RHSS Lavender

RHSS-Red Heart Super Saver; DNE-Deborah Norville Everyday;VC-Vanna’s Choice

Next was deciding what stitch or pattern I would follow for the blanket.  I searched temperature blankets on Pinterest and Ravelry and there were so many great options to choose from!   I fell in love with the Apache Tears pattern.  I love how it looks best with multiple color changes and that it looks like broken stripes, very interesting to look at.

I wanted this blanket to be a good size to grow with her, so I swatched a few stitches to get my gauge (4 stitches per inch and 4 rows per inch) and decided how wide to make it.  **I also want to note that I used a J hook for the Deborah Norville yarn and an I hook for the Red Heart and Vanna’s.  I have 366 days, with a gauge of 4 rows per inch, that would make it  91.5″ long!   WHOA!  I didn’t need it that big!  So I started with three days per row, no idea why. Oops.  I wanted it around 50″x60″ so I actually should have started with two per row making it close to 46″ long and 240 stitches for 60″ width.  I had to switch to two days per row, but then that was going to be too short too, so about halfway through, I switched to one day per row.  You can’t really tell because of the pattern I chose, but  be sure to check your math if you choose a pattern that will show.  This just gave her more purple in hers, which she won’t mind at all!

You can customize the pattern, so I chose to use an 11 stitch repeat, with 10 sc in between the dcs for the pattern.  Since the dc moves over each row, it didn’t matter that my stitch count match the repeat, meaning I didn’t have to have it at 244 or multiple of 11. So my first row was just a foundation single crochet, so much easier than chaining and crocheting into each chain.  Leave the tail in the beginning and the end!!  This will give you built-in fringe and eliminates all the weaving in.  From here, just follow your colors and the pattern.  Another note, I skipped the dc in the first and last stitches, just single crochet instead, I didn’t care for the disconnect it created because you drop down a row for them.  You can do it however you prefer.

Progress after several rows in:

And some more progress, I put it down for a while and then picked it back up again.

And even the back side looks good!

I ran out of the light purple, so I had to stop for now, but I will post more when finished!