Last year at this time I decided to make a temperature blanket for the year Erich (aka the Shop Elf) we were married. I was building a spreadsheet to hold the historical high and low temperature info and selecting my yarn colors and the manufacturer for each temperature band.
Then Erich passed away and everything in my life came to a grinding stop.
Several months later I decided that I was still going to do a temperature blanket but it would be for my first year without Erich - January 12, 2023 through January 11, 2024. I considered adding, somehow, the amount of rain on each day but each idea could not be integrated easily and then I saw a temperature blanket that used the amount of daylight and darkness such that the high temperatures were daylight and the low temperatures were the darkness. I used the Weather Underground to locate a personal weather station near the house so I could get the temperature data. I used Time and Date to get the sunrise & sunset data and built out the rest of the spreadsheet to calculate the number of stitches based upon minutes of each. I even added some conditional formatting so the recorded temperature would show the color of the yarn for that temperature band.
For the yarn I chose an acrylic from Lion Brand because the blanket will be on the couch and will probably get washed a lot plus the yarn is not very expensive! Being the geek I am, I also set up a page in the spreadsheet to calculate the amount of yards yarn I would need based upon a test gauge swatch for the number of stitches and then calculated the total yardage using the number of stitches over the course of the year for each temperature band...
Once December started I went and ordered one to 2 skeins of each yarn and cast on the first rows of black on New Year's Eve. New Year's Day I started with January 12th. It takes about 2-3 hours to knit each day while watching TV; today I am working on finishing January 14th and maybe all of January 15th.
Yes, it will probably take me all of 2024 and some of 2025 to finish it but it will keep my hands busy in the evenings
Then Erich passed away and everything in my life came to a grinding stop.
Several months later I decided that I was still going to do a temperature blanket but it would be for my first year without Erich - January 12, 2023 through January 11, 2024. I considered adding, somehow, the amount of rain on each day but each idea could not be integrated easily and then I saw a temperature blanket that used the amount of daylight and darkness such that the high temperatures were daylight and the low temperatures were the darkness. I used the Weather Underground to locate a personal weather station near the house so I could get the temperature data. I used Time and Date to get the sunrise & sunset data and built out the rest of the spreadsheet to calculate the number of stitches based upon minutes of each. I even added some conditional formatting so the recorded temperature would show the color of the yarn for that temperature band.
For the yarn I chose an acrylic from Lion Brand because the blanket will be on the couch and will probably get washed a lot plus the yarn is not very expensive! Being the geek I am, I also set up a page in the spreadsheet to calculate the amount of yards yarn I would need based upon a test gauge swatch for the number of stitches and then calculated the total yardage using the number of stitches over the course of the year for each temperature band...
Once December started I went and ordered one to 2 skeins of each yarn and cast on the first rows of black on New Year's Eve. New Year's Day I started with January 12th. It takes about 2-3 hours to knit each day while watching TV; today I am working on finishing January 14th and maybe all of January 15th.
Yes, it will probably take me all of 2024 and some of 2025 to finish it but it will keep my hands busy in the evenings
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