Temperature Projects

Temperature Blankets/Scarves/Wraps/ETC are back in vogue right now. If you don’t know what they are, here’s a quick description.

I had been contemplating doing one on-and-off for the last year. But didn’t pull the trigger until Keva texted me and asked if I was going to do one. After hardly any discussion, we both decided to do a project in our respective mediums – for me that’s fiber, for Keva that could be just about anything not fiber. Below are the details as they stand now. 

Keva’s Project

I decided to go a different route, like Lauren had mentioned, I’m not a fiber person. Nothing against fiber, it’s just not my forte. Over the years I have learned to play to my strengths. So I went with markers. A tad childish one may say, but hey, if I can’t entertain my inner child once in awhile then why do it at all? Anytime I can entertain her as well as myself it’s a win-win situation.

I decided on working with my Arteza alcohol markers that I was gifted years ago and rarely break out and play with for any project; real or for funzies. I looked at a ton of different color scales for the temperature breakdowns and found one in which to work. It didn’t take long to sort through my vast array of colors and pick out my favorites for each temperature block.

I always, ALWAYS, have scrap paper laying about (it’s organized chaos in my studio) so I grabbed what was close and available. Lauren sent me a high/low option and I went from there. Lauren also sent me a couple of quilt patterns if I wanted to go the only “fiber” art I can & know how to do and the whole jagged design sent my senses into overdrive. I started marking my watercolor paper in 1’’ squares and dividing them into halves. Seemed jagged enough to me.

I then decided rather quickly that I would need to keep track of said squares so I marked them on the back with the date. That way, because it’s happened several times already, I’ve lost track of time and had to do several days record keeping in one sitting. That seems to be my only sore spot with this whole project thus far…if you aren’t dedicated to keeping your records straight you’ll fail even before you start.

With three kids underfoot, a husband, cats, a house, cars and life in my constant view I have to sit down and dedicate time to a medium that works for me. Taking screenshots of the Weather Channel App on my phone has saved my dupa more times than I’ve counted over the last two weeks since we’ve started this project. Let’s get real here, as fun and as artsy as this project is for the record keepers of the world, it needs to fit into your life seamlessly or I’m quite sure people will give it up within the first 30 days. Like those New Year’s Resolutions that everyone is so fond of…sounds great in the beginning, but if you don’t stay present it’ll fall apart like a flan on a cupboard if you aren’t careful.

So I’m crossing my fingers that I too chose the right medium for this little project. I’m also keeping in the back of my head, that yes I may have chosen markers as my yearly medium, but that doesn’t mean that if at the end of the year I can’t take what I’ve done and change to something different. Taking my colorful record keeping and averaging out the high and lows of the months and creating ONE block per month giving me 12 blocks total. Take those colors, and use it towards a different medium. Same information, different format, will give the whole entire project a different look and feel that may surprise even myself when it’s all said and done. 

Who knows though. What I do know is that I have 365 days to figure out what direction I want to stay in, go with, and play around in all the different mediums in which I am accustomed to working. I may at the end of the year surprise even myself with what I end up creating! That’s the beauty of creating isn’t it? You THINK you know, but one rarely does until it’s finished.

Lauren’s Project

After searching for inspiration, I decided I would get bored and not finish a project that takes this long if it was super simple, like knit or crochet a row in a specific color for each day. I also really couldn’t settle on the high or low temps to focus on. So off I went to find a pattern that would give me both but that wasn’t harder or more complicated than I wanted to do either. That was a sure-fire way to not finish the project.

I finally landed on a crochet block of an hourglass from The Crochet Handbook and Stitch Guide. I really like the idea of temperature paired with a time visual. The example uses three colors, but I figured I’d stick with two. The body of the hourglass would represent the high and the background to show the shape would be the low.

So I pulled some worsted weight yarn leftovers from my stash and a couple crochet hooks and proceeded to do what I usually don’t do for a project, figure out gauge through swatching. Man am I glad I did. If I had ordered all the yarn, and dove in with the default weight and hook, my blanket would have been nearly a double King. Absolutely ridiculous! The other issue I ran into when I used the smaller hook sizes was the fabric got thick as it shrunk in width. I was concerned about using too small of a hook as well. If it came out too thick, the blanket would be unusable.

I had two options (other than throwing in the towel on the pattern), scale down the weight and hope that cut the block in half or convert the pattern to knitting so I had more flexibility with thickness. A trip to the store for yarn options and 4 swatches later, it was decided, the lighter end of the default yarn weight, but convert the pattern to knit (stockinette stitch) and cut the mm size of the needles in half. I was down to medium weight yarn (4), using Caron Simply Soft which runs thinner, and size 4 (US) needles. Now the blanket is still going to be fairly big, but not ridiculously so. This combo gives me 4-inch squares. With borders, I think it’ll end up 5ft by 10ft or so. Think a little long for a twin.

Next up was to source the yarn and make my temperature key for the project. These projects generally call for 8-12 colors depending on the range of temps that you are expecting to encounter. We get from below zero all the way to 110F some years, so I needed a decent range, but not too many. As you can see, I settled on 11.

So for now, I record the temps of the day before on a little chart and whittle away at the block I’ve got on my needles. In the end, the plan is 26 rows of 14 blocks and if you are a math whiz, you know that means I am missing one day. I’ll do December 31st temps as the top and bottom borders of the blanket. I’m still deciding if I need to do borders on the sides. If the first block is any indication, I will be putting borders on it. 

Hopefully, I’ll improve as I go, as I’m not the most well-versed with colorwork and this will definitely teach me all kinds of lessons. I’m thinking once I get 28 days knitted, I can connect the first rows and really get a feeling for how the final will look.

Anyone who has created something unique in any medium knows that it usually doesn’t work exactly as planned. We are no different in that we change our minds, adjusting as we go. It will be interesting to see how we’ve changed things in the end. See you next year with the results!