Temperature Blanket
In northern British Columbia, our temperature is pretty
constant so I knew when I started crocheting a row per day to reflect the
temperature there would be little colour variation. I had decided that any
temperatures under -20 degrees Celsius would be purple and that temperatures
between -19 degrees Celsius and 0 degrees would be blue but rather than one
shade of blue, I would make a study in blue. I was inspired by little woolie's "Mixed stitch stripey blanket crochet-a-long" and love the look of the mixture of stitches. You can find her blog post here: http://littlewoollie.blogspot.com/p/mixed-stitch-stripey-blanket-crochet.html.
I was a bit concerned about how long the potential
blanket would be if I used all double crochet stitches to do the 365 rows so I began with two rows
of half double crochet. As these days were below -20, as days in early January
are, these are dark purple.
One of my aims for this project was to use some leftover
yarn, so as the temperature warmed up a wee bit, I looked through my wool stash
and came up with this great dark blue. I worked a row of hdc and a row of dc in
the dark blue followed by a row of sc in turquoise and another row of sc in the
dark blue.
Foundation Row: Make a chain the length of the desired
width of your blanket. I did count my stitches as I wanted the stitches to be
divisible by 2, 3, 4, 6, 8, etc. I chose to begin with 240 stitches. Add an
additional 2 ch to count as the first hdc of Row 1. (purple)
Row 1: Skip first 2 ch and hdc in each stitch across the
chain. (purple)
Row 2: Chain 2 (counts as first hdc), turn and hdc in
each stitch across row. (purple)
Here I switched to the blue:
Row 3: Chain 2 (counts as first hdc), turn and hdc in each stitch across row. (Dark blue)
Row 4: Chain 3 (counts as first dc), turn and dc in each stitch across row. (Dark blue)
Row 5: Chain 1 (counts as first sc), turn and sc in each stitch across row. (Turquoise)
Row 6: Chain 1 (counts as first sc), turn and sc in each stitch across row. (Dark blue)
Row 7: Chain 3 (counts as first dc), turn and dc in each stitch across row. (Turquoise)
Row 8: Chain 2 (counts as first hdc), turn and hdc in each stitch across row. (Turquoise)
As I said I was inspired by little woolie's Mixed stitch stripey blanket crochet-a-long and winter in northern BC is cold and snowy so I thought that white bobbles on a dark blue background would mimic our long dark nights that often filled with big fluffy white snowflakes. The actual instructions for the bobble stitch come from Tales from Cuckoo Land (http://talesfromcuckooland.blogspot.com.au/p/bobble-stitch-tutorial-2-bobbles-in.html?m=1), which offers very detailed instructions that I won't repeat here but rather encourage you to visit their blog.
Row 9-11: Bobble stitch in dc from the instructions on Tales from Cuckoo Land.
Next came some granny stripes, again inspired by little woolie's blog and the snow outside I thought a row of white granny square stitches would sit perfectly between the dark blue that was reminiscent of our long dark nights. First I crocheted a row of turquoise hdc to separate the two sections.
Row 12: Chain 2 (counts as first hdc), turn and hdc in each stitch across row. (Turquoise)
Granny Rows:
Row 13: Chain 3, *3 dc in next stitch (cluster) skip next 2 stitches, repeat from * across. Depending upon your stitch count, it may not come out evenly and you may need to improvise to keep the stitch count and keep a straight edge. (Dark blue)
Row 14: Chain 5 (counts as 1st dc and gives a bit of space to reach the 1st gap), 3 dc in each gap (between each cluster). Again depending upon your stitch count you may need to improvise at the end to keep the row straight. (White)
Row 15: Chain 3, 3 dc (cluster) in between each cluster across. (Dark blue)
The image shown here shows the progress so far. I will try to take more images more often so the next sections aren't as long.
