I think for the past five years or so, I have thought about making a temperature blanket for that year.

Every year, I made excuses for why I couldn’t make one or why I shouldn’t make one.

Of course, right now, my email inbox is full of blog posts and newsletters touting temperature blankets, done in various gorgeous yarns of a myriad of weights, as well as being made using a plethora of different patterns…as is my YouTube feed. I haven’t actually been checking much of anything else because, quite simply, I do not do that on a regular basis anyway.

There is no way to avoid the temperature blankets made in 2022 or the plans for the ones to be made in 2023.

On the night of December 28, I made that hard decision and said, yes, yes, this is the year I am making that temperature blanket. Why else do I track the local weather every single day if not to make one of these?

That night, I went to Joann Fabric And Craft store online—and was very happy to find all of their yarn on sale.

I ended up buying eleven different colors, one skein each, in their brand Big Twist. It’s more of an Aran-weight yarn, at least in my opinion. It wears hard and well…I have used it in blankets before and have had no complaints. I used it to make a sweater once, and that is where I had complaints (the fabric was a bit … tense, shall we say?).

Once the yarn arrives, I will make a quick video showcasing the colors I bought and the temperatures they represent. I ordered the yarn on December 28, and as of this writing, it has not shipped yet, which is par for the course in this season. I could not order in-store pick-up as my local store did not have all of the colors I ordered.

I only ordered one skein of each, for now, in order to see where I need to buy more. This is one reason I bought Big Twist brand yarn. Even if I cannot find the correct colors in my local store, I can still order it online and get it without too much fuss. This is something I appreciate.

One color I did not order is white. I know I will have to order more white in Big Twist. Currently, I have nearly a whole skein on hand from where I knit my oldest son (my middle child) a color-work hat he had requested. I have a lot of neutral nearly whole skeins after making that hat.

Back to the topic, the white is going to be the center so that I have a place to start from…as well as a row (maybe two, I am not certain as yet) to break up one month from the next. I will also be creating a picot border all the way around the outside of the blanket once it is finished.

As for the pattern, I had to deliberate for a bit on that. I will not be knitting the blanket as I want to actually finish the blanket as well as my other knitting projects throughout the year. I do not for any reason want to make squares, neither small nor large squares. I do not want to make anything that I have to sew or crochet together at the end…not even as I go, really.

I also do not want to make stripes. I am being a bit of a snob, I admit, or maybe I am being lazy, I don’t know. Maybe I am still feeling the pain of making a king-sized striped crochet blanket row by row after we lost our last pregnancy years ago. Maybe it is a huge foundation row that scares the bejeebers out of me. To be honest, it is all of that probably, all together.

I am planning to make a grand granny square blanket, which I love because that’s what I make typically. My mother makes the most beautiful C2C blankets (that’s corner to corner, if you haven’t heard of it before); every animal in this house will take a Granny blanket (as we call them) over anything I make any day. The only thing they prefer more than a Granny blanket is fresh clean laundry, right out of the dryer—of course. Once the laundry cools off, it’s back on the Granny blanket. I crochet a blanket and they (cats and dogs and youngest both) will paw away my blanket until they reach a Granny blanket. The snotheads. The lot of them. Lol

Anyway. For her blankets, my mother uses an I hook. I probably have more I hooks than any other crochet hook. I love the Prym hooks. Ever since I bought my first one on a whim, I have been addicted to them. I have wanted to crochet a granny square at a tighter gauge, but so far, I think I prefer the I hook for this project.

I have been wondering because I have no desire whatsoever to sit and actually do the math, at least not until the yarn gets here, how large this blanket is going to be.

If we add the 365 rounds, plus a single round for the center, twelve, no eleven, for each month (the center would count as one month), as well as a minimum of three rounds for the border (two rounds of, say, single crochet and then a round of picot), that would give us 380 rounds.

If I decide to add two rounds between every month, plus the three border rounds, with the 365 ‘normal’ rounds, that would give us 392.

I am not thinking I will be crocheting up a little throw for the couch. I am thinking this is going to be a nice king-sized or bigger blanket, which actually works better for me. We have plenty of throws around here. What I need is a blanket that will cover the bed from one side resting on the floor to the side while resting on the floor, so no matter who climbs into bed when and starts yanking blankets this way and that, the blanket still covers the person or people in the bed.

Depending on how this blanket turns out, I will make another blanket next year. If this gets as large as I think it might, I will definitely be making a striped blanket next year.

One thing that I caught in a YouTube video, I cannot recall who said it as I was letting YouTube run in the background while I folded clothes and just listened as people showed off their blankets and yarns and whatever else, but someone said you can actually make a temperature blanket for any year, in any locality. There are sites online where you can pull the temperature information for any year, all year long, in any location on the Earth.

So you can make a temperature blanket for your children’s year of birth, wherever they were born. You can make a temperature blanket for your anniversary, based on what year you got married and where. You can commemorate a trip or the last year of a school, a cross-country move, or a death, or any other impactful occasion that makes you want to create something to honor that event.

Perhaps your grandfather dies, so you make a temperature blanket based on the weather the year he was born and where he was born. Or you make one based on the temperatures the year he died where he died.

The ideas that this brings up are astounding…and exhausting to be honest. There are so many things that cropped up that I thought, oh, I should make a temperature blanket for x and y and z…and then … twenty more events and forty more people. I actually do want to have a life in between making this blanket, so making a series of blankets is not going to become my touchstone or anything.

One temperature blanket per year based upon where we are living at the time. End of statement. The pattern can change every year, but I do not think that the number of blankets made will change.

What about you? Are you interested in making your own temperature blanket? If not a blanket, maybe a scarf or a shawl? You can crochet something. You can knit something. You can simply keep track of the weather and the temperature where you are, or wherever you want to, and not do another thing. It’s about making you happy, not about stressing you out.

As it is the fifth of January and my yarn has as yet not shipped, I am thinking of planning a weekly sit down on a weekend and catching up with the rows from throughout the week. That sounds great now when the blanket is so small, but as it grows, it’s going to suck. So, I will adjust my plan as needed.

I will keep you updated here and there on my blanket throughout the year.

No one ever said I could not make two blankets in one year. If in six months, the original blanket is getting too large, I will break it into two different blankets. We’ll see when we get there.

Oh yes, I have plans. I have plans within plans in case I need other plans. evil maniacal laugh