How to Crochet a Temperature Blanket
Have you heard of a ‘temperature blanket’? They are a project that is worked on for a year during which the highest and lowest temperatures are recorded each day. You then choose yarn colours that you want to use to represent the temperatures. The way that this can be decided can vary massively – if you live in a country where there is a wide range of temperatures during the year, you could allocate a yarn colour to a range of temperatures. If you don’t, then you could have a yarn colour for every individual temperature. Once you have decided on this, you then crochet 2 rows for each day – one for the highest and one for the lowest temperature. Of course, you don’t have to do rows – you could do a square or a circle for each temperature and then join them at the end. With the colours you choose, you could use all different colours, or choose all different shades of the same colour to give a more subtle outcome. It doesn’t even have to be a blanket – it could be a shawl for example.
This is why these projects are so intriguing – they will be truly unique to you and your choices, giving the chance to create the kind of item that can be passed on through the family. It is also the kind of project that you can put to one side while life or other projects take over, and then come back to it later. They often tend to be mindful projects – often the same/similar stitches are used for a whole month of the pattern.
I have never made one of these, myself, until this year and the reason I chose to do so was seeing this amazing pattern for an heirloom temperature blanket from Suraya Hussain, the designer and creator behind Mahliqa.
I follow Suraya on Instagram and when she shared photos of her own blanket, I admit, I fell in love. Suraya had created a pattern using my current fave – mosaic crochet (I’ll come back to this in a future post). I also have a rather large stash of yarns from UK based dyers and had been looking for a project to use them with. I decided to use one yarn for each individual temperature and then came the hard bit – choosing the yarns and allocating them! I will give a full list of all the dyers I have used in a future post.
It took several attempts but I finally had my list and was ready to start January. And here it is – the first month of my heirloom blanket and it only took me until mid-march to finish it!
I’m loving the way that the colours I’ve chosen are working together and I am also really enjoying the pattern itself – Suraya has written a beautiful pattern that is so well written with lost of extra guidance, especially around the planning process.
I will keep you posted with my progress over the coming year.
