Temperature Blanket – Final Round-Up

2017 is over and done!  And so is my temperature blanket, my year-long project.  Check out all the details in this post.

It is so big!  In this round-up post I’ll cover the size, the amount of yarn and my recommendations for others doing a temperature blanket.  It was SO MUCH FUN.

You can see all my posts about this project here.  As a reminder, the concept of my temperature blanket is to use the average local temperature in the 24-hour period of each day to determine the colour of the row for that day.  My colour chart is below for reference.

Project Round-Up

See my Ravelry project listing for details and photos here!

• 97,356 stitches
• 84 square feet of blanket
• 30 skeins of yarn used, although some only used a bit
• 8,040 yards of yarn (not all used, so I can reuse some of the partially-used balls!)
• 365 rows + a ch row
• 10 minutes per row
• 61 hours of crochet + weaving in ends!
• Check out all my Instagram posts about my temperature blanket here

Pattern

I used the moss stitch (sometimes called the linen stitch), which is doing sc, ch1, sc, ch1… ending with sc.  Following row, ch2, sc in first ch-space, ch1, sc in next ch-space, ch1… ending with sc.

For my blanket I started with a ch 266, which ended up yielding an 8 foot wide blanket.  Quite wide, but I wanted to make sure it didn’t seem way too long and skinny!

I used a 7.0 mm hook to give the worsted weight yarn some drape and it was perfect!

Blanket Size

So… this blanket is huge.  I can barely even fit it in a laundry hamper when it’s folded up.  Did I make it too big?  Absolutely!  But there was method to my madness.  If you go back to my original post, you can review my thought process on the size.  Basically, with the worsted weight yarn I had, once I decided to do a row every day, I knew the length was going to be huge, at least 8 feet.

Ignoring my messy room (kids toys are EVERYWHERE during the Christmas holidays!), this can give you an idea of the size of the blanket…

What I Learned

There are a few thoughts and factors I would consider if doing this project again…

1. I got really excited seeing the progression of the rows day over day, check out the final PDF of my colour chart here: HomemadeByGiggles_2017_TemperatureBlanket.
2. It’s WAY easier to do a row every day than it is to play catch-up later.  That’s likely a handy tip for most things in life I guess!
3. This size was a bit huge 🙂 but unavoidable.  Maybe use a lighter weight yarn for it to be smaller, or try a different style like a small square for each day.  Or use an average temperature over 2 days so you have half the number of rows.  Some people have made scarves too but seriously, that would be a LONG scarf!
4. I love love love the colour transitions in winter and spring, however I don’t love the red shades.  I find it to be too stark of a contrast to the rest of the colours.  In hindsight, I would have used soft pinks instead.
5. For my colour ranges, there were a lot more yellow/red rows than I anticipated!  If I did it over again, I’d alter the colour ranges to have more variation of colour in the upper ranges.

I’ve really enjoyed this project, although for the end of the year I had to catch up on several months in a hurry, but I’m proud to say I finished on December 31!  If you’re thinking of trying out a temperature blanket, I say GO FOR IT!  It’s so much fun!