He finished it last night! It looks magnificent and he was grinning from ear to ear.
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Ok, I woke up this morning with a plan. Two strips, one for the year I was born (1955), and one for the year I turned 60. Then I’ll sew them together into one big blanket. It will be interesting to see the difference. I don’t want to do the current year, it seems like too much pressure to keep up. I may even try crocheting it, although my crochet skills are not too slick…
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So yeah, 2022 is starting out with a bang. It was warmer here than expected and that color yarn is still on it’s way but, you know what? I’m not the slightest bit concerned. Max Daniels really got me thinking on my WOTY the other day and I kept coming up with things that used to just be normal for me. Things like “my house my rules” and keeping my cool when something goes wrong. Before the world went wild these were just part of who I was. So yesterday, I took a deep breath and decided it was time for a reset.
So I will wait for my package to come and I will cast on my 2022 blanket when my colors come. Yesterday, when I realized that the high temp was not going to work for me, I could have redone my palette for the wtf-th time or stomped around the house all pouty but I didn’t. I have plenty of other things to work on and plenty of yarn to play with. I even had a temperature project that I got an early start on because it uses history. I made a mistake and have to start it over but even that didn’t bother me.
I decided to do some work on my stash organizing and came upon a bag (hoard) of Purl Soho Cotton Pure and bells went off. I owe a friend a baby gift. I met the baby recently (from a distance) and he’s just beautiful. So I laid the yarn out, figured out my plan, and cast on.
Behold Baby Luke’s Probably Huge Blankie!
I cast on 365 stitches and am going to work 365 ridges. At least one ridge a day will get done on it and the rest of the catch up work will happen as I have other time in the days to come. My colors start on April 22, 2021 and he’ll get it when it’s done (the kid doesn’t know when his birthday is). I’m winding the yarn as I go and still need to pick out a special project bag for it but it’s well on it’s way.
It’s funny how these things work out when I don’t get in their way.
P.S. My WOTY for 2022 is Intentional Quiet. Not silence. Just taking some time to pause and observe. I’ve sometimes do things like step away from a party, take my drink out to the curb, and watch the party from a distance. It’s always really moving to me to actually look at things without actually being in them. So for 2022 I plan to make this a daily practice.
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That sounds like a wonderful idea!
I like that idea too.
I wonder what my year would look like. Hmmm. I have so much yarn here maybe I’ll knit two wraps.
This morning I woke up and decided to change my color scheme after I pulled out all the leftovers from 2019. I always wanted to make the cold weather colors cold. Does that make sense? I originally used lavender and purple. I ordered white, pale gray and two shades of lighter blue which should get me through the first two or three months.
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Myth #2: It’s January and I haven’t started yet. Or, it’s January and I don’t have a plan yet. Or, I did one day’s worth and I don’t know if I can do this every day.
Mythbuster #2: No one cares. Well actually, I do care if you’re upset about it, but really, this is not a competition. There are no judges and no police. There are no rules but I think that we should be clear on some personal safety guidelines.
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Start whenever you feel like starting.
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Finish whenever you feel like finishing.
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You can make a plan and change it as you go. As long as you’re happy with what you’re doing and it makes sense to you, then go for it.
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The “I can’t do it every day” is the easiest one. The simple answer is, then don’t. Don’t do it every day. This isn’t Sling where someone’s going to judge you because you didn’t sign on at 9 am. Sheesh, this is supposed to be fun!
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Do you feel like you’re trapped in a Coen brothers movie where Steve Buscemi is sitting in the corner in every scene playing the “These Rows are Too Damn Long Blues” on the harmonica? I’ve seen that movie too. Nowhere is it written that you have to finish a row. The Ten Commandments do not include “Thou shalt finish the row.” I get Long Row Fatigue so I add a stitch marker every 50 stitches. It visually breaks it down into smaller, more doable parts for me and before I know it I’m done.
The worst thing that can possibly happen is you break up with the project. J Lo comes out of all her breakups just fine and you will too. Although I do feel like Ben Affleck is a UFO that she just found in the back of the linen closet.
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So Ann did you start your embroidery odyssey? I can’t wait to see what your doing.
Hi hi hi friends!
Happy 2022! I hope your holidays were cozy. I like the way the weather on the eastern side of the country seemed to anticipate that we were starting our temperature blankets, and threw us some weird temperatures just for grins.
This is a sneak preview of MDK posts I’m writing, but I wanted to let you know that I’m making two temperature blankets this year.
The first one is the one based on the Garter Stripe Shawl–the rows are long but there is very little thinking involved, just knit those 504 stitches in the day’s high temperature. If you have a morning zoom meeting every weekday, you have a whole year where you don’t have to scrounge for something easy enough to knit while zooming! In my life, long garter rows are a feature not a bug.
But I kept thinking I wanted to use more than one color, as Cara does in her crochet hexies. So I started making wee log cabin squares, using the day’s high temperature for the center (cast on 9 stitches, knit 9 garter ridges, BO on the RS), and then working 3 ridges of garter around the center in the low temperature for the day.
I’m already realizing that I probably won’t make all of the squares using straight log cabin construction, as it will be more fun to look at if it’s a little more varied, but since we are dealing with garter stitch it will be easy to make squares that are exactly the same finished size (15 stitches wide and 15 ridges tall). In my mind, it will look a bit like a postage stamp quilt. Specifically a Dear Jane quilt if that reference means anything to you. (Shout out to my fellow sometime-quilters who got all excited about Dear Jane and managed to make like 3 squares–good times!)
And finally, a third idea that it took all of my self-restraint not to cast on, and is really for adventure-level knitters who love improvisation: The Ninepatch Blanket from Field Guide No. 4: Log Cabin. Make 40 ninepatch blocks in the smallest size, using the temperature of the day for each of the 9 patches—in any order!
That yields up 360 squares which gets you through Christmas, at which point you can stop, or if you want the full 365, you can used those 5 colors for the border. I think this would yield up a delightfully mixed effect, in which you would definitely perceive the seasonal move from cold to warm to hot and back, but in a less lock-steppy way. That will be my 2023 blanket!
To me this project is all about the randomization that comes with following a rule, the excitement of seeing what color comes next, how they will look together. What a great time we have in front of us!
Kay
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Oh, Dear Jane!! 
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Wow Kay! I admit I had to google Dear Jane and now I’m going to have to get a hot washcloth and lay down. That’s a rabbit hole I might never come back from.
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DYING this is so true.
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I go back to work tomorrow and I was just sitting on my couch thinking about how wonderful it was to have so many days off (we’ve been closed since Christmas) and how grateful I am to have had this time to myself and it suddenly occurred to me why I have take such a liking to this project.
2020 and 2021 have both been shit shows. Rotten years in ways that I could never imagine. Every year has it’s ups and downs but the past two years have been full of ups, downs, and more than our fair share of sucker punches.
And yet, here we are, like a band of superheroes facing 2022 with our elbows linked ready to take on the unknown. And like superheroes, we all have our own superpowers. There is one simple thing every year that we try to predict but we know is unpredictable - the weather. Yes there will always be other things that we don’t see coming but it occurred to me tonight that we have found the least common denominator in the chaos of life and everyone who is here has actively chosen to take it on and make it something beautiful. On our own timelines, our own rules, and our own abilities.
Unlike superheroes, we will not change anything. There will be villains we will not vanquish. But we will bring a bit of order to chaos. I’m glad we’re all here and I’m glad we’re all doing this together.
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Ding ding ding! I want to formally announce that it is only Day 4 of 2022 but I have already messed up both of my temperature blankets by knitting the wrong color for the high of the day. I also joined up two of my 3 log cabin squares in the wrong order.
This is the first of what will be many reminders that our temperature blankets will not be audited for accuracy! Remember that we are painting a misty watercolor memory of the temperature shifts over the course of a year. Talking to myself here! But seriously nobody is going to say OMG Kay on January 3 you should have used Maritime instead of Seasalter!
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At least they are both good colors!
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I haven’t had the opportunity to mess mine up yet since my Super Cold Weather colors haven’t arrived yet. I think Thursday might be the day or that could be the day I get my almonds. Some of those shipping notifications can be so mysterious.
So far, the first three days are actually all different colors.
Either way. I have other projects to keep myself busy with and am getting my frogging practice in. Dark blue yarn will due that to a knitter.
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I’m in the same boat you are! But I have started two side projects. I’m doing a blanket for a baby born on April 22 and I started a triangle shawl for my niece who got married on May 12th. I was so proud of her and her fiancé. The wedding was originally July 2, 2020 (uggh!) so the moved it to October 2020. When that didn’t happen, the moved it to July 2021 but when they had to make the final call the restrictions for weddings were still really tight (no dancing except at your table, etc.) These two are pretty amazing and they announced to the family that the reception was just a party and, since they wanted to have the party that they really wanted, they were going to push it out another year and get married at City Hall in two weeks. One $17dress purchased online, two simple gold bands, two haircuts, and some flowers later we go this.
Since she’s a woman who a: loves a hand knit and b: rocks a shawl, I cast on a triangle temperature shawl for her for the rehearsal dinner for the party next year. It’s two days after the legal wedding so, in theory, I can document the temps on their first year of marriage. I cast on doing one row for each day and the ends were immediately unmanageable. So ripped it out and started over - and I went all in. I’m cutting the yarn after every row and making a self fringing shawl. I got this far before I realized my failure.
See that dark green on the very first row. It’s the wrong color. Normally, I would just shrug my shoulders and let it go but I don’t have the heart to know that on my fun gift, the day that they actually got married was a mistake. I’m ripping it out at lunch time and starting over with the right color.
P.S. If you made it this far reading this post, thank you for indulging me. I just think they’re so sweet.
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Hi Jan, if you’re still thinking about doing the I-cord borders, I recently learned a cool way to work the sides of the I-cord as you knit garter stitch. It’s pretty simple: just slip the last 3 stitches purlwise wyif on every row. If you paired that with I-cord cast on and I-cord bind off, it wouldn’t add too much time/difficulty to the knitting.
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She looks beautiful and I love the flower hairpiece. My daughter also had three wedding dates - first May 2020 (they actually got married with just parents - she bought a dress online since hers was locked up at the alterations place), December 2020 (cancelled) and Oct 2021. We had the party in October although at much reduced numbers due to Delta. Nothing like planning a wedding for almost 3 years!
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What a sweet idea!
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