I think it’s looking pretty. It sort of looks like April. One lone grey day in the middle of that upper green band, but otherwise I think I might be able to put away the grey yarn until fall. May will be the start of breaking into the browns.

As this is mid-May and I’m only now posting April, you might have guessed that I’m behind. The blanket has gotten big enough that it’s unwieldy to take with me to work on wile waiting for something or hanging out with the family away from home. Plus, it’s big enough to more than cover my lap, and it’s getting warm (note again the lack of grey yarn) and not exactly ‘cuddle under a heavy blanket’ weather. So while I don’t intend to neglect this project, and I’m still having fun, I doubt I’m going to do much better than staying a little behind.

Let’s go May!

Took this photo outside so the sunlight is making it hard to see the pink at the top. Defiantly getting into more pink and green. I had planned on predicting that I might be done with the grey categories all together until winter, but then yesterday dipped into the light grey range. So I’ll predict we’re done with dark grey until winter. Ha.

The full blanket is getting a little big to take with me places. I like to bring it to my daughter’s violin lesson. Even though I wait in the car now to minimize people near each other, I can still hear her play and it’s nice to crochet and enjoy pretty violin music and relax. It will soon become a sitting at home project and I hope I keep up with it. Although I’ve kept up for 3 months now, so I’m doing really well.

A quickie measurement at the end of March puts the length at 19 inches. Times 4 that brings me to 76 inches, but since Feb is so short, maybe I can expect to land somewhere near the 80 inch mark for a final length. I’m happy with that outcome so I’m going to be happy with the choice to go with the small moss stitch for this project. I will be putting a boarder of some type on at the end which will add some as well, and how much more I want to add will help me choose what boarder I want to use when I get there.

Onto April!

So, not as much temperature variety this month is seems. A couple of warm days there at the top in light green and pink, otherwise we stayed in the light grey and dark green ranges. It has been beautiful out and I’ve worked a lot in the garden.

However, I’m nervous how little rain we’ve gotten. It should rain all of February. It didn’t. Barely any rain at all. Makes me afraid for the summer fire danger if we are starting off with things this dry months earlier than normal. My kids sometimes don’t even say summer, they say ‘fire season’. It’s sad.

Please, cold and rain – come play. We love pretty springtime, but we need you!

I’ve liked the concept of temperature blankets and scarves ever since I first heard about them. The idea is you crochet (or knit I guess) one row for each day of the year to a color guide showing the change in temperature. What I didn’t care for was the straight red, orange, yellow. . . to blue color scheme. Not that I don’t like those colors, but I didn’t think I’d like a huge blanket in those colors. Or at least, I didn’t love the ones I saw.

Then sometime in December last year I saw one where they had decided they too would like a temperature blanket, but one that would match their room. So they used, I think it was a lot of reds, burgundy, tan and some greys. It was very pretty. So I decided I’d make one and use my favorite colors instead of the traditional choices.

This is January. Greys are the coldest, you can see the warmer week there of greens and that strangely weirdly warm day in pink. Yesterday warmed up again into that green row at the top. When we get into the warmer months it will move into the pinks and browns with maybe some yellow if we get the super hot days. I was prepared to go into maybe a purple if we ever got colder than the dark grey zone I made, but it doesn’t look like we’ll probably go there.

So far I am happy with these colors. I worried I’d get bored with something I needed to keep up with every day. So far I’m still having fun with it, but there are day’s I’m too tired, so I do two rows the next day or three the day after that. But I’m generally keeping up without it feeling like a chore so far. We’ll see how that feels in the heat of summer to work on a big heavy crochet blanket.

I’m using the moss stitch because I read it was a good choice to keep it from getting too long. 365 rows is a lot. January measures at about 7 inches so the finished length would be around 84 inches witch sound like a good size to me, although I’ll probably add a boarder at the end so the edges look cleaner. What color the boarder will be is a big question. . .for another day.

I tried to make an amigurumi version of my co-workers dog. A sweet little Pitbull. While I think the dog I created is cute, I am very disappointed in it because it looks nothing like her. I wasn’t happy with the yarn I had. Everything was too brown or too grey, and she is somewhere in the middle. I just couldn’t find anything that was right. Next, her nose is way too long. it doesn’t look like a pitty at all. My next project was going to be another pitbull, so I decided I would have to change that from the pattern I was using (from AmiguruME pets – a wonderful book) and stop sooner to shorten it. As I was looking up the right parts to use to start over, I realized I think I used to completely wrong recommended nose pattern for a pitbull. I don’t know how I did it, but once I started on the wrong nose, I just finished that pattern and never noticed I was on the wrong page, maybe? Gah!

My co-worker said they loved it, but of course they would say that. They are a kind person, but I wish it had turned out to do the real life doggie justice a little better.