The Temperature blanket is finally complete! Although I did not finish it in February as I had originally hoped, I did finish before the end of March and that counts as a success in my book. This means that it took me slightly over a year, almost 13 months, to knit the blanket, which is is pretty much on schedule, or would have been had I knit one garter ridge a day -- also the original plan. Of course waiting for a yarn order also slowed things down, and by the time the yarn arrived I was wrapped up in another project....
I love the results. Admittedly I would have liked a little more color variation in the middle of the blanket, just as I would have liked a little more temperature variation in those middle five months. Generally however, the blanket turned out well, and the excitement of seeing what the next color would be was both motivating and a bit of a lesson in combining colors as I found myself entrance by color combinations that would not have occurred to me otherwise.
I purchased 21 colors of Rowan's Felted Tweed for this blanket and I used 20 of them. Surprisingly the color I did not use was the warmest color, Rage, which was to indicate days where the high reached 96 degrees Fahrenheit, or greater. We usually do get a couple of days a year that are that warm, but the highest temperature in 2022 was 95. Now, we had 5 straight months where the average high was over 80, a bit of a long stretch for us, and 90 days where the temperature was over 85, which puts us right at the top edge of the normal range for this area in terms of heat index. The extended prolonged heat was actually harder on my garden than the cold snap in December. So I have to say the blanket was nicely balanced between being relatively mindless while also being fun and educational.
I was inspired to knit this by the temperature blanket post at Modern Daily Knitting, and I started roughly, as they suggested with Kaffe Fassett's Garter Stitch Striped Shawl. Basically that means I used the needle size he recommended and knit the shawl in garter stitch. I knew that my gauge would be looser than the gauge recommended in the pattern because I have knit this yarn before and have knit patterns by Rowan and this designer. My gauge was 18 stitches and 34 rows to 4 inches (as opposed to the Kaffe Fassett pattern which got 24 stitches and 44 rows to 4 inches. I liked the fabric created at my gauge, and I love the weight and drape of the blanket. It does not feel too loosely knitted, in fact it feels quite ideal for my use and my preferences.
The finished blanket is 60 inches wide by 96 inches long. According to my records I used 23 1/2 skeins, or 4509 yards. I had originally estimated, from my gauge swatch, that the blanket would take 19 or 20 skeins, and I estimated that the border would take 3 1/2 to 4 skeins and both ended up right on point. Overall I am happy.
As you see, it fits perfectly on my queen-sized bed as a topper, and it is the right size for a solo sleeper. It is not large enough to share, but, having been married to a blanket-hog, I long ago decided that separate blankets are the way to go both for comfort and maintenance ease. I would rather fold or drape multiple blankets over the bed anyway, and I wouldn't be surprised if I end up knitting at least one more of these blankets during my lifetime. I have certainly been thinking about the possibilities.
