My Temperature Blanket

The last couple of years I have had my eye on creating a temperature blanket. I enjoy “row a day” projects, as evidenced by my Crackerjack Scarf that followed a SF Giants season. 2022, my year of joy, was the perfect span of time to tackle a daily meditative project.

I spent a great deal of time on Ravelry and Instagram searching for the perfect pattern. One photo kept catching my eye, Nathalie Bouffard’s Temperature Blanket.  I love the colors and the texture of the blanket. The problem was my knowledge of crochet can be described as basic at best. I am always encouraging all of you to try new things, so I am doing the same this year. Guess what?  It is super easy!

That said, you do not have to crochet the blanket. There are tons of knit options in worsted weight where you perhaps knit a couple of rows of linen stitch or a row of garter stitch for each day.  Check out some suggestions on Ravelry. And remember, you can do a scarf too!

Nathalie lives in Canada where the temperature dips well below freezing in the winter to a high of mid-seventies in the summer.  Let’s face it, the Monterey Peninsula, while beautiful, does not have the greatest of temperature ranges, making for a rather boring blanket. I decided to create a blanket charting the daily high temperature in Brewster, MA, a little town on Cape Cod where my family spent many summer months and with a temperature range from mid-30’s to high 70’s. 

While Nathalie’s blanket has a total 13 colors (12 for temperature and one for the border), I decided to go with a total of 10 colors. Plymouth Merino Worsted Superwash had the range of colors I wanted and it, because of its washability is great for a blanket. I created my own temperature chart, assigning a color to each range. For easy reference, I made a little temperature / color chart.

Now to crochet. I knew some basics but the “foundation half double crochet”? What is that? To YouTube I turned and the clearest tutorial I found was by TL Yarn Crafts.  (The FHDC starts at about 4:35 into the presentation.) The chain 1, single crochet stitch that is done daily is easy. If you need a tutorial it Yarnspirations has a good one.

I am getting my temperature information from Accuweater. I put the city name in the search bar and then when it comes up, I go to the monthly tab.  I am using the high temperature for each day and wait until the following day to log the temperature. I don’t want forecasting; I want actual daily temperatures. 

Let’s chat yarn ends – there will be a lot of ends.  I am weaving in my ends as I go for new yarns, see a tutorial here. Even with that, there are a few ends you will have to weave in with a tapestry needle. I have decided to do that every Saturday morning to avoid having a huge job at the end of the blanket.

A lot of information for you on a really fun project that you can make your very own. With all of the variables; color selection, temperature range, craft type (knit or crochet) and city, no one’s blanket will be the same. I can honestly say I am enjoying working on it and can hardly wait to have a blanket to cuddle up under at the end of the year!