Temperature blanket – Beginnings

Hello again. I told you I’d get it out soon!

Now I’m not saying this is a bad thing, but I think I’m feeling slightly overwhelmed with the amount I’ve got to do recently. It’s not been like Christmas where everything had a deadline and I knew I had to just crack on, but a strange sort of listlessness. I don’t know what to pick up first. I’m usually very good at being able to prioritise, but I have no idea what SHOULD be done first. It has meant over the past couple of weeks that rather than doing something, ANYTHING, I’ve just been looking around me with what is I presume a bewildered look. I’ll repeat again, it’s not the worst problem to ever have, quite the opposite in fact. But its days like these where I’m really glad to have my new temperature blanket. It’s nice and simple. I need to do one a day. No more. In fact I couldn’t do tomorrows unless I could see into the future as I’m taking my temperatures at 12pm. It makes that first 10 mins of sitting down and crafting time that much easier. There is a plan. All I have to do is follow it.

The week before Christmas, just as everything was calming down, you couldn’t look at the internet without seeing a temperature blanket. It had never really appealed to me, but I’m not sure why. But all of a sudden, I really wanted to be recording daily temperatures. Like some sort of mad woman. I’m not sure what changed. Maybe it’s because I’m rapidly approaching a big age? (5 months from today actually). Maybe because I’m actually feeling like a grown up? Half way grown up at least. Maybe it dawned on me how much of a big year this is, and how many changes will be happening. Lots of the crafters who are doing temperature blankets are doing special years. Seen as I’m turning 30, it seemed like an ideal opportunity. Maybe that’s where this blogging thing has come from. The need to record stuff.

Anyway. Down to the details.

First, I wanted to look at the pattern. I’d decided that I wanted to try hexagons for no other reason than I’d wanted to try hexagons for so long. I’ve always love tessellating shapes when they’re more interesting than a square. Obviously I don’t want to get too crazy with it, hexagons are the perfect fit. I also found this as inspiration and it set my mind immediately.

I looked high and low for a hexagon pattern that I A; liked, B; gave me enough scope to do a high and a low temperature C; something that would work up to a decent size. In times like this I usually think ‘What would Lucy do?’ and head over to Attic24. I had a nose but then made an adult decision to branch out and give everyone else a go. More searching ensued until I found this. How pretty is that? Anyway, I delved further to find a pattern, and guess what? Shed used the Attic 24 hex pattern. So be it.

Next for the colours. Felted button is doing a proper CAL with her own designs. While they’re lovely, I didn’t quite fancy that. Her colours however were good. I altered them slightly as I felt there was too much yellow in there for me. So here they are..

0 – lower             Silver

1 – 4                     Sherbet

5 – 8                     Cloud blue

9 – 12                   Aster

13 – 16                Spring green

17 – 20                 Saffron

21 – 24                Spice

25 – 28                Tomato

29 – 32                 Copper

33+                       Claret

All in Stylecraft Special DK obviously.

How good are the pegs. The mother got them for me. Presumably after she realised I’d never get round to doing something so sensible.

I have to say I’ve been obsessed with checking the temperature every day since. I’m taking the maximum and minimum for my town at 12pm from the Met Office. Annoyingly they don’t ever update it on time so its usually 12.50 or later before I can get the right ones. Plus there’s the obvious panic when I haven’t got internet, or the dreadful day the Met Office site was down. I’m not sure how it’ll go recording them for the full year like this, but we’ll see.

Armed with my secret santa gift voucher I headed to my online yarn retailer to get the rest of the stash that I needed. The Parents were kind enough to feed us on New Years day so I went armed with some left over cream to try the design out. What d’you think?

Quite pretty just as it is isn’t it?

I’ll explain the brown row around the outside in a second. But here’s progress as of the 10th.

Don’t they look lovely. I sort of don’t want to join them up when they look all edible like this. Joining, yes. This brings me to the next hurdle.

While I was looking the colours I decided that I wanted to do a warm brown row around the outside. People objected but I went ahead anyway. On the original test it looked ok, but as I tried I on my first day a seed of doubt was planted.

Originally, this pattern was meant to be a join as you go method, which for some reason I have an aversion to. I honestly can’t explain it. My plan was to outline with the brown and then stitch them together. But then I wasn’t sure of the brown. A spanner in my works.

I decided to leave the brown on the next day, and I think I prefer it. From then on, I left off the outer row entirely, just in case I did want to join as I went with just the parchment. What do you think? I’m pretty certain I’ve decided to leave off the brown, but I thought I’d see how I feel once the pictures had gone into the ether.

But yes so far it’s lovely. It’s nice to be having colours that are random. And by random I mean not planned by me, but also still have some structure and meaning. Apart from todays one (highs of 2, lows of 2 if you’re interested) I’m all up-to-date. With the main bulk anyway. And of course when I say up-to-date, I don’t really mean the ends..

365 x 8 ends per hex = 2920! Gulp!

 

 

Much love xx