Stix Journal

Are we all a little tired of hearing that phrase? I certainly am. My bad (tho endearing) habit of starting endless new projects before finishing even one isn't going away just because it's a new calendar year. Sigh. I might as well embrace it, right?

All Kinds of Weather by Fifty Four Ten Studio

For those who don't know, this project is a way to chronicle the temperature every day for a year. Really, it's a way to chronicle anything for any period of time. You could choose to record how many push-ups you do each day for two months or how many Oreos you eat per week in a year. Whatever you'd like to have a textile record of. 

High-Low Temperature Blanket by Rachel Dawn

There are loads of great patterns available on Ravelry, or you can design your own. Most of the patterns on Ravelry outline the process to use when assigning colors to days and will give instructions as to how many rows/stitches/motifs to work for a blanket.  Because I rarely do anything the easy way, I am designing my own. I was inspired by this crochet pattern:

I LOVE making crochet hexies!

Here is my process as I have mapped it out so far. I plan to record the high and low temp for every day. If I forget to record on any day, I found this website which provides that info so I can catch up on it if I need to. I am going to make one hexie per day. Well, I might not actually keep up with making one per day, but I will have one hexie to represent each day. At some point. Eventually. A girl can dream.

Now for the fun part! I dug through my stash and found 12 colors that I love.

As you can see, all of the oranges (for example) are not exactly the same kind of yarn or shade of orange, but they are close enough and I'm labelling them orange. I assigned the 12 colors in two ways. First, one color per month. Next, I broke down the temperature range into 12 chunks: below zero, 0-9 degrees, 10-19 degrees, etc., ending with 99 and above for the twelfth bracket, and then assigned one of the colors to each bracket. Orange will represent April and 90-99 degrees.

Next comes the hexie design. I decided to make the center of the hexie be the color assigned to each month. So, each one I make for January will have denim blue for the first round. The second round is going to represent the low temperature for the day, and the third will represent the high. The fourth round will be the border color, which will be the same for every hexie.

Here are January 1st and 2nd (Hi 32/Lo7, and Hi 34/Lo3). Aren't they adorable?! I made all 31 of the denim-colored centers for the month of January, so I only need to crochet 3 rounds per day to stay current. Most importantly, I wove in all of my ends for everything so far and plan to do that each time I finish a hexie. I have no doubt this would never become a blanket if I had a minimum of 2,928 ends to weave in at the end of the year. (Yes, I did the actual math. I'm a numbers girl.) 

I think I will buy enough of one color to edge all 366 (it's a leap year!) in the same color. I believe it makes for a better-looking assembly when all of the motifs are edged in the same color; the seaming is tidier and less visible.

Does anyone want to join me and make a temperature blanket? They aren't limited to knitting or crochet either, quilters can join the party too! If you don't already follow @plainsandpine on Instagram (you should; she's local and she's awesome), go check out her posts on the temperature quilt she just started. Have you already made one or started one? Reach out in the comments! I'd love to see your photos and hear about your process. I plan to post my progress here once a month. I know you'll be on the edge of your seats waiting!

On a final note, speaking of posts, those have been few and far between here on the Stix Journal. While I know the shift from one year to the next has zero chance of shifting my modus operandi, I do have the best intentions of posting more content here this year. So, if you can tolerate my admittedly excessive use of parenthetical expressions, please stop by here to see what's new every once in a while. It's a great way for us to get more in-depth with you about what we are working on, obsessing over, learning about, and just the everyday magic that happens in a yarn shop. We'd love to hear back from you too....let's make it a conversation! 

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