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What is a Temperature Blanket?

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What is a Temperature Blanket?

- Liza Eckert
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Have you heard of temperature blankets? They’re a super popular project idea, and it’s easy to see why — they’re fun to make, a long-term project, and have the potential to be passed down as an heirloom piece. But what are they?

The basic idea is that you knit or crochet one row per day of a blanket in a color that coordinates with the temperature. If you use about eight to ten different colors, you’ll get a beautiful variation throughout the year. Depending on the climate where you live, each color will probably correspond to between five and twelve degrees. Below is a sample color chart, made for the climate in New York City and using Vanna’s Choice®️ yarn:

tempcharrt

To make the colors really stand out, it’s best to use a fairly simple blanket pattern. Even a basic garter stitch or single crochet back and forth would work well. If you would prefer to use a written pattern, the ones below are simple enough to show off the change in seasons.
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33 Comments

  • How would I change it for the Savannah, GA climate?

    • You would do basically the same thing, but when buying your yarns keep in mind the warmer climate. You might need more of Rust and Raspberry than someone up north, and not so much Lilac or Eggplant. And of course, you can substitute the colors mentioned for whatever you want!

      Use your favorite weather website or app to track the temperature each day to know what color to use.

    • I’m in the Pacific Northwest. I lowered the highest temperature (mine is “Over 85) and increased the lowest one (mine is “Below 25). Most of our temps are between 40 and 65 and I didn’t want mostly one range of colors. I have 10 different colors and the lowest and highest three are 10 degree ranges. The middle 4 colors are only 5 degree ranges so there will be more variety. I picked all solid colors, except the store I was at did not have Purple or Eggplant in stock so I used the variegated Purple Mist (which is beautiful, so it’s a happy accident).

      • That sounds wonderful! We are neighbors.

  • I love this idea! How do I know how much yarn to purchase? I’m worried that I might not get enough in one color/dye lot and too much in another color. With return policies being more and more restrictive on time constraints or restocking fees I would rather not make a costly error or discover a dye lot is no longer available.

    Anyone else have this concern and how did you address it?

    Thanks to all and Happy New Year

    • This was my question too and had a lady say that if you buy no dye lot yarn no problem and if it is dye lots that hopefully there will be a big enough space between lots you won’t notice. Also I had a woman tell me to buy more of the colors you think you will use other wise start at one a piece unless you live in Alaska or Arizona where your temps don’t change much

    • The dye lot should not be that important because the stripes are not going to be next to each other.

    • It actually takes quite a long time to use up a skein in this project, unless you have a very long stretch of time that’s the same. One or two of each is a good place to start, and if you have to restock some colors later, it’s like Fernanda said — the rows are far enough apart that small variations from dye lot won’t be noticeable.

  • Weather Underground is a wonderful website to use if you need to catch up on the days in the new year. They archive the highs and lows everyday in a user friendly calender. Happy crafting, friends!

  • I live in San Francisco and there isn’t that much of a temperature variation here. I’m looking at those colors and I think my blanket would basically come out to be all green shades.

    • You could always do smaller categories so you have more variety! These are 10-20 degrees each because I needed to cover a more varied climate, but you could make your categories 5-10 degrees instead.

    • I’m in SoCal desert and was thinking same thing. How about using different colors for each season. Whites and grays for winter, greens and pastels for spring, yellows and blues for summer, oranges and browns for autumn.

  • How many stitches would I cast on? I love this idea, but I’m a real pattern follower.

    • You could pick a throw pattern you like, but the main thing is what yarn are you going to use and what size needles? Knit a swatch and see what gauge you get, then multiply the stitches per inch by the number of inches wide you want your throw to be.

  • Do you use the days high temp, low temp?

    • I think you could use either, but I would pick one and stick to it rather than do high temp one day and low temp another day. I think most people are using high temp though.

  • I plan on trying this with a corner-to-corner blanket (crochet). Since it makes a square, I feel that this would ensure that I don’t have to worry about how many to chain to start off the blanket, and end up with something that’s not very wide, but VERY long.

    If you keep increasing through day 183, and then start decreasing for another 182 days, you’ll have 182 rows on either side of the “longest” row, creating a nice even blanket. I tried to find a Lion Brand corner-to-corner pattern to paste a link to here, but didn’t find a basic one. If you do a google search or are on Ravelry, you could probably find one pretty quickly, if you’ve never tried the c2c technique before. Happy crafting!

  • How do I do one for sanjose Calif … I like to learn to make … where I get a pattern .

  • Do you start with January 1st as your first day?

  • If you travel, do you do the temperature where you live or where you are? I am going on several business trips, and I’m curious how you handle that.

  • Temperature Afghan Tutorials and an app that helps with temperatures for your area.

  • http://thecrochetcrowd.com/crochet-temperature-afghans/

  • Doesn’t 365 rows make a super long blanket??

  • I plan to start mine as soon as the yarns comes. I ordered 2 skeins of each color.

    I could not find Magenta or Radiant Yellow. I substituted Cranberry and Lemon. I hope those are good colors.

    Are Magenta and Radiant Yellow discontinued? I searched all over the internet.

  • Wouldn’t you end up with a blanket that’s 70 inches long? How do you make up for this?

  • Do you use the high, low, or an average of the two temperatures for each day? Just wanting some input

  • I’m currently making my third temperature blanket I start with the birth date of each grandchild and give the blankets as a first birthday present. The first two blankets were done with a chart much like the one shown. This time I made my own temperature chart using shades of pink and lavender and
    purple. I use the Weather Underground site to track the temps as my grand children do not live in the same town as I do. I use the high temperature for the day.

  • I am thinking about using last year’s weather data to make a retrospective one for my nephew who just turned one.
    I just have to learn how to end each row without making a yarn mess.
    Shirley

  • I started my blanket Jan 1, 2017 while I was on vacation. I am retired and have had many opportunities to to travel last year. I would track the temps by the highs of where I was. I made mine to fit a queen sized bed. It was a tad short but we love it. I changed the colors so that the lows (in my case the high temp was never lower than 45 degrees) were greens and blues, the mid temps (60-80) were shades of blues and purples and the highs (we actually had 3 days of 113! in Southern California) were purples, grays. I used 13 colors with some variegated ones. I just love it but it was quite large at the end! Made my son a scarf for the year he was born–so much easier!!!!!! The weather underground is the best!

  • I am wondering about knitting needles. What did you use. I am thinking of doing 200 on a 10? Does that sound right and should I get circular needles?

  • When you are knitting a baby blanket how many stitches did you cast on?

  • this is my first time doing one, from sandstone Minnesota in hook size H and I want to do a twin blanket, I think if i did it right I have 10 colors for temps and I wanted to af birthday color holiday color and new color for month change, how many should I buy of each color?

  • It’s really hot is the AZ desert. Temps of 110, 115 even 120 aren’t unusual in the summer. Can you add more depth to the high end? I would but I’m not good at color matching.

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