Temperature Afghan Crochet Project

Is there a time that means something special to you? Would you like a memento to remember that time? When I moved in with my Mr. Rob things changed a lot for me and for him. It’s been difficult. It’s been exciting. It’s been happy. It’s been sad. But overall it’s been good. It’s been a time worth remembering.

Some time ago I had seen a scarf that kept track of the daily temperature to make it’s pattern and I thought that was awfully nifty. Unfortunately, I don’t know that I would actually need a scarf very often living down here as it doesn’t get very cold. Even with it being warmer here we still use blankets and throws, though. So I decided to document our first year with a temperature afghan for Rob and me to cozy up in and today I’m going to tell you how to get the weather history so that you can make your very own to document your special time.

Maybe it’s nine months of pregnancy, your first few months of marriage or just a time when you felt supremely happy… no matter when it was you can go back to those dates and document that time in this simple, colorful way that can warm your heart no matter the temperature.

For this project you will need:

• Yarn in 6-8 colors
• Temperature history (see tutorial below)
• Yarn needle for weaving in ends

To get your weather history visit this link for –> Weather Underground. Put in the location of your happy time and hit submit.

Click the tab for “Custom” (circled in the pic above) and change the dates to your happy time. Click “Get History”.

Scroll down and you’ll see the weather history for that time to start whipping up your temperature afghan. Now this page does not print up terribly well, or at least I couldn’t get it to for me. I instead grabbed my nightstand notebook and took down the high temperature for every day for the first 4 months Rob and I lived here.

As it turns out, a full year in V Double Crochet stitches is GIGANTIC to be wide enough to accommodate 365 rows and I only got about 30 rows in before I decided to start over on a much smaller scale.  I wound up trimming the time-frame down to our first quarter together and it’s a comfortable sized throw :)

You’ll need to work up a color palette and temperature range for each. Now it doesn’t get very cold here, like, at all. My first attempt I figured I’d do 90+ for my warmest color, 80-89 for the next down and so on and so on until I got to my coolest color. But that sucker was almost nothing but orange, orange, orange and I was getting so bored with the lack of change. I wound up counting out the number of rows I’d use if I switched to 95+ and then 90-94 and so on and so on until I got something that looked more representative of the color changes I wanted. Because it was hardly ever cold I still wanted to keep that in the color scheme, though, so I only have a few rows of my coldest color, and it’s mostly a warm colored afghan.

For my colors I used mostly Impeccable yarn from Michael’s but I preferred one color in Vanna’s Choice from Michael’s. I went with a palette of 6 colors from warmer to cooler. Those colors are Rouge, Gold, Kelly Green (Vanna’s Choice), Teal and Amethyst.

Once you get your temperatures and your color scheme all that’s left to do is hook that sucker up! I went with a V Double Crochet stitch because it’s really easy to do while you’re watching TV. When I got sick for about a week and spent a lot of time in bed I queued up a True Blood Marathon and got through 2 seasons and knocked this sucker right on out!

You might find that you need to add more or use less days to get the appropriate size for your afghan. A good way to work it out is to do a swatch of your preferred stitch in the yarn you’ll be using. Crochet up a couple of rows and determine how wide you need to make your initial chain to accommodate as many rows as you’d like.

Once your ends are woven in you’ve got a beautiful reminder of a fabulous time that you can wrap up in. Even though my A/C is busted and I feel like I’m about to sweat my girls off (it’s freaking feels like a hundred with our heat index <– not making this business up, because South Texas doesn’t understand how to do Autumn :) I must admit that I am really happy with this little temperature afghan. I think it’s beautiful and represents a good time in my life that I’m happy to have documented in my crafty way.  Now if you’ll excuse me I just might go lay on the tile floor and cool off with my pups!