The Sky Blanket - January

 

I had big plans for 2021!  This month I turned 40 and I had planned to use the whole year to celebrate by doing some new activity each month.

Of course with the country going into lockdown I failed at the first hurdle, with a tropical holiday cancelled and other activities not possible, even a walk on the beach.

But I had been aware that this might be the case and had a Plan B. 

 

I've decided to make a sky blanket.  This means knitting a square of 'sky' every day for the year and sewing them all together to make a blanket.  Each square is knitted in the colour of the sky for that day (recorded at lunch time) giving you a representation of the weather for the year in a blanket.

I first saw the idea on the Bugs and Fishes blog and kept it as an idea for a time like this.

Laura isn't really a knitter (check out her felt makes - they are amazing) so she kept it simple knitting all her squares in garter stitch.  She used 2 strands of DK yarn which gives greater flexability over the colours and a nice chunky square.

 

But while I liked her chunky squares I'm not a massive fan of garter stitch and so made a few modifications for my own blanket.

A star button to mark the first square

 

Firstly I've been learning to meditate over the last year.  One of the examples they use is that the sky is always there and your thoughts are like the clouds that come and go throughout the day.  I find this a really useful thing to remember when I'm struggling and so in my blanket I wanted the sky squares - the days were there isn't a cloud in the sky, to be more solid than the garter stitch which I do think lends itself to clouds very well, so I decided to knit them in stocking stitch.

The second square was inspired by this

 

Secondly I was struggling a little about what to do on those days were you've got a lovely blue sky but a little cloud (see above image).  Could I combine the stocking stitch and the garter stitch?  Talking to my friend Katie, she suggested I try chatelaine stitch which gives little lumpy clouds.  With a little modification with the colours I got a square that had both stocking stich and garter stitch.

A couple of days looking for bits of blue big enough to make a sailor trousers

 But then I wasn't sure if it was quite right, but again talking to Katie she reminded me that its only a representation and as we talked more we agreed that is also kinda based on how it made me feel.  So a couple of days have been knitted in dark grey as they were dismal and wet, although they might not have been any greyer than other days.  And a couple (so far) were knitted solid blue even though it had been cloudy in the morning, as I took Milo for a walk in the blue bit.

A day of snow and a day of sunshine

It's an interesting project and I'm curious to see how it progresses throughout the year and what modifications I might need to make as we move from cold wet January to something a little warmer (hopefully!).