temperature blanket – The Hermits' Rest

Working through Horse Challenges (and others) Pays Off

It’s been a challenging few days. Have you ever been through a period where even the simplest things turn complicated? It’s felt like that lately. I mean, I just wanted to wash my car yesterday and every one I went to was closed. No wonder I don’t like going to Austin anymore. And the dentist said I need two crowns. All that flossing didn’t prevent that.

But I got to see my former coworker for lunch, and that was positive.

Austin never fails to charm, though. The maintenance people at the hotel where I stayed mowed around the wildflowers.

Plus, I got through row 4 of my temperature blanket yesterday. The black and green square is where February starts. That was the ice storm, too.

The horses have been challenging, other than being so good getting their feet done. I was really looking forward to getting a lesson today, at long last. They were, at least, good getting ready to go, but that challenging life thing struck again and we couldn’t get into the road to Tarrin’s because a huge, stopped train blocked us. Sigh. But we went the other way!

We were between a rock and a hard place. (Actually this is another thing I miss about Austin, the limestone karst)

For Apache’s lesson, Tarrin tried to get him frustrated, so we did new stuff. To our surprise, he was all calm and learned to trot over small jumps. On the last one I did everything right and he JUMPED! And it was FUN! Hooray! Our hard work paid off!

We then proceeded to see if he’d leg yield at a trot. Did he get annoyed? No. He DID IT. It wasn’t perfect, but he did it! I wish I could say he never showed his Old Patchy behavior, because he did fall apart as we went to the trailer. I handled it, though, keeping as calm as I could. I’ve learned a lot!

You didn’t bother to take my picture. Hmph.

Drew, on the other hand, didn’t need a lot of prompting to misbehave. Or be a teen. He and I did ok doing some serpentine moves, but he decided I was easy to manipulate and melted down. I “got to” work through it and did a lot of leg yielding with him. No fun but we got through it with a lot of help from Tarrin and ended up able to weave through poles and go over obstacles. I was proud that I stayed calm.

When I was done, Tarrin ride him and he continued to indicate his displeasure. I learn a lot when I watch her handle rowdy horses. And Droodles did look pretty acting pissy.

Drew kept neighing his head off, which is quite unlike him. Tarrin said she’d never seen him act that way, either. Her theory is that it’s the extra sweet spring grass. It’s not making either horse lame, but they’re not quite themselves. Other horses are acting similarly right now, which made me feel better. It’s not ALL a lack of skill on my part!

Diagnosis: magnesium. I got some to feed tonight, and I’ll order more tomorrow. Let’s hope that helps. I don’t want summer too soon!

Book Report: Two Crafty Pleasures AND Temperature Blanket Update

I ordered more yarn for the popular colors in my temperature blanket, and while on the Knitpick website I saw two books that looked interesting. First, let’s see how the blanket is coming along.

You can definitely see that the third part of January cooled off. The dark blue where it’s 30-35 degrees showed up and there’s even an all-blue day at the end (by the way, the dark blue is way prettier in person than in the photos where dark blue and green look black).

First two rows of the blanket. Finished March 4.

The first twenty days were pretty warm, into the 70s (bright yellow and the lightest yellow). It’s going to look interesting as time goes on. Next row will go into February. I decided to make the square between months solid black at first. But now I think I’ll make it’s center the most popular temperature range of the previous month. That’s Alfalfa, the light green that represents 55-60°.

Books

So the books I got were mostly motif based. The first one is Colour Crochet Unlocked, by Jane Howorth and Dawn Curran (2023). As the title implies, it’s British. Luckily, I can translate their stitch names into American.

The cover shows projects, which are quite nice, but the part I liked best were all the interesting and not-too-hard motifs the authors share.

The back of the book. Look at those ideas!

I kept coming up with things to make with each new pattern. This book is worth owning, plus it was on sale at KnitPicks. The only part I didn’t like was the long discussion of color theory. That’s because I’ve read so many of those in various books. It’s fine for a beginner though, and quite clear.

If you need inspiration for blankets, pillows, and such, this will be a fantastic reference book. They do have garments in the pattern collection, but I like the home decor options.

The second book is from KnitPicks, Block Party: Modular Blankets (2020). You can probably guess why I got this one. I do love modular projects. Yum. The cover drew me right in.

There are only ten projects in this one (all knitted), but it was inexpensive. I think there was only one pattern I wasn’t interested in making, but I think I might even like it done in other colors (it was solid gray). The book is thicker than you’d think, though, because there are many, many photos of each one, including extreme closeups. I enjoyed looking at them, but if you just want patterns, it’s sort of overkill.

I will certainly find my next project in one of these books!

By the way, I’ve had a really good blog week. Yesterday was by far my most popular single day on this blog. Thank you all for the stories you shared about your family’s naming traditions both here and on Facebook. It was nice to write something cheerful that was popular, for once. So, here are flowers to thank you all.

Happy (?) March

It felt like the longest day ever. 11 meetings. Lots of challenges. Sweat (me and Apache). Learning. Helping others. Receiving help. Normal stuff, just lots of it.

So many temperatures. I‘m up to January 16 on the temperature blanket.

Smiling because I managed to ride between meetings. Sweating.

I was cheered up by shiny, chunky shoes. Great gift!

What’s a Temperature Blanket?

I may have mentioned recently that I was waiting on yarn to arrive so that I can make a 2023 temperature blanket. The yarn arrived yesterday, which made being sick at least a little less annoying.

Because I still hate moths, this will be in acrylic, but I chose the sport weight of Brava by Knitpicks rather than the thicker stuff I’d been using. I bought one skein of each color I think I’ll need until winter of this year. That’s because it didn’t get very cold here so far in 2023. Why does that matter?

A temperature blanket is a knitted or crocheted project that records the temperature at a specific place over a specific amount of time. Here’s an article from Modern Daily Knitting (MDK) about some projects they were working on. Click either of the links above or look at these Ravelry projects to see lots of photos and get an idea of what the deal is. I made one of the “official” ones (link is below) back when I lived with Anita at the Bobcat Lair, but I apparently did NOT put it on Ravelry or mention it in a blog. That’s annoying. I have no idea where it got off too, but it covered Austin Texas temperatures for I think 2018.

My blanket will cover College Station, because there’s no great data for Cameron on any weather site I could find. That was disappointing. Lee collects rainfall amounts, but not temperatures, as far as I know, so I can’t get them from him. I selected yarns to represent five degree increments going from 0 to over 100 Fahrenheit, knowing that I probably will not need the lower colors with all this global warming.

I wrote down 5-degree ranges and colors I’d ideally like. Then at right wrote down the yarn colors that vaguely matched my ideals.

I love mitered squares, as you may be aware, so I am making a blanket using that technique, with the high temperature for the day on the outside of each square and the low temperature on the inside. I’ll make ten days per row, and I’ll indicate the end of each month with a black square. The blanket will make a lot of sense if you’re used to reading Arabic or Hebrew, because it goes from right to left. It’s just how I always do my squares, so why stop now?

One square in weird light that makes the colors wrong.

I’m really looking forward to working on this. It’s a fun project, until you see just how hot it gets every year around here. Maybe it will cool down toward the end. I encourage you to learn more about temperature blankets. Another great resource is the one I found first, which is the Tempestry Project. They make wall hangings for different years in the same places and it makes the changes over the years VERY obvious. They have temperature tapestries from all over the world and for the US National Parks. It’s fascinating.