Temperature temptations, tribulations and trebles

I hope everyone had a quiet Christmas and that Santa was good.  Happy New Year to you all.

The ladies of the group all seem to have read the same Facebook and blog posts around the turn of 2017 into 2018 and the theme of a piece of temperature work has come up.  Enthusiastically last week we discussed the prospect of doing these and about six of us have got the ball rolling.   This is going to be a sort of CAL within the group but we will all progress at our own pace and at our own skill level. 

There are many blogs and Facebook posts about temperature work and Pinterest is chock full of photos for example The Crochet Crowd, Lion Brand, Simple Knitting, Sleepy Eyes, and photos on Facebook and Pinterest.  I have no affiliation to any of these sites but a good Google search will elicit myriad results to aid you in your research and give you lots of (too many!) ideas to get you started.

The idea is soooo simple …   Isn’t It?  The idea is that you work a set number of rows  per day of an item in a colour that co-ordinates with the temperature. You can pre-decide a colour range/chart using perhaps eight to ten different colors depending on your climate and as you work your piece, you will get a beautiful variation of colour throughout the year. Depending on the climate where you live, each color will probably correspond to between three and seven degrees.  If like me you live in Northern Ireland then temperatures will mostly vary between -5 to about 35 degrees.  However, you may live in a country where a temperature range of -20 to +40 is normal.  Choose your colours wisely.

And they’re off ...  

 

Or perhaps not …

Will I knit or crochet?

Will it be a scarf, a blanket or a tube scarf, a baby blanket? A cat? 

Straight lines or zigzag? Hexagons or circles?  Corner-to-corner?  Granny square?  Ribbed?

A straightforward temperature chart or a ‘mood’ chart, a weather type chart e.g. stormy, windy, wet, hot and sunny?

At what time each day should I take the temperature?  Max temperature, or at a set time?  What if I go on holiday, should still I record and use the temperature at home or the temperature wherever I am?  Do I use the highest temperature each day AND the lowest temperature?

How many colours each day?  Just one or two for the highest and lowest temperatures?  A granny square with three rows using white always as the middle row and the other colour as per the daily temperature?

Shades of the same colour such as a blue theme or a rainbow of colours?

DK, chunky or aran?  Use up my stash or buy new yarn?

Get myself organised?

Which stitch?  Doubles, trebles … Use the same stitch Monday to Friday and change for each weekend?  Use a different stitch each month?

Getting started was not as easy as first thought for many of us.  Two of us have frogged out the first 10 days and started over again.  One has taken a dramatic turn and halved the number of daily rows as her scarf was going to end up measuring over 3 metres/10 feet and another has planned a new colour scheme.  One other person has a spreadsheet to assist her with colours and moods together. 

One of our number, who lives at a great distance from the group but calls in with us when she can, will be working along with us and sharing lots of pics on Facebook.  Hopefully she'll get to visit us often throughout the year.

It’s so nice to see that we are all working differently, interpreting the challenge on a very personal skill level and colour preference.  Most of us are keeping diaries and I hope to update this blog monthly with pics of our work.  It's going to be very exciting watching all the pieces develop.

I thought I had made my mind up but time to cut the ties, I think, and start again …

(All pics courtesy of Pinterest and Google except for those depicting the work of ladies in the group.

The year of the blanket

It all seems so long ago now when we talk about 2016 and yet we aren't quite at the end of January 2017.  How time flies!

Looking back over some photos, for our group 2016 appeared to be a 'year of the blanket'.  Many, many blankets were produced for babies, charity and for oursleves.

This got me thinking and the Chinese celebrate 'years' on a slightly different calendar to us and, on checking, 2016 was The Year of the Monkey and 2017 will be The Year of the Rooster.  So for a bit of a laugh and on the theme of 'the year of' I decided to look a bit further.

Those born under The Year of the Monkey are ambitious and adventurous, helpful and confident, love to talk and are sociable.  Monkeys are also thought of as being crafty and so are we although we hope it stems from a different definition of the word crafty!

People born under The Year of the Rooster are energetic, generous and hardworking, compassionate and talented, talkative and are happiest when they are surrounded by others.  They also make very loyal and devoted friends.

I think that these qualities just about sum up the Wednesday evening Hookery ladies, don't you?   The Hookery group is very talented as is evident by the vast array of crocheted and knitted goods they produce.  They are also very community aware and honour efforts and sacrifices made by others as was shown by their Poppy Project.  Many of us in and through the group have made, and also revived old, friendships.

It is the group's work with Pauline and John Tuff who are based in Tanzania which reveals their caring and passionate nature.  Each year for the past 4 years the ladies have sent out initially hand made blankets and and then wool and needles first to a leprosy village, Samaria, where the women were taught to knit with the wool and accessories.  Lately the blankets have gone to a children's home in Kazima, north of Taboro in Tanzania also run by Pauline and John.

I hope you enjoy looking at the colourful blankets below.  Apologies for the poor quality of some of the photos but a mobile phone was used to take the pictures in some cases.

For babies

  

For charity

For ourselves

A beautiful mermaid's tail

 

 

Camellias

I've written about camellia here. Camellia real and woollen...

Merry, bright magic and love

 It was another normal night at Hookery tonight. An enormous pot of tea and Catherine rattling off another pair of socks. Effortlessly.

 Heather Boss was helping the fabulous Grace with some initial crochet. Maybe she won't make initials with it.

 A close-up of fabulous Grace's fabulous jumper. I still think she should have just said yes when we asked if she had made it herself!

 Anne's stripey scarf. Stripey pattern inside stripey wool inside stripey bands. Very cheerful, very merry and bright.

 Also merry and bright are Niqi's October socks. Merry, bright and wholly uncharacteristically unfinished. My amazement at this proof that Niqi is actually human and not a crochet robot is only surpassed by my wonder at this project that Niqi has sustained effortlessly all year. The year of the socks: a pair a month, so far... There will surely be a grand documentary on The Year of the Socks coming to a blog near you soon.

Shirley's scarf summed Hookery up for me tonight. We have all been watching her work on it for weeks, but now she needed help with casting off the very tricky yarn. It was passed around the group- Auntie Margaret to Cooking Catherine and finally to Lady Gillian. (Let it be noted that Lady Gillian has two broken thumbs. Or at least she might still have two broken thumbs but she had prayers for healing last weekend, so we're not sure yet.) Wrist supports cast aside and needles clicked and scarf was done.

All together on the sofas, drinking tea and coffee, sharing whatever has come the table's way whether that be food or updates on children or a delightful festive cook book. Casting aside to cast off, or cast on, or sort out my inevitably wonky (crochet) sides. I do love Hookery.

And here is last week's sneak peek in its magical whole:

Willow, fabric, wool, lights. But when you mix it with magic and love? Merry and bright x

It's beginning to feel...

 A little peek at what has been keeping us busy lately.

 We can't blame our blog inactivity on this project alone,

 but we have been somewhat distracted by this and other Advent preparations.

 All will be revealed! In the meantime, any resemblance to Dorothy's Emerald City should be ignored.