Last month, I started scheming up a Sky Scarf-style baby blanket that I’d like to knit during the Hatchling’s first year of life. Shortly thereafter I found the perfect yarn for my idea and have been sitting on it ever since. Well, over the weekend I pulled the preggo card and my dear Fiasco kindly wound up all six skeins for me while we watched an excellent documentary about African wildlife on Netflix.
Best husband ever.
That man is a trooper… Due to his tireless efforts, I was finally able to swatch and do some math! I cast on 26 sts with 2 skeins held double and knit a bit of garter stitch and stockinette on size US 6 and US 7 needles, then washed and blocked.
Swatch and scribbles.
It quickly became apparent that if I wanted to knit one square representing the sky for each of the approx. 360 days of Hatchling’s first year (I gave myself 5-day wiggle room to fail at knitting), the blanket would be either GIGANTIC or comprised of itty bitty 1-inch squares, which would be a horrible pain to seam together and probably look awful. After some finagling, I think I’ve decided on seaming together 12 squares, one for each month, with each square comprised of 2-row stockinette stripes that represent the sky each day. The details of the math can be found on my Ravelry project page but if I cast on 44 sts and knit 2 rows per day, my squares should be come out at 9.5″ x 9″, resulting in a blanket about 30″ x 36″ in size.
O-Wool Fingering Merino
Now I need to figure out which color combinations represent which types of sky, and remember them for a year. I also might add a border to each square, I might border the whole thing, I’m not sure yet. I’m a little disappointed that this plan won’t result in a clearly patchwork-looking blanket, what with all the striping within each square, but if the weather each month is variable enough the squares should look fairly different from each other.
What do you think? Would you do something differently?
Woolen Diversions 
I think it is a great undertaking! If you use a border, then you COULD turn some of the squares 90 degrees, giving it more of a patchwork look. That would require thought in bordering to make them more square, though. 🙂
He does seem to be an excellent husband, by the way. 🙂
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That’s a genius idea! I’ll definitely have to see how that looks when I’m at the assembly stage, thanks!
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Edging is the worst. I second and third that. But, I’d still add an I-Cord edge. It’ll class it up and you can hide any rogue ends inside of it. Good luck and congrats on the little one!
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It does make sense, because that is ALOT of squares if you do it different. I’d probably still miter it, but I understand why you have chosen not to. I think the stripes will be fun. You can always rotate the squares so the stripes go in different directions. Talk about crazy!
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The first thing I thought was, “What a clever idea” I think that two stockinette rows will be much more manageable in the long run anyways. If were you, I would either make the edged of each square seed stitch or something in order to avoid making a boarder, or I would second Jacquline’s suggestion of putting an cord on to hide ends.
Maybe it’s a good idea to make a legend so you remember the color combinations.
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I agree with you in that the blanket will not make it very patchworkish. Have you thought of doing it memory blanket style? http://www.ravelry.com/patterns/library/sock-yarn-blanket
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