My Sky Blanket in January #skyblanket2016

My Sky Blanket is now complete! Here is a link to the completed Sky Blanket. 

Here is how my blanket progressed throughout the year - January, February, March, April, May, June, July, August, September, October, November and December.

If you have found this page because you would like to make your own Sky Blanket, you might like these posts:

Tips for completing a Sky Blanket

My Sky Blanket - What I would do differently next time

January is over already, and the first month of my Sky Blanket is complete! I've been finding it pretty easy to keep on top of and have almost always completed my row on the same day. I'm also managing to keep up with sewing in the ends! I think it's looking pretty good, with a lovely mix of colours.

I began with a foundation chain of 200 stitches, although I suspect that I've added a few more, particularly in the first row. It's a nice length as it doesn't take me too long to do each day, although I am starting to fret that it's not going to be wide enough. It's 146 cm wide - about the right width for a single bed. The final blanket is going to be quite long though - it's 24 cm so far so I make that an estimate of 2m 88cm - so it will be a nice long thin blanket, plenty long enough to go along the whole length of our sofa for us all to sit under at once! I could always add a border when it's finished, although at that length it would be quite a mission!

I've found that the project isn't just about completing my row of crochet for the day, I'm also spending time looking at the sky throughout the day while I decide what colour to choose. It's definitely the most attention I've ever paid to it, and I'm really enjoying it!

I'd planned to just stick with simple sky colours for the blanket - basically blues and greys. But quite early on in January there were gorgeous rainbows in the sky twice during one day and it seemed a shame not to incorporate them somehow.

So I found some bright rainbow ribbon, and sewed a short length around the edge of the blanket. I also added a mottled dark grey button to each end to represent the corresponding rain clouds.

Similarly, on the 13th January the sky first thing in the morning was a beautiful pink colour.

So I sewed a tiny pink button on to the blanket to match it. I also added a sparkly clear button for the only really frosty day that we had in January, and for Harry's birthday he chose a green flower button from my stash. I've now gathered up a few beads and buttons to save for special occasions throughout the year, for example I've found a little anchor bead which I'm saving to mark the date that we are going on a cruise later in the year. For these rows I've also started doing a row of trebles instead of the half trebles that I'm usually using.

The edges of my blanket are starting to look a little wonky, I'm not sure if I've been losing or adding stitches or if it's just my uneven crochet. I'm hoping that they will be less noticeable when it's blocked or if I add a small border.

I really like the way that using the occasional row of trebles has broken it up a bit, and also that because the colors are so varied it makes the blanket look more interesting, especially when there is a dark row next to a lighter one. So my one white row (for fog not snow!) looks really pretty and loopy next to the dark grey of the next day.

I've settled down into decisions of when to use the different colours - I use light grey for cloudy days and dark grey for those days when it just seems to rain all day. Light blue is for when the sky is blue but with some pale cloud cover, medium blue is for a completely brilliant, blue sky. The first three rows were all the same light grey and funnily enough so were the last three! Apart from that I've only had two colours next to each other a couple of times, usually I'm ending up with a different colour than the day before.

I must admit that I was a little disappointed not to get any snow in January, and I'd saved a couple of sparkly buttons and some silver ribbon for frost, but there's really only been than one frosty morning. Perhaps I'll be able to use them at the end of the year!

There was a group of us taking part in the Sky Blanket project throughout 2016, and you can find us across social media, in particular Instagram, using the hashtag #skyblanket2016. The project was started by Bug, Bird & Bee, The Boy and Me and You Little Sew and Sew.

If you aren't sure if a Sky Blanket is the project for you, you might like this blog post with some more ideas for a year long craft project.

With thanks to Make it Coats for providing me with the yarn for this project.