…and now, the weather…

Is there any chat more flurried than that of two crafters in that week between Christmas and New Years, when we have zero real life commitments to impinge on our craft time – beyond keeping the family fed and the house slightly above biohazardous choas – thus distorting our idea of exactly how much free time we usually have for crafting, and a new year incoming to encourage new goals and projects and a fresh burst of energy. I have lost count how many grand ideas we have come up with in that in-between week, that we’ve started with all gusto on January first… and abandoned by around the fourth.

I had finished my previous morning stitches project, and hadn’t yet gotten started on another. Then, I got a message on January 2 as I was starting to kick around my new year’s morning stitches, and morning basket routine, and the inspo kicked into overdrive:

(Apparently we have A Reputation!). What if, thought I, instead of a blanket, I did stitching? Because I am self-aware enough, for once, to know that a daily row of crochet on a blanket is not a thing that I would keep up with. I am not know for being the fastest crocheter in history, as evidenced by hitting the 3 year mark on my wave blanket around the same time I hit the half way mark.

So. With the seed planted, I ran the idea past the board. Is this a crazy idea? Says I. Is it a genius idea? Am I gonna do it either way? The answer came back as a resounding YES to all, and so off to the floss box I went. I decided I wanted a rainbow, and what better inspiration than our beautiful Grimms rainbow in our school room.

The first weekend of January saw us heading to the coast, to drop off my mother-in-law who had very kindly come over to visit and babysit our children while we attended a family event with my parents (who would normally be our go-to local babysitters), and after dropping her home and having a night with her, we hit the beach and then the shops while we had the chance in big regional centre. Locally, the drought has hit the economy hard and lots of shops have been closing, including our main shoe shop for kids shoes. With cattle camp coming up, boots were a non-negotiable, so off to the shops we went…and if the GPS just happened to direct us to Spotlight on our way out of the shopping centre, well, it’s not really my fault, is it?

Unfortunately, despite the size of the city, the spotlight there is quite small, and was actually quite understocked on the day we were there. I managed to get one single skein out of the 12 I needed, and the selection of linen was…less than spectacular. So home we came, and the next day, I took myself off for a walk, complete with pieces of the children’s puzzle in hand (as one does), and headed down the hill to the local fabric shop. For a change, I was able to get more than at spotlight, and walked out with three skeins of floss, a metre of linen and a whole lot of crafty mojo getting me fired up and ready to get stuck in.

I fiddled with a scale for a bit, and ended up settling on a mix of four degree and five degree steps to fit in the range and frequency of our local climate. My chosen scale is:

Red 40

Red Orange 35

Orange 30

Yellow 25

Bright green 20

Green 16

Sage 12

Light blue 8

Dark blue 4

Cool purple 0

Warm purple -4

Burgundy -8

Each colour covers up to the temperature noted next to it. We have only have a handful of nights below -8 (Burgundy), and it’s not uncommon to have a couple of days above 40, so in that case I will simply cycle back through the rainbow and use the burgundy for those high temps as well, so it will act more an extreme temp colour rather than a specific range.

Each day, for now, has 8 French knots for the maximum, and 4 for the minimum. As we move towards the autumn equinox and then onwards to the winter solstice, I will adjust this to show the shortening of days, with February continuing at 8/4, March and April being 7/5, May-August at 6/6, then increasing again to 7/5 in September and October, and rounding out the year with 8/4 again for November and December. Quite possibly I have overthought this entire project a wee bit too much (hashtag shocking new behaviour).

It’s such a lovely, easy way to start my morning. I will confess I am currently three days behind, due to some life circumstances wiping out most of last week’s regular routines, but have been making note of the min/max each day in my diary so I can easily catch up. Yesterday it was three days worth of maximums. This morning it was the corresponding minimums. By the weekend I should be back up to date again.

I am loving seeing the patterns of the past month or so starting to emerge. The random cool day, just before being smashed with heatwave number one. A short break with cooler days but hotter nights and then along comes the heat again. I can’t wait to see what a whole year looks like!

After a crazy week last week, we are back into what passes for routine at the minute. Packing. Moving boxes to storage. School. Lather, rinse, repeat. My morning stitches and bible journaling are constituting the vast majority of my crafting at the minute. But the end is in sight, with a cleaning company here today doing an “end of lease” style clean today, washing walls and ovens and all those big crappy jobs that I just don’t have time to get to before we go on the market, so come the weekend, I should be free to crank the craftapalooza to 100% and go nuts in my craft room. But in, like, a totally non-messy way lest I destroy all my hard work in getting it clean. Totally doable, right?

FLOSS FOR MATCHING GRIMMS BRIGHT RAINBOW:

Love your Grimms as well and want to incorporate some matching handwork for your play space? Working from the outside in, the floss colours I found to best match are:

Red DMC321

Orange-red DMC 3801

Orange DMC722

Yellow DMC725

Lime green DMC703

Bright green DMC912

Sage green DMC3816

Pale blue DMC996

Royal blue DMC797

Indigo DMC158

Purple DMC3834

Burgundy DMC3685