Two Things Made My 2019 Better

I did two new things this year that I've never done in my whole life.

1. I started a temperature blanket and in 3 days it will be all done.

        I worked on it almost every single night of 2019.  What's a temperature blanket you ask?  Exactly my question last January.  A temperature blanket is a crocheted blanket where you do one row every day of the year based on the high or low temperature of the day.  You assign a different color yarn to a temperature range.  You find out the temperature for that day and that's the color yarn you use.  Here's how I kept track:




















I made a huge mistake though, when I started.  I used the wrong size crochet needle!  So I ended up with and extremely long blanket in June.  I knew I couldn't go on but I didn't want to stop.  So I started a whole new blanket for the second half of the year.  Here is a picture of my blanket Jan. -June and July - December.

I may sew them together.  I would love to try it again with the right needle or I'm thinking of quilting a temperature blanket next time.  Whichever I do, I really enjoyed making my first and I know I will love doing my next.

2.   I started a bullet journal (Bujo), to keep track of all the stuff in my life.

My daughter had been trying to talk me into one for a few years but I kept resisting because I thought it would be too much work and I'm not very artistic.  Well I'm happy to report that I have kept a bullet journal for almost a year.  I looked forward to writing in it every night recording all the things I had accomplished.  It motivated me to keep on track, take that extra few steps, read instead of falling right to sleep.  What I have now is a well documented look back on 2019.   I love it!  It's like a diary but much more.  Some of the things I recorded were:

•               Steps
•               Dinners
•               Whenever I finished a sewing project
•               Whenever I had an Etsy sale
•               Whenever I had a custom order
•               My doctor appts and the outcomes
•               Birthdays
•               Temperatures
•               Exercise

Here are some of my pages that might inspire you and some of my "art".  I will definitely be starting my new 2020 bullet journal.

Temperature Blanket

My word for 2019 is Productivity.  I want to get stuff done, make things, create, purge  and organize.  My daughters told me about a temperature blanket that they were going to crochet this year. Have you heard about these? It took me a while to understand what I was supposed to do.  I have been wanting to get back into crocheting as it's been years since I had made anything.  I bought my yarn - 9 skeins so far and I wrote out a chart of my temp ranges.  Here in southern CA the temperatures do not vary that much so decided to change colors every 5 degrees.  For a Temp Blanket you only crochet one row a day but you do it every day for a year.  In the end you have a multicolored, soft, warm look back at the weather for the whole year.  I'm doing this project with my 3 daughters and my best friend and once a week we share our blankets and it's been fun to see the progress and all the different colors.




















I keep track of everything in my bullet journal that I just started this year.

Here's a shot of 4 of our blankets when we were just starting out:

Here is mine from Jan 24th:

And from yesterday

And the obligatory cat shot: