My friend Jenny visited me last weekend. We have known each other for years (since college). Actually, we met through the Knitting Illini, our university’s student-run knitting club. (I’m still trying to find a knitting club as fun and welcoming as that one, but that’s a whole other story.)
Anyway, Jenny pulled out her needles and several shades of blue and gray yarn. She whipped up a couple little garter stitch squares and put her knitting back in her bag. I was curious what she was making, and she said she was “Knitting the Sky.” I had never heard this concept before, and had her explain.
Apparently, Knitting the Sky is the idea that you put aside a few minutes each day to look at the sky and then pick a yarn color closest to the color of the sky to make an afghan square, or a few rows of garter stitch to add to a scarf.
As far as I can tell (and correct me if I’m wrong), the first person to do this was Leafcutter Designs. They sell a kit (yarn plus directions) to make a Sky Scarf. It’s a simple garter-stitch scarf, but the subtly shifting grays and blues make the scarf look almost like it’s made with hand-painted yarn.
Gorgeous, right?
But Jenny is an overachiever (in the best possible way), so instead of just making a sky scarf, she’s making a sky afghan, like this one.
How beautiful is that! Who could have imagined that wrapping up in cloudy and rainy days could be so cozy?
And, imagine extending the idea of using a color to represent a day in other projects. How about a striped cardigan that shows your mood each day for an entire year? Or what about a pair of mittens that represent what you ate for breakfast for a month? OK, I’m getting silly now. But, the point still stands.
This is a fantastic idea, and a great way to get some knitting in while getting more in touch with the world around you. Too bad that if I was to make a sky scarf it would end up being a uniform Seattle-gray.
On the Needles 
I love this idea!
Lately I have seen several “sky” style projects on the blogs – all are so pretty, because some folks are assigning colors to temperatures or weather conditions, etc. A great idea if you don’t love blues and grays! But I fear I would grow bored with a project I could only work on once a day – I would lose interest before it was complete. 😦 Still those afghans and scarves look intriguing….
I love the idea of using a range of colors for weather conditions and temperature. I imagine a temperature scarf would be very pretty-sort of a shifting rainbow, over the year.
You’re right that a year-long project could get tedious. But, if you treated it just as a little mini project every day, while you worked on your “real” knitting for the rest of your knitting time, I bet you could get through it.
Sometimes I definitely don’t feel like knitting my little square of the day! But it takes hardly any time and I have all my yarn for it in a box by the couch that it’s never hard to pick up right after dinner and take care of. It’s kind of fun too, I enlist my husband to watch the sky too so we always compare notes on what we think the square should be that day.
can’t wait to see that afghan done!