This month I really need to decide on what sort of pattern I'm going to use for my 2026 calendar project, which is going to be a crocheted king size blanket in multiple colors. My main requirements for the year is an easy repeating pattern that doesn't work up too heavy, and that I can finish in 12 months. Since one row per day isn't a problem I'll have to swatch out whatever pattern I pick and let that tell me how many rows I need to crochet in a week to get the blanket done in a year.
I've been looking at free printable patterns over at Yarnspirations and I really like this ripple pattern. I've never made a ripple stitched project before the granny ripple last month, and it would look nice in multicolored yarn. The problem is maintaining tension, especially on the down jags, but I think wearing one of my yarn tension rings will help with that.
Another contender is this Easy Peasy pattern, which is basically straight repeating rows of granny square stitch. That also looks good in multicolored yarn and it's certainly easy enough. While it's a baby blanket I can easily make the size larger to fit our bed.
It might be a bit boring to make, though, and I want to learn something new.
The one I most like the look of is this Twilight Shells pattern. It's pretty, it's a pattern I've never tried and it's kind of a ripple stitch, just with shells.
The only issue I see with this is that it might work up a bit thick for our needs.
In order to make a good decision I need to make swatches of all three patterns, see how I have to adjust them to make a king size version, calculate how many rows I'll need to make per week to complete the project in a year, and otherwise find out exactly what I'm getting myself into before I commit. Stay tuned to the blog to see the results of my swatching.
Image Credit: all of the images in this post came from the free patterns available at Yarnspirations.
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