A plaid afghan with an unusual feature: alongside the standard instructions, the pattern includes a tutorial explaining how to customise the plaid so it records a particular date – a birth, a wedding, an anniversary.
How the date customisation works
The stripe sequence in a plaid is arbitrary. It has to repeat, but the widths within a repeat can be anything. That means the numbers of a date can be encoded as stripe widths: a three-stitch stripe, then a nine, then a two, and so on.
The result still looks like a plaid to anyone who sees it. Only the person who knows reads the date. That is a genuinely lovely idea for a gift blanket, and it costs nothing extra to do – you were going to choose stripe widths anyway.
Work it out on squared paper first. Some date sequences produce a well-balanced plaid and some produce an awkward one; you can usually improve it by choosing which order the numbers appear in, or by adding a neutral stripe between them.
Understanding plaid structure
A plaid is the same stripe sequence run in both directions, crossing itself. Where two colours cross you get a third tone, which is why plaid looks more complex than the number of yarns suggests.
Keep one colour dominant, one secondary, and the rest as narrow accents. Equal-width stripes in equal numbers give you a check rather than a plaid, and the effect is much weaker.
Colour contrast
The crossings only read if the colours differ in value, not just in hue. Photograph your yarn choices in black and white before committing – colours that look distinct on the shelf often sit at the same value and will blur into each other.
Practical notes
Buy all the yarn at the start in matching dye lots. A colour change partway through a plaid is far more visible than in a solid blanket.
Weave ends in as you go. Plaid generates a great many of them.
