a new year

and a time to look at new opportunities. each new day is actually.

In order of my creating in this method for the longest amount of time to the least…

Crochet:
– The Polar Bear cub hat continues to receive rave reviews. I might need to revisit the ban on fleecy soft yarn because even though I dislike working with it the end result is loved.
– I’m not pleased with the Scarf [ravelry · flickr] at the moment but that is just the colour choice. E doesn’t like it because he says you “can’t see the pattern” and “it’s skinny”. I don’t intend for this to be a keep-me-warm scarf. We’ll see. I might bring it into the yarn store and see if any other yarn jumps in to save the day. Which is sad because I did want to gift it today.
– I’m going to work on minimizing my DMC Pearle Size 8 stash. I have a lot of it (not all is pictured), and it would be nice to say to E that some of it is used up.
– Fred [ravelry · flickr] was gifted and is adored. I’m not sure if I’ll make his brother George in DMC cotton again, but I will choose proper hooks next time, my gauge was a tad loose.

Knit:
– Another baby sweater [ravelry · flickr] off the needles. I like the look and idea of this sweater but really did not enjoy weaving in all those ends. I also think that the arms would have been executed much better in the round, but live and learn. I had to rip my seaming a few times, but it’s done. I hope that baby L enjoys it.
– The bootees [ravelry · flickr] have been passed on to be gifted.
– I’m making slow progress on the wrap [ravelry · flickr] and am nervous that I’m doing the decreases incorrectly, but we’ll see how it works out. At worse I rip.
– And I’m Dreaming of Spring with these socks [ravelry · flickr]. The fabric the 2mm needles creates is beyond beautiful.
– My goals for this ‘new year’ are simple, to keep improving my skills and to complete all the current wip and hibernating projects. I want to knit as much from the stash as possible, especially since Yvonne is offering some really gorgeous yarns now [contest · etsy] and E has banned more yarn from entering until more is used up. I’d also like to knit up the veste before it’s too hot to wear.

Spin:
I haven’t in the past week. I’ve felt too guilty to take additional time away from clients and other work to do so. My knitting has mostly been in snatches of ‘free time’ and has been all gift projects with the exception of the socks on the subway. Dave’s created a challenge of Spin My Wheel (or Spindle) and I hope to play along. One of my goals (to talk about tomorrow) involves better time management so I can spin guilt-free and learn and next year be able to have better goals to set for myself.

Additionally I’m going to figure out how to take better photos E, my wonderful patient husband has helped me out lately and figure out how to best integrate them into my posts.

My kitten I still miss you every day. I hope you and the furry blurry one are having fun. I hope you are also having fun playing with Luke and Freddy, we miss their furriness too and hope that all our pets know we love them no matter what timespan we have together. To that end, please go help if you can.

• Category: handmade
• Tag: crochet, knit, spin