Achievable Goals

Here it is, my to do list for 2018.

1. Finish the water bottle carriers (four complete, three to go) by 1/20/18

2. Finish the brown hat

3. Do 3050 stitches in Guardian Angel

Yes, I know its a short list but the plan is to complete one thing and then add another to the list. I have a bad habit of making too many plans and completing none of them. This list covers my three major hobbies and has bite sized goals. Instead of "Finish the Persian Tiles blanket" I'll choose things like "Finish two hexagon tiles for the Persian Tiles blanket." and rotate projects once the goal is met.

Smidget's Temperature Blanket

Over the last few weeks, I've been putting a lot of thought and planning into the Smidget's temperature blanket. I choose the Summer Garden Granny Square by Attic24, inner color is low temp for the day, middle ring is high temp for the day, outer row is black.

The hardest part was figuring out a layout. This is what I came up with. Its 18 x 21 squares. The black squares separate the months and are at the beginning and the end for a total of 13 black squares. The first day is his birthday, meaning that September is split on the afghan.

I did the first few days as a test run and I'm pretty happy with how its turning out, although I was getting tired of the pink/yellow combination.

So I programmed Excel with conditional formatting based on the colors I had chosen, to give myself a preview of the upcoming color combinations and it really gets interesting once I get past the first week or so of September. We had some unusually warm day this September, it was actually quite pleasant of a fall.
 

There is no rush to get this done, so its been set aside until I finish a couple smaller crochet projects that I have in the works. I'm just really pleased to finally have it figured out.

There are a few more temperature blanket styles that I'd like to try out, so I am considering eventually making one for my birth year and one for Jack's, or maybe one for our anniversary year or something like that. There was one that had highs on one side and lows on the other with a sine wave pattern seperating the two and someone suggested that you could do that by finding the number of light and dark hours per day and making the ratio the same. Oooh so many good ideas...

New Year, New Projects

I've moved the vast majority of my projects into my crafty room. They aren't properly organized yet but that will come later. I'm trying to only keep two projects at a time handy for working on in the evenings - one crochet and one cross stitch.

The cross stitch project is the one I started at New Year's and I'm sad to say I haven't gotten back to it yet. But its waiting for me, for when I have a few minutes. I wasn't able to keep up with the 100 days of stitches with the holidays and so I plan to restart soon.

My other New Year's start was Persian Tiles. I just did one of the granny squares and then I set it aside in favor of an older project.

My primary crochet project is a hat that will match the scarf I just finished. It should be completed relatively quickly.

The hat and scarf are done with Red Heart Super Saver Stripes in Latte

The scarf took almost two full skeins and it is a very dense warm scarf. I choose a hat pattern with a similar look, and although it won't be as thick, I think they will match nicely.

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Merry Christmas and Happy New Year

With the Smidget getting a little older and starting to consolidate his day time naps into something longer than thirty minutes, its entirely possible that I might manage to squeeze an hour or two of dedicated crafting time into each day. 
New Year's is typically a time when I want to start new projects, and while I want to do so this year, I'm also feeling the weight of all the things I've already started but not yet completed.

Yarn for two ongoing projects

Christmas yarn for a new project! 

I've consolidated all the yarn not actively involved in something into storage bins. I've cleaned the vast majority of my crafty projects out of the living room, sorting those I want to keep on hand into three totes in a basket and one bin for the temperature blanket. The rest went into my sewing room. I'm going to try to keep only one crochet and one cross stitch project in the living room at a time and put anything I'm not actively working on away. This will become especially critical when the Smidget becomes mobile.

The two new projects I am celebrating the New Year with are Persian Tiles Blanket using Sheepjes Spirit yarn and Guardian Angel by LA Williams cross stitch, which Jack kitted up for me for Christmas.

I also had a couple last minute finishes for 2017. The first was a couple water bottle carriers and the second was a scarf which I haven't had time to photograph yet.

I have six more of these to make and I hope to have them done by the end of the week (hahaha).

Let me know if you made any plans for the New Year, I'd love to hear about them!

A Time of Transition

The last three months have gone by in a whirlwind. Smidget is three months old and last Friday I put in my two weeks notice at my job. Now that the decision has finally been made, I'm anxious to make the transition. It'll be a weird one - I've been working full or part time outside the home since I was 18.  I have four more days to work this year and then I get to be a full time mom. I'll be looking into some part time work from home opportunities and working to adjust our life to a reduced income.

Its really odd that this all comes at a time when I'm already thinking about goals for the upcoming year. 2018 will be a brand new start for us in so many ways. Its time to finish up a few old projects and get them out of the way for new and exciting things.

So far on 100 days of Stitching, I've managed to get a little cross stitch in on 6 out of 9 days for a whopping total of 694 stitches. A lot of these were back stitches which go much faster that regular, but I'm still pleased. I've only every counted stitches before in a round-up general sense but I like doing it as it gives me a small sense of accomplishment every day. I'm using one of my cross stitch groups advent calendars as inspiration. Each day they post a new small goal for stitching.

There's also a quilt that I finished several months ago but never got around to showing off. I plan to gift this to someone at church who has her first granddaughter so it was now or never.

I hope to have all the water bottle carriers finished by the end of the year and sent out to the necessary people and then I have a few project bags I want to start and finish, as well as a lot of arrow head covers for some friends. With the Smidget currently napping, I'm going to go spend a little time in my sewing room. Best wishes for Christmas and the New Year!