FO Friday: The December round-up

December got rather busy and I missed out of writing several FO Fridays, so here is a round-up of all the things I finished in late-November and December!

Merry Christmas hooped embroidery
First up we have a Merry Christmas hooped embroidery. I bought the kit for this at the end of 2016, thinking it would be a nice quick project. One Sunday afternoon I sat down to work on it and very quickly realised that it might not be quick as quick as I had hoped!

Firstly, I had to sort the thread colours myself, and the lack of light in November made it quite difficult to distinguish five shades of green. I suspect that I didn't quite get it right as I ended up with one spare shade...

The next problem was following the chart: the chart had both symbols and colours, which should have been fine, but the regions of green were very scattered and I found it really hard to keep track of what went where. I had done about half the kit when I realised that the first half didn't line up with the second, at which point I took a photo of the chart and printed it out in greyscale as large as I could. I then coloured each square as I checked that it was correct. A little bit time consuming, but it did mean I only had to unpick a few stitches rather than the whole lot.

And when I finally got onto the outlining I discovered that the photo on the front and the chart didn't actually match! And I ran out of black thread... So I improvised a merge of the two and I think it turned out pretty cute! The final hoop was sent to my advent calendar secret Santa swapee. I am hoping to do some more cross stitch this year, but I'm going to be a bit more careful on choosing the kit!

 

 

 

 

Alice's Christmas stocking
A few years ago I made a stocking for a friend's daughter, and last year she had a second daughter and requested a matching stocking. It took me a little hunting to find my original notes, but once I had this was a lovely project. I knitted it in Drops Alaska, which is fabulously woolly, and the yarn comes in perfectly festive shades of red and green. There will eventually be a pattern for this, but I want to make a few modifications so keep your eyes peeled.

Nordic gnome
This was one of my favourite projects of last year, and definitely not one I was planning to make. During the Giftalong, these little gnomes kept popping up in the finished object thread and I fell totally in love with them. The pattern is Never Not Gnoming by Sarah Schira, and it's a super-quick knit - I finished this one in a couple of evenings using the leftovers from the stocking.

 

Advent calendar socks
Last year I took part in a secret Santa advent calendar swap, and over the course of December I knitted this pair of scrappy socks. I am not necessarily a fan of scrappy socks, so I decided to stripe the calendar yarn with a neutral (West Yorkshire Spinners Signature 4 ply in Milk Bottle), but this did mean that I had quite a lot of knitting to do each day, and got several days behind, hence there being only one pair of socks, featuring rather fewer than 24 colours! I did enjoy making these though, so might make another pair in the future.

A week in the life: 8th January 2017

I've decided that this year I will try and post a few more progress shots of projects, rather than just declaring them done before I show pictures, so thought I would start by trying a little round-up post for the week.

This week has been a busy one, with the kids going back to school and nursery, and I've had lots of little bits and pieces to catch up on that didn't get done over the holidays. I have enjoyed being in one place for the whole week and not having to travel the length of the country.

My main project this week has been a sample for a new design for a magazine, so I can't show you more than these two pictures (it's seamed, and is purple), but now that's done, and I have been working on some things I can show you.

I've been working on my Toft chameleon. Progress is a little slow as I can't work on him while I watch TV (I have have to look at crochet all the time, and as every round is different, it takes a lot of concentration). I have made it to the neck, and finally made a start on stuffing him yesterday, only to realise that I really ought to have started that step rather earlier! I had to use the blunt end of a knitting needle on the inside of the piece to poke the stuffing into the tail, and then the pointy end of the knitting needle to shuffle the stuffing around from the outside of the tail to give it a good shape. So fiddly! But worth it; the tail looks pretty fab now.

My out and about knitting is the pair of socks I started during the holidays. I've not made much progress, but feel I ought to get cracking on them as they're currently housed in a Christmas project bag, and I don't want to hunt out a more seasonally-appropriate one.

Annoyingly I've injured my 'pushing finger' (the one that I use to push the stitch off the needle when I've finished the stitch, so I constantly have a plaster on that finger (it is healing, but very slowly, occasionally I forget about it, remove the plaster, then promtly stab myself again and am back to sqaure one), which is starting to get annoying. Hopefully it'll be better soon.

Yesterday I cast on a new project: a jumper for me! It's a reimagining of the Antler cardigan I cast on last year, then decided that I wanted it to be a jumper instead, and a bit bigger. I have knitted as far as the elbow on the first sleeve, but the only photo I have shows way to much of the chaos on my living room floor, so I'll wait until I've done a it more before sharing any photos.

I have managed to stick to my target of reading for 15 minutes every day (though not necessarily by going to bed earlier - I slept for longer into this morning than I meant to, oops), and have finished my first book of the year: The Christmas Surprise by Jenny Colgan. I started reading the book over Christmas, and enjoyed it. It's part of the Rosie Hopkins' series (not that it matters - there's a series summary at the start of the book), and is a light, easy read. The surprises start pretty near the start of the book, so there's not much I can tell you about the story, but it's lovely and heart-warming, defintely one of the better examples of chick-lit out there.

Hope you'vbe had a good week this week. What have you been up to?

Hi there 2017

Happy new year!

 

Image from geralt on Pixaby

The end of 2016 and the start of 2017 has had me thinking about things I'd like to change about my life over the next twelve months. Not exactly resolutions, but some things I'd like to try and do to make life a little better or simpler. Some of them are things I'm hoping to develop into habits that will be here to stay. So here goes, 12 things I'd like to try this year.

1. Be proactive, not reactive 

I spend a lot of time joining in KALs and swaps and other knitting bandwagons, but actually they stress me out. I have written myself a plan of what I would like to knit and design over the next few months, and will try my hardest to stick to it. The same goes for impulse casting-on of projects, they make up the vast majority of projects that languish unfinished.

2. Always check my stash

The stash is starting to take over the house; if I open a cupboard in any room other than the kitchen (and the bathroom, I'm pretty sure there's no yarn in there!), there is a strong chance the cupboard will contain some yarn. So for this year, I'm hoping to establish the habit of checking whether there's anything in my stash that would do, before starting a project, rather than buying new yarn, then remembering when I get it home that I already had some of whatever I bought.

3. Keep my stash in check

A continuation of point 2, from today I am not going to buy extra yarn to make up free postage - I never knit those balls. Instead I'm only going to buy one project's worth of yarn at a time, and only for the project I want to cast on. And when I've finished a project, I'm going to look closely at the leftovers and decide whether to keep them or pass them on. I don't often use leftovers, so there's not much point in giving them house space.

4. There will always be more sock yarn

The sock yarn box is especially full, so no more sock yarn purchases: no sock yarn that is on sale, waved at me from Facebook, Etsy or Instagram, or comes in a mystery box. When I next want to cast on a pair of socks there will be plenty of sock yarn in my stash, and if none of that takes my fancy, I can always buy a single skein.

5. Make a list and check it twice

I used to be quite an organised person, but the stresses of two children seem to have made me rather scatty. This year I am going to write lists for everything: finances, children's events, meal plans, the ins and outs of my stash. There is some hope I might start to get my life back in order!

6. 15 minutes of reading a day

The year I had my son I read well over 50 books, including the Booker Prize shortlist (let's pretend it wasn't the year that the shortlist was criticised as having been dumbed down). And since then I've not read much at all! So I'm going to try and go to bed a few minutes earlier every day and get a bit more reading done. I've already got a page ready in my notebook to fill with the titles of the books I've read.

7. Plan ahead for making gifts

The run up to Christmas in 2016 was a little stressful as I had a backlog of gifts I wanted to make for people, but totally ran out of time. So this year I'm going to start gifts well ahead of time and store them to give away later, making sure I keep a note of who I've made gifts for so I don't end up making gifts twice or two gifts for one person (it has happened...).

8. Back up the computer more often

Because I don't do it often enough, I'm going to add backing up the computer to the calendar and make sure it gets done, at least once a month.

9. Keep up to date with photo editing

I am so far behind with editing my family photos (I think I was last on top of it the week before my daughter was born, over two years ago) that it feels like an impossible task, but actually a couple of hours a week is all it will take for the backlog to stop getting bigger, and that is doable. So one evening a week will be dedicated to editing photos, and by the end of the year it'll be really easy to print photo books for Christmas!

10. Carry water and snacks in my bag

Every time we go out one of the kids will say they need a drink or something to eat, and it's always best to be prepared!

12. Find a job 

The final one is a big one, but one that only needs ticking off once! Since I finished my PhD I've been muddling through with bits and bobs here and there, but I've finally decided that what I want is a nice reliable job to make the money to pay to do the things that make me happy.

What are your plans for 2017?