2011 Update

Well, January has gotten the year off to a great start. Craft-wise, I'm on track and making good progress. Home-wise, well, we're getting there. We have some furniture we're trying to sell (if anyone locally is interested) to get the house looking like we live here, not like we just moved in. The laptop is still out of commission. The guy fixing it figured out it was the monitor that failed (not software thankfully) so we ordered a new one and he installed it. The laptop worked for about 3 days and then died AGAIN. I was beside myself. So it's back at work with him and hopefully we can figure out what the problem is. His payment is currently a Turn a Square in Cascade Superwash. Whenever I see the light at the end of the technology tunnel, I'll cast that on.

Goal Update

I've already knocked out a couple of my goals! I'm making steady progress on my year long goals as well and (slowly) depleting my scrap bin.

#2 - 12 pairs in 2011

Pair #1 of 12 is complete! They are vanilla socks made from Plymouth Yarns Happy Feet in color 26, which is purples and grays, and we all know how much I love those color together.The yarn is so soft and squishy. These are also the BEST FITTING pair of socks yet. I noticed my socks were just a tad tight after I washed them, so I tried an adjustment. I added 1/4 of an inch to the length of the foot. Fantastic.

#5 Knit from Handspun

This is the beginning of a lace scarf made from some merino I'd spun a few months ago. It's a 2-ply semi-worsted (for you spinners) that's about a DK weight. I started at least 3 other patterns with this yarn and they just weren't turning out like I wanted. I finally cast on a basic lace pattern (r1: yo, k2tog; r2: purl across) and WOW. It's perfect. One skein looks much better than the other I think, but it evens out in the knitting. It's also flying by, so it should be done soon.

#6 Beading - Accomplished!!!

That is the Citron of Doom. But it's gorgeous and I love it. It's knit in Malabrigo Sock (so how can it not be awesome?) in the Indecieta colorway. I got some extra yarn from a friend in my knitting group, and used it first since most project pages I'd seen said that with sock weight yarn, they were barely able to finish the pattern, or had to cut it a couple rows short. It's the same color, but CLEARLY a different dye lot. However, I like how it came out. It looks intentional. I also did a beaded bind off using size 6 beads and a 1 mm crochet hook. The tutorial can be found here. My bind off took about 6 hours, so it's not for the faint of heart.

#8 - Charity - Accomplished!!!

A couple weeks ago, I took a fieldtrip to Martinsville, IN to meet a woman I met on Ravelry to give her the bag of baby hats. She was so excited and appreciative for them! I will probably meet with her every couple months to give more.

#1 52 Hats

This goals should be easy enough to achieve. I didn't really make any baby hats during the first few weeks of the year because of the other projects I was working on, namely the Citron. But the past week or so I've been fighting some startitis, so I grab a ball of yarn and a crochet hook and knock some out. Here are the 18 I've made this year so far:

After I get some more pictures taken, I'll show off the other random things I've finished so far this year!