Progress toward creative goals, spring 2017

At the beginning of the year, I made a set of "creative goals" for 2017. In March, I wrote about my progress toward those goals, and I'd like to check in regularly and update my goals as they change and/or write about progress in general. So far, 2017 might be my most productive "making" year to date. I can't help but think that this list-making and list-maintaining helps motivate me toward concrete goals and to stay on track with projects that I actually want, need, want to give to someone, or that will teach me new skills.

Knitting

Current, active projects:

May cardigan: I made some significant progress on this in the car during our recent trip. Nine hours each way to and from Arkansas (with a husband who enjoys driving) gave me a lot of knitting time!

Colorwork mittens: these weren't originally planned for, even though several other colorwork projects were. However, these use some precious stash yarn (Brooklyn Tweed LOFT, gifted to me by a friend) and the yarn and pattern pairing seemed too perfect to pass up. Plus, the more colorwork practice, the better, especially before tackling a larger project like a yoked sweater.

knitted hearts: these are fast, soothing knits for me. I keep the necessary supplies for them neatly tied up in a bento bag, ready whenever I want to knit for the sake of knitting.

Recently completed projects (both of which will be included in a blog post eventually) :

Sencilla cowl: a spontaneous project intended to make the best use out of a single skein of an indie-dyed DK weight yarn. I love this cowl so, so much.

Arctic cardigan: I've written about it a bunch, but for the record on the blog, it's entirely done and I love it.

Planning for future projects:

• Glacier park cowl
• Morning walk hat
• colorwork yoked sweater (I gave some examples in this post)
• a wrap/shawl/something knitted with wine-colored DK weight frogged from a cardigan that I never finished because it didn't quite "work"
• a few other surprise projects :)

For general learning, I'm planning to take this online class about colorwork, since I'd like to get more comfortable with managing multiple colors and tensioning my yarn.

Sewing

Current, active projects:

I'm sewing a quilt!! It's really happening! Some things I'm learning: in general, how not to be afraid of my sewing machine. But specifically how to adjust tension and raise and lower the feed teeth and how to avoid stretching fabrics on the bias so they become distorted. At this point, I've sewn together 184 half square triangles and decided upon a final layout. Next step? Sewing the squares into strips. It's quite slow and methodical, but I love the rhythm of it, and all those short, straight seams are definitely building my confidence with the machine (although you can see the instructions booklet opened, at-the-ready, in the frame below ;)

Planning for future projects:

• a few zippered pouches from stash fabric (using the Petal Pouch PDF pattern from issue 2 of Making that I already own)
• wool+ wax tote (pattern also from Making, issue 2)
• stowe bag