Good intentions

Ooph, I’ve been away for a bit, haven’t I? Truth is, it took me this long to get over the Christmas hols, and I’m not even kidding. Is it too late to wish you all a happy new year? Well, I’m going to anyway.  I hope 2013 will bring you much joy, health, peacefulness and lots of crafty fun. I always make my new year’s resolutions around the time of my birthday (which is in November) and I tend to stick to them.

Fascinated as I’m sure you would be to read the more personal plans I have for this year, I’m sure you’re even more interested in my stitchy, hooky and knitty plans. Or possibly not, but I’m going to bore you with them anyway. On the stitchy front, my plans are pretty straightforward: just DO it. STITCH something. Anything. Just plain x-es on linen. I’ve done it before, surely I can do it again and get some enjoyment out of it.

On the hooky front, my plans are basically the same as they have been for two years: make blankets and shawls. I’d like to finish two blankets this year. One of them was inspired by the film Nanny McPhee, wherein one of the children has a blanket that just BEGS to be made by me. For Pelle.  A very old-fashioned, very simple but extraordinarily super fantastic granny square blanket. Here it is, on the sled, in all its old-time glory.

The other blanket is just something I shamelessly stole from Kristen at Cozy Things, who promises peacefulness and balance whilst hooking, and as the words peacefulness and balance always lure me into starting anything associated with them, I couldn’t help it:

The colours aren’t particularly restful to the eye, but It’s to be a summer blanket, lined with the flowery fabric you see in the picture. The fabric used to be a curtain for a day and a half, before I decided it looked atrocious next to the petite antique-looking samplers on my walls. So it was either take down the curtain or the samplers. The curtain went. I’m not that far gone yet!

Now my knitty plans fort his year are … ambitious, to say the least. Especially because I’m still, despite my very best efforts, a hooky person more than a knitty person. But I will do it. I will, I will, I will. My plans (which I shall disclose in my next post) require me to learn the two-handed fair isle technique, which looks very meditative and, dare I say, easy when you see someone doing it in those deceptive videos over on YouTube. Of course, as soon as I take knitting needles and yarn in hands, I tense up and cling to the needles as if I’m in mortal peril. I just need to learn to relax when I see a knitting needle. So that is another one of my knitty new year’s resolutions: to relax whilst knitting. And here is the proof that I’m learning.

Yours resolutionary,

Annemarie.