The Monday Smile

Have a great week everyone.

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Five On Friday

So here we are January is half gone already and I still haven't put my crafting plans for the year in place.  I need to have a plan and it needs to be written down otherwise I start new projects all over the place and nothing gets finished.  So this is what I've decided.. 

I will be working on five things a month two of which are monthly challenges which will take up most of the year the first is..

ONE
A sweater a month  to be made for little boys I'm so pleased that I've managed to finish my January sweater already, thank you to everyone who has left me such lovely comments you can see the sweater here. I have already chose the pattern I'm going to use for the February sweater now I need to look through my stash to decide on which yarn, now two colours or three? decisions decisions... I can't wait to get started but by making just one a month it will give me time to do other things.

TWO
Make at least two Teddy puppets for Operation Christmas Child, if you remember I made some last year when Occ Barton on Humber were trying to beat the world record, well they didn't succeed but would like to try again this year.

They are appealing to everyone to help out and make a Teddy puppet or two.  They are great fun to make and are great stash-busters too.  You can see what I made in this post and there are pattern links there too in case you fancy helping out.

Specific to January

THREE
Finish my Greg Blanket from the  crochet along last year, all the crocheting is done and 

I'm busy sewing the squares together, it's going to turn out much bigger than I thought it would, hopefully I'll have a completed blanket to show you before the end of the month.

FOUR
I'm following another CAL it's super easy and I'm enjoying it, it's going to be ongoing for January through to February.  As always there are so many new crochet alongs and all of them are calling to me but for now I will stick to this one and will be telling you all about it in my next post.

It's hard to choose the last one because there is so much I want to do and I have so many wips to finish but I've chosen this...

FIVE
The cardigan I began making for myself back here.  I was so excited to get started on it but it had to be put to one side because of more urgent makes. 

 I hate restarting something that's been put down, I have to reacquaint myself with the pattern and try to  remember where I left off.  My big problem is I rarely follow a pattern exactly how it's written I usually adapt it a bit, usually to make it fit better and then as in this case when I go back to it I can never remember what it was I did.  I know what you are saying well why didn't you write it down? well the simple answer to that one is I probably did but can't remember where!

This year will be different I have a new  notebook just for my projects and everything will be entered into there, now where did I put it?

Have a great weekend :) 

Linking with Amy's Five on Friday

January Sweater.

As you all must know by now, I love a challenge and because it's the beginning of a New Year I feel the need to be challenged to motivate me to use up some of the mammoth proportions of stash yarn that is literally cluttering up my home. So when Pat one of the members of Loving Hands invited us to join her in her challenge to make boy jumpers I jumped right in there.

Although I do try to even things out with my charity makes it's usually the little girls that win, lets face it everyone likes to make sweet pink pretty little things that make your heart sing when you look at them. So I am challenging myself to make twelve jumpers for the boys this year not tiny baby boy clothes but larger sizes to fit older kids because they usually miss out.

January Sweater

I found the pattern for this sweater in this book which I borrowed from the library, there are some lovely projects in there and I couldn't wait to start.

However the making of this sweater was not without it's problems.  The pattern calls for Aran weight yarn and I happily began to use the variegated Aran I had bought from Aldi.  Of course silly me didn't do a gauge swatch and was about six inches into the sweater when I began to realise it was turning out very wide so I pulled it off the needles and started again, this time I knit the smallest size meant for a child age two, it was turning out at a 30 inch chest so I stuck with that and just adjusted the lengths to match.

Just to irritate me a little further look how the patterning worked up on the variegated yarn! how did it do that! this is the back of the sweater..

someone suggested embroidering a cats face onto it, hah I don't think so! anyway other than pull it all out I did the only thing I could think of....

some swiss darning to try and disguise it a little..

Of course I still know it there but I think it looks better at least better than before what do you think?

Anyway one boy sweater all complete to fit a child 8 - 10 years.

Lessons Learnt..

1. Always do a gauge swatch.
2. When using variegated yarn, watch how it's patterning and cut the yarn and start further along the ball if necessary.

It took 283 grams of yarn so deduct that from my total of 29,740 that means I have a mere 29,547 grams left to bust.

Linking with...

Snickerdoodle Sunday
Cooking and crafting with J&J
Handmade Monday
Lunamon Design
Link and Share Wednesdays