New Year, New Projects (and a lot of old ones)

Don’t let this picture deceive you; Ginger is an adorable holy terror, lol.

Happy New Year, a few days late! Hope everyone had a wonderful Christmas (if you celebrate), and a great New Year’s Day. I spent Christmas with my parents and crazy one-year-old Jack Russell/Red Heeler, and New Year’s at my friend’s home as my partner Tim was working. Good times all around.

I have already started planning my projects for the upcoming year. I have some new ones, of course, but am also working on finishing some older projects. I have the feeling I’m not the only in in this predicament. Now that I’ve recently expanded my needlework skills, I find it difficult to decide on what to work on. I think I need to come up with a plan to work on one craft each week. It isn’t spontaneous, but spontaneity got me into this, lol.

One project for the new year – and I’m already behind because I need to purchase the yarn – is the Temperature Scarf. The great thing about this is choosing the colors and the temperatures for each color. Depending on where you live, and the amount of colors you want in the scarf, you will want to choose a large temperature range for each color or a small one. I want to use several colors and in the Northeast it can get very cold in the winter and very hot in the summer (depending on the year), so my temperature range is from zero to 107. Frankly, it doesn’t usually get down to zero above 100 here, but I wanted to cover my bases. Here’s what I’m using, once I buy the yarn. I’m going to make mine colorful, but it could also be very pretty in several shades of the same color. The colors in parentheses are the color names from the Caron Simply Soft line I will be using. I’m also going to make it simple, just using single crochet. I figure that 365 rows could be a pretty long scarf, so I better keep the height of the stitch small.

0-11 – dark purple (purple)
12-23 – med purple (lavender)
24-35 – med blue (country blue)
36-47 – light blue (lt. country blue)
48-59 – green (green)
60-71 – light green (limelight)
72-83 – yellow (lemonade)
84-95 – orange (orange)
96-107 – red (harvest red)

There is also a Sky Scarf. The pattern is for knitting, but the basic idea can also work for crochet. I won’t be working on that this year but it’s another interesting option. It’s similar to the Temperature Scarf except it’s based on if it’s sunny, cloudy, raining, snowing — you get the idea. I’m sure there are other “journaling” scarves we could create; There already is a Mood Scarf (that could be dangerous!), and maybe you could create an exercise scarf (based on how many minutes you moved that day), TV or movie scarf (different colors for your favorite show that day), etc. I’m really making these up as I go along, but the options are endless.

Another project I’m looking forward to is Tamara’s 2015 Afghan Crochet Along on her Moogly blog. I heard last year’s was a lot of fun and it’s something new for me. Every two weeks she’ll share a new free afghan block crochet pattern for a 12-inch block. By the end, you’ll have blocks for an afghan that is about 4×6. I think some people use it to make two small blankets. You choose your colors and then follow along. Seems like a great way to end up with an afghan at the end of the year. Some people piece the blocks together as they go, but I think I want to see all the blocks at the end to decide how I want to place them.

This week I started my Mirabilia 15 in 15 by working a little on my Angel of the New Dawn. I haven’t made a lot of progress on her this week, and this photo is from before this week, but will stitch more tomorrow. I am not starting one each day the first 15 days of the year, but will start or stitch on 15 over the course of January. The idea is to finish them all by the end of the year. I don’t know if any of us will be able do to that, but I think it will help me to make progress on some that have been languishing a bit.

What new projects are you starting this year, and what old projects are on your goals list for finishing? I love to see what other people are working on. 🙂

Posted by Mindy on January 3, 2015

https://mindysneedleworkmania.wordpress.com/2015/01/03/new-year-new-projects-and-a-lot-of-old-ones/