Accomplishing a little

And here we are on January 6, 2011 and I already have some accomplishments.  It’s not much, but it’s a step in the right direction!

   1.  Knit hat for Oren.  I only promised it a year ago when I started knitting Emma a scarf and mittens.  It’s not great and Chris will probably never want him to wear it out of the house, but it is done and that is the main thing.  It’s just a simple garter-knit rectangle about 8 inches long and then I just pulled a blunt needle through all of the top stitches to make it come together and seamed the back together.  I know there must be a better way to do this, because it left a small hole at the top of my hat, but at 10:30 at night I wasn’t too worried about it.  Instead I made a little pompom (to add to Chris’ dislike of this hat on his son…) and attached it to the top to cover the hole and give it some cuteness.  Boys can be cute right?  The weather was so bad yesterday, I’m talking storms and rain off and on for 12 hours, so I took this inside, but here is a picture of him wearing it.  It kinda looks like he's got a really bad blue afro.  Hmmm...I think this is definitely a don't-wear-out-of-the-house hat!  Oh well.  I'll just make him another one from an actual pattern!

2.  Cooper's Quilt.  I finished up the quilt for my cousin’s newest little one, Cooper.  This was the final project on my old machine before it met its doom.  Sad.  Anyway, I finished it up yesterday.  I did wait till this morning to take pictures of it.  My cousin is planning on using it for a wall-hanging so I did minimal quilting on it.  I only quilted down each star and circle and left them raw-edge appliqué because I really like that fuzzy feel for a baby’s quilt.  This small amount of quilting is strange for me, but I didn’t have just the right brown color for intense border quilting and I wasn’t sure how stipple quilting in just the 4-patches would look.  I got the design from Mrs. Bonnie Olaveson’s book Lots of Dots (available here) and changed it to meet my color, embroidery, and lack of love for prairie points needs.  I highly recommend this book—very cute ideas.  I’m running it through the wash now for that (hopefully) crinkly look and frayed edges.  I’ll take some pictures of it after that and add them before I send it off.

The embroidery in the center square has his name and birthdate on it.

So, now I’m on to finishing up my muslin for the Mad Men Sew-Along, which I see I’m not the only participant falling behind, and then I’ve got some other UFOs I’d like to finish up before I begin some new projects!  Like…the postage stamp quilt along over at Rachel’s blog.  I went over to check out the winners for the Ho-Ho-Ho contest (sadly, not me) and saw this.  I’m hooked.  I was actually cutting pieces for a different scrap quilt and although she’s recommending a jelly roll, I’m going out on a limb here and gonna do it my way.  Wish me luck as that is a lot of little pieces.  Here’s hoping she’s got some tips to make it go quicker!

 So there is progress toward my goal of accomplishing more this year.  I've been knitting (or hand-sewing on binding each night while I watch TV with Chris) and I feel better already about what I can do this year.  Onward!