Annual Attempted Self-Improvement-Palooza

Yeesh, time flies!

I had actually forgotten that I'd made any resolutions for last year - thanks, sieve-for-a-brain! - but I managed to do OK, OK here defined as 'achieving my usual 2-out-of-3-ain't-bad success rate'.

I cocked up a few times but my punctuality is better - success!

I did not manage to detach myself from the internet to the degree I'd have liked - dang!

I did do a comic for every day of last year - extra success! - and have decided to keep it up because it's fun :-)

So the attempt to be less internet addicted rolls on as a non-resolution task and here I am, faced with a brand new year.

Hrrrmmm...

What to resolve...?
 OK, here we go.

• Resolution The First: Start Getting Into Gardening Properly
  I have gotten excited about gardening before here, here, here and here but despite my noble intentions I've mostly been doing maintenance fiddling rather than planting anything new or learning anything particularly advanced in the gardening skill set.
  So this year I'm going to buy some plants and then do my level best to keep them alive.
  As I'm doing this resolving in summer this means that there's some things I won't be able to plant until winter/spring but if I manage to plant anything at all I'm going to count that as a success.
  Even if it's a collection of herbs and a tomato plant in a pot grown on my balcony at the flat.
  
• Resolution The Second: Read A Book A Week
  I started recording what I was reading in 2009 and depending on what I was up to that year I got through a varying number of books.
  28 in 2009 (I started keeping the journal in June).
  73 in 2010 (By far the most successful year).
  34 in 2011 (Hey, woah, what happened there...?)
  21 in 2012 (WHAT!?)
  So yes, this year I want to ratchet the reading back up again.
  New stories, new knowledge, new writers to admire, more inspiration.
  I'm going to aim for 52 books, with the loose goal of a book a week and if I manage more than that then I'll just get to be smug about it.
  
• Resolution The Third: Start Sewing
  Remember The Very Hungry Caterpillar fabric I bought?
  This year it is becoming quilts.
  It is becoming at least three quilts and then depending on how obsessed I am with quilting by that stage I'll either make the rest of the material* up into quilts for later** or put the material aside to make the quilts when the time is right.
  I want to try making clothes as well. I've put myself off in the past by imagining getting the measurements wrong and making clothes that don't fit or just cocking up and ruining the material.
  I look at lovely material and hate the idea of screwing it up by cutting it out wrong or ruining it somehow but I'll never learn if I don't squash that aversion down and just let myself make some mistakes.
  

* I bought so much material. 2 m of each of the... maybe 7 patterns?

** Later = when people have babies

Naked Ambition

Before I get into the meat of this one, I'm just going to take a line to say Holy Crab-sprinkles! This is my 300th post!

OK, now that I'm done being stunned by the amount of time that has passed and the fact that I haven't been distracted by something shiny and wandered away, back to it!

I've been trying my hand at the arts and crafts over the last few years.

My most ambitious project so far was that I made a Deddy-Bear* for one of my friends for her 30th Birthday.
And of course it was my first project. I went from 'nothing' to 'super ambitious project made out of difficult to sew fabric'.
Luckily I have an incredibly crafty aunt who took me step by step through the process.
I - of course - forgot to take any pictures of it before I gave it to my friend but I've got another one 90% done that I've made for myself so I'll post a picture sometime this year hopefully**.

It looks a bit like this lovely bear by moonwing-pamela on deviantART but different as we put together the pattern ourselves and used shaggier fur.

I've started knitting, successfully produced a big-ass scarf...

...I cast on too many stitches because I didn't know how wide it would make it and then I had to make it long to balance it out... But look, if you wear it like this it is normal sized and extra cosy warm...

 ...and am now making lots of little squares for a snuggly rug.

I've learned how to crochet and have a tentative little learner's scarf on the go and probably some more little squares for a different kind of rug coming up sometime soon.

My new thing that I'm planning to throw myself into is trying to make a quilt.

And I've decided that the first one will be for my friend Awesome's baby - who is now somehow two months old! - who I'm sure will dribble and widdle all over it.

And this is the material I've chosen.

So friggin' excited!

And I am totally making one of these for myself!

And I have bought enough material to make probably a tonne of these because I didn't know how much I needed and erred on the side of super caution.

As you might be able to make out I have seven prints so some of them will go into the quilt design and some of them will probably become bags, maybe for holding quilts.

Very Hungry Caterpillar quilts for everyone!

Of course I haven't started yet, have no idea how long the process will take me and how often I'll be able to spend time with my crafty aunt and how much I'll be able to manage without her guidance but man am I excited.



*Toki's teddy bear from the TV series Metalocalypse

**It depends on getting time with my aunt and her heavy-duty sewing machine.

Knit Wit

Remember how instead of learning how to crochet, I got seduced by the unholy art of knitting?

Well, as I march onwards to becoming the owner of the widest scarf in history*, I thought I'd post a couple of the videos that I found helpful as I began knitting.

The diagrams in books are all very good and well but until you've seen an action in motion, if you're anything like me those diagrams may as well be Magic Eye puzzles WHICH DON'T WORK AND HAVE NEVER WORKED AND DON'T SHOW ANY PICTURES EVER NO MATTER WHAT EVERYBODY ELSE SAYS!

YouTube has been a real boon to crafty beginners who don't have regular access to friends, relatives or teachers who are familiar enough with said crafts to be able to guide them.








Knittingtipsbyjudy does a 'how to add a new ball of yarn' video too but as she was purling and I haven't got to purling yet, I found it less straightforward than the video I embedded.

And soon I'll even get to try this one...





... at which point I will throw my outlandishly large scarf around my neck and shoulders and part of my torso and will settle down to actually learn how to crochet!


*I started off with a bunch of stitches because it didn't look that broad but it turns out, yes it was. I think I'm going to have to fold it in half and sew it up and turn it inside out or some malarky unless I want people to think it's a shawl.

It Winds The Yarn Out From The Skein Or Else The Ball Unrolls Again

I am probably the last person who should have taken up knitting.

Not because I'm a menace with the needles or a danger to myself or find the mechanics overly challenging. It's a soothing and hypnotic pastime once you get into a rhythm.

But knitting is a craft of patterns and following patterns is not my strong suit.

Well, patterns in language I can follow: recurring words, favoured sentence structures, particular devices, pacing and the like.

Anything visual or to do with numbers though... well...

As an example, this year I've been doing a lot of walking. There's a block near work that I like to do my laps around:

• it's a known length so I can record the distance I'm walking,
  
• it's long enough that I don't feel like I'm going in circles but short enough that I can get back to my car in short order if I need to, and
  
• because of its length, adding on an extra lap is a gentle, incremental increase.

And for every lap I complete I have to mark up one of my fingernails with a lead pencil otherwise I will - no lie - forget how many times I've gone round.

The first lap I remember, the second I'll know isn't the first, but anything after that could be anything from the third to the seventh and without a physical record I could end up going around for hours in a walk trance.

And this is the mind which is now expected to remember how many stitches, how many rows, when to knit, when to purl, when to stop.

It's going to be tricky, it's going to take a lot of stopping and checking, will probably involve a bit of counting aloud and at least once I may end up with a cardigan that has arms long enough to fit an orangutan but unless I want to just keep churning out an endless supply of scarves, I'm going to have to bend myself to the task.

I think I'm up to the challenge, even if it might require me to mark up more than just my fingernails to keep my place.

Tangled Up In Plaid

Well, not necessarily plaid but hopefully some sort of patterning. Once I get going.

Remember my wild and cray-zay New Year's Resolutions?

Remember the one about learning to crochet?

Well, I'm edging closer!

After having bought a beginners' guide months ago and then forgetting to go back to the store for the yarn* or hooks I have joined Ravelry to get extra inspired with patterns and the like and will soon begin trawling YouTube for lovely little 'how to' videos so I know what all the short-hand in the patterns means.

I also now need to learn how to knit because the internet has patterns for Jayne Cobb's hat...

... and I want one.

Because it's Jayne Cobb's hat and he's the hero of Canton don't cha know!

I want one so badly I can almost taste it!**

I expect my first project will be an almost unbearably sad-lookin' scarf that I'll not want to wear but we've all got to start somewhere and my fumble-fingers will have to learn discipline in cruddy scarf boot camp before they get a shot at crocheting little squiddies or vampires or knitting bad-ass space cowboy beanies.
You have to earn a hat like that and seeing as I was born too early to join the Browncoats in their struggle or have a hand in the liberation of Canton, I'll have to earn it the other way - through arts and crafts!



*well, cotton yarn substitute... stupid allergy to wool.

**it tastes fluffy