My crafting plans for the year ahead

I don't like to set New Year's Resolutions because they are generally things that I'm working on anyway. I could always do with watching what I eat for a little while, especially after Christmas, and I try to exercise regularly and I'm also quite good at decluttering.

So I thought that instead I would share my crafty plans for the year here, with the intention of finishing off some projects that I've had around for a while, as well as working on some new ones.

My big project for the year is my Sky Blanket, which I've written about a couple of times already. Every day of the year I'll be looking to the sky at around the same time everyday, and crocheting a row of a blanket. It's early days yet but I'm loving taking part so far and I'm keeping it up to date, this is the blanket on day 6. This day marked a bit of a milestone for me in the project. I had planned to keep the blanket to simple blues and greys, perhaps an occasional white. But on the 5th January I saw two really beautiful rainbows in the sky and I really wanted to incorporate them somehow without making a whole rainbow stripe. So I used a little bit of rainbow ribbon and two dark grey buttons on either side, and I was really pleased with how it looks.

It's given me a few more ideas for to I can reflect the sky in the blanket without it dominating the whole thing. I wanted to mark our family birthdays on the blanket, but again I didn't want to do a whole stripe in a different colour. So I think that I'm going to sew buttons and beads onto the blanket for a more subtle nod. I've also already lined up a pretty sparkly bead for a frosty day! Hopefully I won't want to add a border at the end!

My other large project is my granny square crochet blanket. I've finished all the squares now, I reduced the number that I made as I decided that I wanted to have quite a large border. At the moment I'm sewing all the squares together which is proving to be very time consuming. Doing these two blankets has made me realise that although I really love the look of granny squares, when you make a blanket with them you spend more time sewing it all than you do crocheting! So I'll be very glad when it's all sewn together and I can start to work on the borders, which I think I'll enjoy more. I've nearly used up all the yarn that I had set aside for the project but luckily Make it Coats were very generous and sent me lots of yarn for my Sky Blanket so there will be plenty left over which I can use for the borders.

Something which I've had lying around for ages is a mosaic stepping stone which matches this sunflower mosaic stepping stone. It's a poppy design, and it was bought at the same time as the original kit but it was a refill kit and I found that it didn't include any cement or mortar. Cue over four years of faffing about not getting hold of the bits that I needed to finish it. Luckily my brother and Dad have stepped in and given me what I need! There might be enough bits of tile left over to make another one to my own design (perhaps in a few years time!)

Going back to the crochet, one of my Christmas presents was this pink crochet bunting kit, one of the beautiful kits by Attic24. The pattern is very pretty and I think that I'll be able to manage it, I'm hoping that Mia might like it for her bedroom. If I finish all my crochet projects this year then next year I might attempt one of the Attic24 blankets (if I don't feel that I've got enough blankets by then!)

If I have time after all that I really should finish off a pair of socks which I started knitting ages ago. I went through a phase of knitting socks and got quite good at it, for someone that has never really taken to knitting. I also have several balls of sock yarn in my stash which I'd like to use up. I've been putting it off because it's been so long since I last worked on them that I can't remember exactly how to do it, but I'm hoping that it will all come back to me if I get on with it.

What are your crafty plans for the year? I'd love to hear them!