A little crafting catch up

At the beginning of the year I published a post about my crafty plans for the year ahead, and so a month in I thought that I'd do a little update. My big aim for this year is to spend some time crafting every day, and so far I've managed it easily. I'm lucky because I do have stretches of time during the day when I can work on my projects, but I've also been trying to find gaps of time when I would otherwise have been doing something far less productive. For example while the children are reading in bed before they go to sleep, normally I'm just sitting playing on my phone waiting for my evening to begin.

I started the year working on my Christmas ABC Sampler (affiliate link), a lovely, large, Christmas themed sampler. Although it felt a bit odd to be working on it when Christmas was over and done with! It's a beautiful design with lots of different colours, including metallic thread, which I've never used before and beads, which I'll add on at the very end. I don't have a particular deadline in mind to finish it, but I'm aiming to complete one letter each month.

I started with Ornaments because that was where the centre square fell. I spent a lovely afternoon by myself in a hotel in Telford, accompanying my husband on a business trip, and that was when I completed the majority of the square. For the next section I chose Tree, as it was quite a large area and I wanted to continue making a decent dent in the project. It's proving to be quite a complicated sampler to work on as there are lots of different colours mixed in together, many of which are quite similar. It looks beautiful when a section is complete but it can be a bit difficult to keep track of the individual stitches - luckily I've not made any major mistakes so far!

Secondly this month I've been working on my Persian Tiles crochet blanket. My Mum bought me this for Christmas and I was quite daunted by it at first, but once I got on with it I realised that I could follow the pattern without too much trouble. For a complicated design the pattern is fairly simple, and there are many tutorials on YouTube for the different stitches if I forget what I'm doing. I'm sure that it's full of mistakes but hopefully they aren't too noticeable. So far I've finished six of the squares and three octagons, so still a little way to go but it feels like a good start. The squares work up quite quickly but the octagons take a little longer and involve a bit more thought.

I share many crafty photos over on Instagram, and if you enjoy sharing your crafty progress, Nicola and I would love you to join in with our Crafting is my Therapy community. Each month we use a different hashtag, so this month we are using #craftingismytherapy_february, and I'm always amazed by the beautiful projects that people link up, from a wide variety of crafts. We also share some of our favourites each month, and it's a great way to find more crafters to follow. We'd love to see you there!

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