Endless Stitches by Sarah

 Hello again! It has been a while hasn't it? As it did for many others, my life got a little hectic last year. The good news? I didn't stop making! Let's recap my goals for the year and see how I did. 2020 Review At the begining of 2020, I made the following list of goals for my charity makes. Goals: Sections: 100 Hats: 30 Scarves:10 Blankets: 2 Other: 8+  I am happy to say that I achieved most of these, and really exceeded that section count goal! My 2020 totals are: Totals: Sections: 146 Hats: 33 Scarves & Cowls: 7 Blankets:3 Other:11 Almost everything on that list was given to Warm Up America or in their name. I did donate a few things to silent auctions as fundraiser items as well.    2021 Goals Going into 2021, I have another list of donation goals. It is largely the same as last year, or at least close. As I grow as a maker, making things to donate to people will always be an huge part of what I do. However, I do want to spend some time designing and gr...

The saga continues... As you may know, in early May, I started a fairly large project. The goal was to take an old work in progress and turn it into something useful. You can find the whole story in The Great Blanket Remake Part 1 . The second part of this project was a little more in depth than the first. That is because this half of the project involved taking apart the blanket that was already seamed together. It might seem crazy, but it ended up going so much better than I expected. I lost very little yarn to cuts and was able to make lots of sections. I had grand plans of making a whole set of one row striped sections, and I started doing so. I made 5 of these sections. These sections look amazing, and I think they will be a great addition to the blanket. However, they were not nearly as easy to do as I had hoped. There were lots of ends to deal with, but more than that the yarn yardage didn't work out well. There were times I ran out of a color too early, there were times ...

The Great Blanket Remake Begins... I have put a temporary pause on the Section-A-Long to tackle another big project (and to start planning a wedding!). This project is technically 5+ years in the making, so it is about time for something to be done with it. I am transforming a partially made blanket into something complete and cohesive for donation, and I have decided to take you along for the journey. As you can see, the blanket comes in a variety of stages of completeness. I have a whole skein, a couple partial skeins, a huge pile of completed granny triangles, and a few rows of granny triangles sewn into a blanket. I am going to tackle this in pieces. The full skeins have been relocated to my fiance's apartment to work on when I am over there. (Oh, I do love calling him my fiance!) The variegated partial skein has already been turned into 2 and a half sections. Oh, I am using my last section-a-long pattern to make all of the sections for this blanket remake. Now for ...

Time to get scrappy Last week, I finished my first blanket donation project of the year. It is somewhere between a lap blanket and a small child blanket, and it has 22 different colors! I shared the in progress photo several weeks ago with the C2C moss stitch section, but here is the completed blanket. The blanket was inspired by the sections I made using the C2C moss stitch and my order of 44 little skeins of the DIYarn from Lionbrand. I knew I wanted to make a blanket with half of them, but didn't know how big of one I could make. That is why I chose the corner to corner option, fully expecting to only get a baby blanket out of it. The two sections from this week are made from almost all of my scraps from the blanket project. The stitch pattern is simple (half double crochet is all you need) but I wanted to share with you some tips on using up every last bit of scraps. Make sure you have checked out the original section-a-long post , if you haven't already for ...

A little more love in the world As the crazy times continue, it is nice to know that there is still love in the world. In honor of that, this week's blog post is gonna be love inspired. As some of you might know, I got engaged last weekend! (Which is why we ended up skipping a week of the section-a-long...) The proposal was amazingly week and definitely one to remember. We have been together for almost 4 years, and I am so happy to finally be starting this next chapter in our love story. Make sure you have checked out the original section-a-long post , if you haven't already for the list of supplies you will need, and if you missed any of them, the other patterns are all linked at the bottom of that post! Learning new things (and a return to an old favorite) While home, I decided to give the Lemon Block pattern from Twinkie Chan a try. I haven't done much crochet colorwork, but I was excited to learn a new technique. Luckily I had the perfect scrap ya...

Stay Safe These are crazy times for sure. Making has been keeping my hands and mind busy through all of this, and I am so grateful to have the distraction that I know will also help people some day. Anyway, this week will be a short blog post. Silly me forgot to even take the close up photo of the stitch this week and both sections are already happily in Dallas. How about I throw in a cute cat picture instead? Shadow hanging out with my crocheted Christmas tree skirt last winter Make sure you have checked out the original section-a-long post , if you haven't already for the list of supplies you will need, and if you missed any of them, the other patterns are all linked at the bottom of that post! My resource book I decided to browse my one stitch dictionary book that I own to find a new stitch for this week's section. I don't use the book often, but it is handy sometimes. It has an entire section devoted to lacy stitches, and while I am sure those are ...

What can 12 sections do... Here we are at week 12! I thought it would be a fun time to talk numbers with you. If you have made a single section each week of this section-a-long (counting this one) you will have made enough sections for a small baby blanket. Twelve sections can make a blanket that is 21" by 27" which is a pretty good car seat blanket. I have definitely seen people in the Makers group make this size in the past. If you have made 2 sections every week of the section-a-long, you are one section away from having a lap-sized blanket (35" by 45")! And if that is the case, maybe this week you can make that extra section to get you to the 25 mark. The other fun set of numbers comes in when I look at blog post views. If half of the views result in a section being made, together we have made enough sections for 28 full sized-adult blankets! I have no way of knowing how many views result in sections, but those are still pretty exciting numbers. We are still...