Goals

If there’s one thing I’ve learned in my long life of consistently NOT setting goals, it’s that it is EXCEEDINGLY difficult to nigh IMPOSSIBLE to achieve something by accident. I would go so far as to say that “accidental achievement” should not only qualify as an oxymoron, it should define the category.

It took me a long time to figure this out. (What can I say? I learn the hard way.)

This year I’m turning my life around. I will refuse to sit around and wait for good things to come my way and I will NOT  just throw effort into something without thinking it through or planning.

I want to lose weight.

I looked up what my weight should be according to my body mass index. I’m dieting and exercising in a healthy and well-researched manner so as to lose my goal amount. I’m also charting my success. This not only helps me to stay true to my dietary restrictions and claims of increased exercise, but it also helps me track my success. It always feels good when I can write down that another five pounds have melted away seemingly overnight. (Does anyone else find that weird? Days pass by and absolutely no difference… then boom! and goodbye five pounds? Is fat/water weight quantized? If you’re smiling at /disgusted by the misuse of scientific terms, congrats! you’re a physics nerd.)

I want to knit hats.

The key to my success was NOT, as I claimed in my earlier post, that I cheated. Yes, starting at the top allowed me to feel more comfortable about when I was going to start/stop the rounding of the top of the hat. My greatest problem in the past, I knew, had been in deciding where that critical point should fall. It wasn’t always that the hats weren’t wide enough; but I invariably started closing the hat too soon. Starting at the top allowed me to discover this for myself without fear of failure.

The cheating? It was necessary, too. For any of you non-knitters who might be reading this, it is not easy to start knitting outward from a single point; it looks messy and loose and wrong. Crocheting the center is the only way I can think of starting a knit hat at the top without leaving an awkward point. (Knitting from a point, neatly, would require a narrow tube which slowly expands in a conical manner.)

Now that my confidence has been restored and my method proven, I just need to polish it. My next hat (*cross fingers*) will be successfully knit from the bottom up. There will be row counting. Gauge will be considered in all things. I will make minor improvements in the rate of increases, as there is an odd last little bump of an increase that looks like an afterthought (because it was). Thankfully, that is filled out when the hat is worn.

I want to become a better writer.

Guess what actions I’m taking to reach that goal! Yeah, that’s right. This blog isn’t entirely innocent. I’m not writing this every day because I want to; not because I have something to say every day, and certainly not because I enjoy sharing my thoughts on things. I write to keep in practice and to explore my voice. My old friend and I haven’t seen one another in a while.

Sammy’s Snowflake Hat is Complete!

Done! 10:00 January 4th, 2012

Crochet Project

I have been crocheting since I was maybe five years old. Knitting always appeared to me some magical feat only the truly gifted (or insane) could possibly accomplish. How could anyone ever get yarn to do what they wanted it to without a hook?! I’ve learned in the past year or so (now that I’m twenty) but crocheting is still what I do best.

Over this summer, I’ve picked up my biggest crochet project yet; I’ve decided to crochet an afghan for my twin sized bed.

I wanted to do it because I was watching the show “Knit and Crochet” and the episode was on embellishing. Embellishing was something I rarely attempted and succeeded at even less – but the show gave me some pretty great ideas and I wanted to try them out as soon as possible. Besides, it’s been years since my last attempt.

It started out just being a compilation of all the scrap yarn I had laying around. Fifteen year’s worth of scrap – I finally decided to use it all up; and in one go. (This was my back-up reasoning to convince my mother that it would be a good thing.)

Needless to say, I failed to meet that ideal. Of course I picked my color scheme and went out to buy more yarn…

The going so far has been pretty slow, but I hope to have it done by the time winter rolls around. It would help had I thought to double up the yarn or use a bigger needle. That didn’t even occur to me until I went internet surfing a few minutes ago and found an article this one woman wrote about crocheting a comforter in a day.

She used a size Q hook. I’m using a K. Significantly smaller. Tiny, even, in comparison. I’ve never even seen a size Q hook.

Needless to say, this is going to take me a while – but I will upload a picture of it when it’s completed.