Achievements to mark

Another huge gap between posts! I've not been idle, just working very hard on improving my hand, with a lot of success: thankfully, I can now draw, paint and knit again without being unduly concerned about my hand's ability to deal with prolonged work - a great start to 2013.

Here are a couple of favourite achievements from the last few months of 2012.

First, an illustration for Little Red Riding Hood, or little Red Riding Hoodie, as I prefer to see her:

A challenge here was to incorporate the wolf, making him look scarey, but not too scarey for a young child aged 3 to 6 years, that I was imaging as reading or looking at the picture book.

Then these fabulous "Fighting words" mitts knitted from Annie Watts pattern  :

These were among the twelve presents I knitted for friends and family for Christmas during November and December 2012. (Such a good strength-building work out for my hand!) The lucky recipient is delighted with his Spiderman-themed mitts!

So, now I am excited to be making progress with my plans for 2013!

Completing Things

One of the more bizarre effects of breaking my finger last year is that I have become very comfortable with not completing things!  In the first part of 2011 I had embarked on many projects, ranging from a Woodland Trust graffitti knit bluebell , to my half-made sketch books , to reorganising my collection of cds, to tidying the garden, etc, all of which I was forced to simply leave as they were on May 2nd. At first, this proved to be quite a challenge because I usually derive a lot of pleasure from celebrating the finished results of a project, and the excitement and energy of my success spur me on with my next scheme.

Last May I encouraged myself to live with the chaotic mess of my many works in progress because I believed the optimistic forecast of "six weeks" for my broken finger to heal.  In fact, nine months later, my hand is now just about sufficiently healed for me to resume work on these tasks. In the meantime, I notice that living with unfinished projects has become a habit.  Breaking my hand did not diminish my enthusiasm for starting things, so my flat is now in danger of being over run by works in progress!

It is commonly thought that it takes 21days to form a habit, so I'm going to challenge myself to focus this February on completing as many of these items as I can, beginning with these wonderful mittens:

The pattern is Ysolda Teague's "cotton reels", which are forming a wonderfully warm doubled yarn fabric that would be perfect for current freezing temperatures.  I have one thumb to knit, ends to darn in, and a ribbon string to attach to the loops so I do not loose a mitt. Wish me luck!