Expanding My Skillset in the Next 12 Months - 4KCBWDAY7

Day Seven (Sunday April 28th): Looking ForwardOne year from now, when the 5th Knitting & Crochet Blog Week rolls around, where do you hope your crafting will have taken you to? What new skills, projects and experiences do you hope you might have conquered or tried?

Turn Drawings Into Plushies!

I sat down with my kids last week and I finally got a few good drawings from them! I plan on designing my first original amigurumi based on my kid's drawings thanks to the Design Your Own Monster class on Craftsy. I think this is going to be loads of fun! I get bored completing the same pattern over and over...sometimes just making a second one is unbearable. This has the potential of becoming a new path of crochet for me that I am super excited about!

This is my oldest with his drawing of Mr. Moon

This is the drawing I got from my youngest.

My younger son is only three. I started him out with a teardrop shape. He drew 3 black dots for eyes. I drew the circle around the eyes. Then, he added that stack of yellow stuff on top. Then, he added a smile and mustache (the mustache is that green line going across the middle). And, he drew the three legs. I thought the picture was finished, but then he needed just a little blue, so now we have some wacky hair action! This will be so much fun to turn into yarn art!

I couldn't let my kids have all the fun though. I came up with my own drawing for a dude who is so happy that his smile is bigger than his head.

My Drawing of Happy, Smiley Dude

Other Crochet Plans

I want to master the loop stitch this year! It makes an appearance in a few FreshStitches patterns: Sherwin the Alpaca and Murray the Squirrel. She also has a microbe and macrobe that use loop stitch. My plan is to complete Sherwin the Alpaca. He's so cute and comes from the Crocheted Softies book.

Expanding My Knitting Skills

In the next 12 months (hopefully before Christmas), I plan to make my first pair of socks using DPNs. The struggle here is that I have a fear of pairs. Something happens with my gauge between completing one and moving on to a second one. The second one never comes out the same. I really need to conquer that fear of pairs!

After knitting my first pair of socks, I want to attempt knitting two-at-a-time. If I get super daring, I may just do this from the get-go to solve that fear of pairs problem. They should come out identical if I make both socks at the same time, right?

I want to complete my first Enterlac project this year, too. I have completed the first section like 5 times and frog it every time. I really hope to conquer that one quickly because enterlac creates such a beautiful fabric.

Pattern Designing Plans

I want to design 4 new items this year. I want them to be things that do not already exist and I want to have a lot of fun with it. I already have a few ideas lined up, but haven't started working on them yet. I might venture out into finally selling some of them instead of giving away everything for free. I promise that my paid patterns will offer much more than the free ones I post here.