…100 days wrap up…

At the beginning of April, my crafty partner in crime was in her usual arm twisting mood, trying to convince me to join her in a daily craft project. Being the highly suggestible type that I am, I found myself accidentally falling into the 100 Days Project, thinking it would be a nice easy way to make a bit of progress on a long term WIP, and give me some focus during isolation, when my mind was scattered and directionless at the thought of all the spare time I now had to make stuff, but had no idea where to start.

In the way of these things, though, making begets making, and my nice and easy “one row a day” rule rapidly went by the wayside as I powered through a colour block of my rainbow wave blanket each night. By day 25, I had a full colour repeat complete, and the end was in sight, which was super motivating, and I started picking up the pace, aided by a lazy week of school break. A week later, I was managing 2 colours a night, and with 8 bands to go, my cheer squad was becoming increasingly rowdy, and hints were being dropped about how soon it could be done. Sunday was bandied about as the potential finish line, and then the chief cheerleader went straight for my kryptonite – a challenge, with a twist of competitiveness. We both had a similar number of colours, so we would race to the end (of the blanket for me, the colour repeat for her). With motivation like that, how could I resist? Two days later I had a finished blanket and a rather sore wrist after crocheting for pretty much two days straight.

With one finish under my belt, I moved on to my other blanket WIP, the sunrise stripe sampler I started as part of an Easter challenge last year. Being quite a bit smaller than the wave, it made for quicker progress, aside from the time I had to frog 18 rows when the blanket was becoming increasingly triangular. Although it was smaller, I had nowhere near as much done on the stripe blanket at the 100 days as I did on the wave, so finishing the stripe took me through to day 82.

Around day 50, I could see the writing on the wall, that my existing projects wouldn’t take me to the end of the 100 days, which meant I had a decision to make – did I finish two blankets and call the project done before Day 100, or did I order yarn and start a new blanket to see out the full 100 days… we all know where this is going, yeah?

Having completed both a consistent row pattern blanket, and a sampler, I wanted to do something different for this newest project. In the end I settled on the Atlanticus mandala blanket pattern by Hooked On Sunshine. My go-to yarn for blankets is Stylecraft Special DK, and I used a palette called “daffodil meadow” that I found on Pinterest for the colour way. Of course, with Covid and all the attendant delays and border issues, it took a full four weeks for the yarn to arrive from the UK, thankfully landing in my mailbox before my stripe was finished.

By the time I got to the end of the 100 days, I had completed two blankets, made an excellent start on the centre medallion of another, and had created a daily creating habit to anchor my evenings that I desperately needed in this wild time where everything seems a bit topsy turvy. It is the first time I’ve managed to stick with a 100 days project and I am so glad I did. I feel super accomplished having a couple of finishes under my belt, and it gave me such a mojo boost that I’ve been following through on projects all over the shop, to the point I am starting to run out of handwork options. I tallied up what I have in progress over the weekend, and realised my WIP list is the shortest has been since I first started blogging and crafting in earnest all the back in 2007!

Of course, one can not leave themselves too short of crafty goodness, so my weekend has been spent surfing Pinterest and insta and Twitter gathering inspiration. I’m thinking of casting on a hooded vest in alpaca yarn. There’s a cute crop top pattern that caught my eye. I want to make a start on a couple of tops for my spring capsule wardrobe. Or maybe I should just stay focused and finish the last couple of WIPs and maybe make some progress on my writing projects….nahhhhh where would the fun in that be?