Well, Charles decided to go and change that for me; I now have something to celebrate on January 1: my engagement! That’s right folks, we’re getting married! (Currently taking bets on: will it be a Betazoid wedding? If not, will mio wear a dress? How much of the wedding will be handcrafted?)

I have many goals for 2010, the first of which is that I want to be finished my Christmas crafting by Halloween. I’ll wait while you fall over laughing.

Done?

I also want to do some stash busting. My stash can be easily divided into two parts: my yarn, and charity yarn. There is quite a bit of both!

For the charity yarn, I’ve made myself the goal of filling up one of my yarn bins with finished items for Mom’s sorority’s various charity projects. I’ll try to keep the endless parade of hats and scarves interesting. ^_^

For my own yarn, I’m going to use some of it for Christmas, but I’m also going to have some fun with motifs this year. Let’s see if I can keep up the pace with a motif a day! (At least until the wedding plans start getting in the way…)

Today’s motif is from “Beyond the Square Crochet Motifs“, p165, motif #120:

The pattern notes say to pin the strips together to keep them in place while working the edging, but I found that my “pins” (I used crochet hooks…) just got in the way, and that if I just paid close attention to the weaving pattern, I didn’t need it all set up ahead of time.

I like the finished product, but the making up was kind of a pain. There were 22 ends to weave in, and very little space to do so. I think it would be easier if there were more rounds in the edging.

If I had used cotton yarn, this would have made a really neat hot pad; pretty, and double-thick.

There is a tutorial coming on how I made the strips: using a no-chain dc foundation. It’s stretchy, which doesn’t really benefit this pattern much, but more importantly, it makes variegated yarn look waaaay better. Anyhow, I have the pictures taken, and I just have to write it up.

Also to come is that post I promised you about the teal yarn. It will be here soon, I promise!