This week I have actually made a point of finishing a number of projects that I had on the go.  Like many crafters I have several pieces I have started and never got around to finishing.

Firstly, here is the completed Tunisian crochet piece.  It’s a cowl which I absolutely love.  I had intended to use it as a submission for the International Diploma, but due to the pattern created by the variated yarn, it meant it was completely inappropriate and highly unlikely to meet the criteria.  I’m not overly concerned as I have created my first piece from my own design and I’ve also written a free pattern to go with it which you can access here.  I had the yarns in my stash and both were yarns that I bought a while ago hoping that one day I would find a use for them, and this is it!  I love the variated yarn.  I’m not normally a fan of variated yarns, but I was attracted by the very sparkly blue sections in what was otherwise a very soft and muted yarn.  I wanted to use a yarn with it which didn’t detract from the colours and so selected a merino lace weight yarn as a contrast.  Whilst it can be seen and helps form part of the tweed effect, it does not dominate and complements the variated wool beautifully.

It is quite a deep cowl, but I tend to suffer from the cold and like a cowl which can both be tucked into my coat and also pulled up around my chin if I feel particularly cold.  I also like cowls rather than scarves as they are much smaller and can be easily fitted into a bag if need be.  I’ve finished it in time to try it out at the end of this current winter and know it will be there to keep me warm come the autumn.

Besides completing the cowl I have also made progress on my Star Wars figures.  I actually started Yoda on Christmas Day whilst I was at my friends house.  Unfortunately he took a bit of a back seat.  He is tiny and at times I struggled with making such a small figure.  Once he was finished, however, I loved him and it spurred me on to make the second figure – the stormtrooper.  I changed the legs of the Stormtrooper slightly to a design that I though looked better, and loved the fact that I now know how to make changes to patterns confident that they will turn out how I like them to. Ordinarily you wouldn’t find Yoda and a Stormtrooper living alongside each other so happily – but the force is clearly strong enough to enable these two characters to stand side by side! I’m keen to carry on and create more of the figures – I’ve set myself a target to finish all of the characters in the book by the end of 2018.  I’m excited to see the finished collection.
This coming week I am setting myself the target to complete a few of the smaller submission pieces for the International Diploma.  It’s time I focussed on them more fully rather than just concentrating on the bigger projects.  It’s also high time I started to make a dent in my wool stash and completing a few samples will be the perfect use for it.