Can't Stop

I should already be preparing my next challenge but just don't find the time or the right motivation to get it on its way. I have already chosen a subject and I can tell you that it will involve a lot of writing and also a lot of planning ahead. So far I couldn't get around doing much because of all the crochet work done in my last challenge. At the moment I'm really motivated to do more of that stuff. I can't even watch a movie without my fingers starting to tingle. I have completed the pieces of the challenge that I haven't got finished and also learned some basic knitting techniques. I would like to start knitting too, but so far I didn't decide on a piece I want to make. I have found an interesting instruction for a knitted tie but the instruction is in english and I have to translate the technical terms for the knitting stitches first. I already know them for crochet so I can read english instructions but knitting is new territory for me.

But nevertheless another thing the last challenge did for me is giving me so much practice on crocheting that now I really like to do it because it no longer is a pure learning experience which can be exhausting but rather it is fun to use the already learned skills on anything I want to create. This is so much more fulfilling than sitting passively in front of the TV. As you can see in the picture above I have started on a new piece, a pair of gloves for myself. Winter is coming up fast and I'm excited to make something that I can really use and wear. They also will have a special feature because there are little slits on every finger so you can push out your fingertips when needed and use them as fingerless gloves if you have to handle something like money or the bus-ticket. I think I will finish them within the next week and I'm very excited to wear my custom fitted gloves. It is just like making fire or hunting or growing your own food. To really do stuff that supply your often most primary needs is such a really satisfying feeling. I can only recommend this for anyone who wants to improve his/her life.

30 Days: Crochet - Aftermath

So the first challenge is completed and now I have to summarize what I gained from it. First of all the facts: I made 16 finished project pieces and 2 almost finished ones. The Plan was to make 19 different projects but the asparagus was just not possible to make with the instructions and my skill level at the time. Of course some individual projects like the olives consisted only of two very little pieces, while the almost finished burger had several quite different and larger pieces.

Of course if someone reads this blog who is really good at crochet he/she will probably think that I am pretty pathetic because of the overall achievement of this challenge. I don’t know any people around who are good at crochet so I have no measure if I do ok or suck completely.

But the crochet itself was only the means to an end, namely to find a way to get anything done of the millions of things I want to do in my life. My overall problem is that I’m interested in so many things but never find the time to do any of them. Multitasking is a bitch because actually the more things you do in parallel the less things you get finished at all. If you are like me and want to learn three languages, while directing a movie, writing a book, knitting a scarf and learn to play piano during a week where you also have to train for a triathlon and in between go to the office to actually earn some money, then you probably know the feeling that you try to multitask to manage everything but end up in a total stasis and at the end of the week all you have done is hung out in front of the computer and checked your numerous news-feeds.

If you read the „about this blog“ part you probably know already that finishing things or sometimes even starting on any projects is really tough for me. So one thing I learned during this month is that breaking a goal down into manageable pieces and setting a finish line of 30 days is a good way to focus on only one thing at a time. And as you can see it actually worked for me. I was able to get most of the things done that I wanted to make and so finally can enjoy the success instead of the stale feeling of continued failure. I think especially the finish line is an important feature for me. Breaking down a goal into manageable steps is one thing but without a finish line I would again get the feeling that I won’t have time to make all the other things that interest me and therefore drop into stasis again. But so I know I only have to focus for 30 days and then I’m free for the next project.

An important lecture for me was to stop multitasking! This helped me at work, too. If you work on one thing then work on that thing and nothing else. There will be enough time for other things once you have finished. Another thing for me was to stop being a perfectionist. It is ok to plan ahead the course for a challenge but if you are unable to stick to it or unable to finish every single step you still need to keep going and don’t give up. Better get some things done than none at all. I know this is not any knew knowledge and I start to sound like a fortune cookie but really experiencing that these things work is exciting and uplifting.

At least I won’t start on such things as „live in the moment“ because I don’t believe that this is working for anyone. Maybe it works if you have no fear of ever failing at anything but who actually is so enlightened that he can say this from him/herself. Planning is essential for any project but you have to find the right balance of planning and margin for error.

During the challenge I also experienced that sometimes I’m actually scared of completion. Everything is going well during the planning phase, the beginning and during most of the work but as soon as the end of a piece is in sight I get the urge to stop and pause, almost fearing to cross the finish line. To overcome this feeling several times during this month also helped me because it seems to overwhelm me less frequent. Maybe I’m starting to like the active productive life I always wanted to have but so far were unable to realize in many aspects.

Before someone gets a wrong idea I usually am quite able to manage a lot of things in everyday life and by the average standards of society I think I’m rather at the successful end of the scale but when it comes to  my personal projects and interests I tend to be very critical and these projects are the part about which I'm talking in this blog. So as a summarizing sentence I have to say that I’m very happy with the outcome of my first challenge. I managed to create stuff, to learn something about myself, found a way to tackle projects and also improved some aspects of my work-life. So now I will start to plan my next challenge.

30 Days: Crochet - Day 30

The last day of the first challenge. Again we spent a lot of time on the city wall. I was able to finish the wiener sausage and also make the bread bun for the hot dog. So I can relax for the last few days of the vacation. I’m actually quite happy that it went so well and that apart from some unfinished parts I really got a lot of pieces finished.

I will give a detailed summary of the challenge in a few days as soon as I’m home again and I will also start to plan my next challenge. There will also be a group picture with all my finished pieces. For more details on the individual pieces I refer you to the blog Beatritsche's KreAKTIVität where I will quest blog my work during the coming weeks. My posts will appear every saturday so if you need information on any piece you can look it up there or you can write me an email or leave a question in the comments below.

30 Days: Crochet - Day 29

A day at the beach again. Finally I finished all of the sushi pieces and also started on my piece for today which is the wiener sausage for a hot dog. It isn’t quite finished yet, since I have to stitch on the ketchup and mustard, but I think that I can bring the challenge to a good end.

30 Days: Crochet - Day 28

Today I relocated the naps to the city wall of Lucca. The city wall is a broad dam around the inner city lined with trees and parks and you can walk around the city center on it. It is about 4 km long and there are benches and lawns everywhere to sit down and enjoy the view of the city and the green parks. I caught up on my plan and finished two of the pieces of sushi so now I’m only one day behind.

Slowly the challenge is coming to an end. Although I have more time now during my vacation it seems quite hard to make up for the lost time. Only two days to go and still one day behind.

30 Days: Crochet - Day 27

Finally time to catch up. We spent the whole day at the beach of Viareggio. Basically I did nothing all day but go into the sea, crochet a little and take a nap. After repeating this cycle several times I was able to finish at least 8 of the french fries and complete the box. I will stop on the french fries now and make the last few later.

The next thing I started on was the sushi. Today and tomorrow the plan says to make two more pieces of sushi, so together there will be three of them. One with salmon, one with tuna and one with egg. 

30 Days: Crochet - Day 26

Going to Lucca, Italy. We were in the car all day long for the ride of over 900 km to Lucca. Half the time I was the driver so I used the other half of the time to start over on the fry box. After checking a lot of youtube videos on how to crochet in rounds, especially on the subject of where to make the first stitch after closing a round with a slip stitch I was finally able to get it right and make some progress on the piece.

I still have to finish it and since today the plan said that I should make a piece of sushi I’m now two and a half days behind on my plan. Again I give you another picture from our trip to Lucca.

30 Days: Crochet - Day 25

Today I should have made 18 french fries but since we go on vacation tomorrow I had to make everything ready for our trip to Lucca, Italy. There was absolutely no time for anything else, not even to take a picture. Since I had to undo the started box for the fries from yesterday I’m now two days behind on my schedule and because there is no picture I will give you a picture from our trip to Lucca.

30 Days: Crochet - Day 24

On Monday I will go on vacation, so today was the last day to finish all work and shop anything still needed for the trip. I have my wool ready but I wasn’t able to get a lot of work done. Todays project was a box for french fries. I seem to have made a mistake while crocheting in rounds and now the basically oval box is twisting and rather helical. I checked on youtube where my mistake is and I think I have to undo the piece and start over. So I call it a day and hope that I will catch up some time next week.

30 Days: Crochet - Day 23

Another day, another cookie. Today a chocolate-chip one, which is basically made using the same instructions as the Oreo cookie. You only need two sides though instead of three and you have to stitch the chocolate pieces onto the sides.

During the work on this piece I pondered on the idea to make a whole play-shop for all the grocery I already made. To have more stuff to play I will buy original packages of cookies, sushi, olives, etc. and then after emptying them, I will fill them with corresponding crochet pieces. Within this challenge I just try different pieces and different instructions so that afterwards I will be able to perfect them and make more, because one cookie is fine, but a whole box full of them will be awesome.

30 Days: Crochet - Day 22

A cookie a day. Todays piece was an Oreo cookie. 3 small round discs which got stitched together. Nothing special and easy and fast to make. Only problem was, that the black wool I used was thinner than the white one for the middle disc so I had to compensate by making the white disc one round shorter then the outer ones. This made the stitching together more difficult because the number of stitches was not corresponding. But overall the piece fits the original cookie quite well, as you can see in the picture.

30 Days: Crochet - Day 21

My project for today was to make two maki rolls. One with salmon and one with cucumber. I have a book with instructions for them but I didn’t really like the instructions so I made them up myself. After several pieces the concept seems to be getting clearer, so I tried two different approaches and the piece made according to the second one looks quite good I think.

30 Days: Crochet - Day 20

Great News! I just took a look at my plan and realized that I have estimated one day more for the popcorn. So today I just had to make a few more popcorn pieces to fill the bag. That was easy. Two thirds of the challenge is over and there are only a few pieces left to make.

So far the whole challenge thing is really going well. I managed to finish stuff, to blog about it and this is already more than I did ever before on any of my projects. I admit that the quality of my blog posts can improve a bit because looking back at them I seem to ramble on about how bad I feel quite often. I will try to improve and be more positive and uplifting. But all in all I'm very satisfied with my progress so far.

30 Days: Crochet - Day 19

I was awfully sick today. I wasn't at work, my head was aching horribly and I was not able to really do anything. My piece for today was a pretzel and since it is rather small and easy I could finish it the next morning so I think this still counts as finished.

30 Days: Crochet - Day 18

Second day of the popcorn-bag and popcorn. The bag was rather easy but small. But then again this means that I do not have to make that many pop corn pieces. I have the bag half filled and made some more pieces but I guess it will need another 6 pieces of pop corn to have it filled.

30 Days: Crochet - Day 17

It seems that productivity is really going up. Todays plan was to start on the hot dog but I still couldn’t get the right colors of wool even though I drove around a lot to find some. On my list there is one bigger piece left for weekends, which is the popcorn-bag filled with popcorn. So I started to make pop corn. The pieces are small and look really realistic but you have to make a lot of them to fill the bag.

I finished the top bun of the burger, too and I got some rounds done on the beanbag for my phone. My finger still hurts but it is getting better the more work you do.

30 Days: Crochet - Day 16

I still experience some wool shortage. Therefore I had to jump ahead on my list of things to make and made a radish. The instructions came from this website . I liked to make it. It was rather easy and there was not much to be stitched except the loose ends of the thread.

So far this was my favorite piece to make. It had the right size the right difficulty for my skill-level and the result is really lifelike.

30 Days: Crochet - Day 15

Halftime! The first half of the challenge went past very quickly. Overall I have finished quite a lot of pieces so far. I still have to finish the burger and I gave up on the asparagus but all the other pieces got finished.

Until today at least. Today the plan was to start on the hot-dog for which I have planned to use two days, but I noticed that I didn’t have wool in the right colors at home, so I postpone the hot dog and instead started on the next piece on my list. A beanbag for my mobile phone. This piece is also bigger then the ones I usually finish during weekdays. Because of the intensive work on my pieces yesterday my finger got sore rather quickly. I worked for about 1,5 hours but had to stop.

Well the next weekend is in sight so I will hopefully finish it then.

30 Days: Crochet - Day 14

Today I finally had one day in the week where I got home early. Early means shortly after 6.00 PM in my case. Todays plan was a corn-cob. It was rather easy even though I had to learn some new stitches. The instructions also showed some leafs to be stitched to the cob, but I think it is better to leave them out, so you can „serve“ the corn directly on a plate with other pieces.

Since I had time left I finished the toast from yesterday as well. I didn’t follow the instructions through to the end but the result was quite good nevertheless.

30 Days: Crochet - Day 13

Unfinished business. The toast seemed to be a rather easy piece and I thought that I got along well, but you need at least two pieces to finish it and I only made one and a half. I was to tired to finish it. Weekdays are only good for very very small pieces like olives, cherries and the like. But overall not much is missing from that piece so maybe I can finish it tomorrow.