Wednesday, October 30, 2013

The Most Wonderful Time of the Year!

They are arriving every day!  These are the hats that have arrived over the last week or so.  Aren't they beautiful!

Monday, October 21, 2013

Do you know Lynne?

November Deadline
First things first, don't forget our deadline is fast approaching.  Hats need to be mailed to me, Sandra, on or before November 11th.  If you do not have my address, please email us at hatsforsailors@gmail.com.

Do you know Lynne?
There are so many amazing and wonderful aspects of being involved with Hats for Sailors.  One of the best is getting to know so many of you.  We all have many facets to our lives, including Lynne.  Most of you know her as Shanti's mommy.  If you haven't read it before, Signature Needle Arts profiled her on their blog awhile ago but it is worth mentioning again for any of you that don't know her.  Here is the link.

It is good to look back at how we started and the two amazing women who had this idea and made it happen.

Monday, October 14, 2013

Stalled at #41

I think I have always had this problem.  I'm not sure if it is because I have a short attention span or that I am a procrastinator.  Either way, it has negatively impacted my hat knitting over the past couple of weeks.  As you already know, I am trying to knit 100 different hats from 100 different patterns.  I plan on achieving this in 2 years, which is basically a hat a week.  In order to stay on track, I need to have completed at least 50 hats by the end of the year.  I was on #41.

I also seem to have great difficulty limiting the number of projects I have on my needles.  I spend a lot of time knitting and I rotate through my projects, spending a little bit of time on each.  Eventually I finish most of them.  Sometimes projects have sat around long enough that it is like discovering it all over again and it motivates me to finish.

I seem to be having problems sticking to my point (which is part of my problem)!

I started a new hat from a great pattern that is perfect for when I need mindless knitting.  I also chose a wonderful, plain yarn.  The problem is that I had a mindless knitting pattern with mindless yarn and no time that required mindless knitting.  To add to that, all of my other projects seemed to be at that same mindless stage.  As a result, that hat just sat in the pile and I couldn't bring myself to work on it.  Even worse, I started looking around for something interesting to do.  It was like I moved into a place of magical thinking. " Oh, look at that beautiful sweater, I am sure I can whip out a tunic length cabled sweater in a week or two just working on it part-time!"  (I couldn't finish a hat and I thought I could knit a sweater?)  I spent a lot of time flirting with other patterns and yarn and feeling guilty for not paying attention to that hat.

Finally, I forced myself to work on THAT hat, even if it was just a few rows at a time.  It started to grow much faster than a sweater would have.  Once it got to the point that I could put it on my head to check the sizing, I realized that it is a great hat and my motivation came back.  It was quickly finished.  It IS a great hat.  Now I am on to the next one.  This new one has cables.

I am trying very hard to stay focused on our November 11th deadline!  But, do I hear Christmas knitting calling?