2012

It's customary at this time of year to recap the year gone by. From a crafty point of view it's been an excellent year for me mainly because I've moved from just thinking about being creative and making to actually producing and finishing lots of things. I started the year totally obsessed with crochet but towards the middle of the year I got back into sewing and later on, embroidery. 

Right at the start of the year I signed up to the Granny-a-day crochet challenge set by Ali with the hope that it would encourage me to get making, but I soon fell behind and never really caught up. In hindsight I think it would have helped if I'd had a project in mind at the start as producing random granny squares with no plan soon lost its appeal. Also I found the daily challenge a bit stifling after a while. But I did manage to produce a few pretty things, both granny square-related and otherwise.

I also started going to a sewing class which rekindled my love of sewing. An unfortunate side-effect is that it has also rekindled my fabric addiction!

In September I came across the Take A Stitch Tuesday (TAST) embroidery challenge on Pin Tangle and fell in love with it. Embroidery is a skill I really want to develop and I loved the process of learning a new stitch, then thinking of a way to use it and also seeing what everyone else came up with.  Some of the creations were really inspiring.  I missed the last few weeks of the challenge, but fully intend to catch up, and to take part again next year.  The format will be a bit different, but should still be fun and interesting.

Overall I've learnt a lot this year, picked up a few new skills and honed a few old ones. I think I've achieved most of my sewing aspirations for the year, apart from using up my fabric stash, which has instead grown to epic proportions!  I'm looking forward to getting more creative (and productive) in 2013.  How has your 2012 craft journey been?