Beginnings of the Paper System and the Sunset Planner Portfolio

Organization of my "work/crafting station" has been going pretty well, but it's not quite ready for its reveal.  But #NatCroMo2016 has me thinking about so many aspects of creativity, it's been so great.  Sometimes I can be effective in the midst of chaos, but I find that I work better when my environment is clean, organized and comfortable.  So, rather than fight my natural inclinations, I'm learning to go with them!  Of course that means more work for me and a delay in getting to projects that I should be working on.  But, I really think that some front-loaded work on my space can free up the creativity and really get me going.

As I've written about in this post, my first goal has been to wrangle in the paper.  I found the Organized Creatives, who have a folder system that really spoke to me and so far has been working.  Basically, you need to have just three folders:  Hot (that should be checked daily for things that need immediate attention; mine is red), Bills (that's pretty self-explanatory, and I chose green for $$ :-), and For Review (things you want to go back to when you have more time to read, etc., and that folder is purple).  I decided to add a fourth folder called Monitoring, for those matters that need follow-up after I've done my part and am waiting for a response, and it's this beautiful black and white swirl folder.

So far so good, but I noticed that the folders were moving around the house as I picked them up and put them down.  I really needed something to corral them, something that would stand out and would be portable when needed.  That's how the Sunset Planner Portfolio came to be!  It's large enough to hold the folders plus other papers as needed.  I created a hard bottom for it so that it would have a little more structure and prop up nicely on the desk.  I didn't want it to have a traditional shoulder strap but wanted to keep my handle options open, so I put in a loop at each end to maintain flexibility and came up with this little lobster claw strap so that I can hook the portfolio to my messenger bag (still need to make another one for the other side!).

It was a fun project to make and used up a lot of my leftover Lily's Sugar 'n Cream yarn.  My friend Charlene thought the finished color combination looked like a sunset, hence the name (but more on what that sparked later!).  The buttons came from AC Moore and were $4.50 each!!  But I just loved them, so the splurge :-)

I'll be offering a kit soon with all the needed parts in it (and hopefully less expensive but just as cute buttons), but the crochet pattern with complete instructions is posted on Ravelry, and, during the month of March, it's half off with coupon code NATCROMO2016!

Coming up soon:  What about a Sunrise Portfolio and what about all the other paper?!

Corner-to-Corner Baby Blanket

I do love the crochet and knit demonstrations on Facebook!  A few weeks ago, I came across a wonderful technique demonstrated by the Crochet Crowd called the Corner-to-Corner Afghan Project. 

It showed up right in time because I recently found out that a friend of mine is expecting baby number 2!  This one's going to be a boy (the first baby is a girl, and she got this baby blanket and still carries it around :-), and the nursery theme is safari.  So, off to A.C. Moore I went before Blizzard 2016 (now, yarnies, don't judge!  Acrylic yarns these days are pretty decent, and, for a baby, the wash-ability and allergy-free nature of the yarn is key) and found "Camouflage" by Red Heart (that's another thing, there were no safari-like or camouflage yarns at fibre space or Looped).

It did not take long to get to this point with this worsted weight yarn and an H hook:

I ended up having 18 "boxes" across and 22 for the length.  I probably should have tried to have 24, but I was running out of yarn (the main body took just one skein) and didn't want to chance it.

Now, I'm putting on a double crochet black border and am thinking about experimenting with adding a row of beige/camel in there too.  I'll be posting a better photo of the final project soon (she's coming to visit at the beginning of February!) with more details if you want to give it a try as well.