Creative Challenge 1 Results

I kicked off the year by sharing some goals and dreams for 2015. One of the most important of these was to get back in touch with my artistic roots, which I quickly decided would be much more fun to do with friends. And so began the Creative Challenge— a way for creatives from around the world, to come together online and tackle one artistic project per month.

Challenge #1: Knitting, crocheting, sewing, quilting, looming, and so on…
I decided to take on crocheting— something I’ve always wanted to learn. I had heard that crocheting was easy to do, which I learned to be true. What everyone failed to mention is that it’s not very easy to learn. At least for me, it wasn’t. I mostly followed this infinity scarf tutorial from The Nectar Collective because I thought the pictures and directions were nice and clear, but I ended up doing a LOT of Googling and YouTube video watching to actually learn each stitch.

Step 1: Choosing my yarn and hooks (the easiest part). I took a little trip to JoAnn Fabrics, picked out some pretty purple yarn, purchased some hooks, a crochet needle, and I was on my way. PS I just want to quickly mention that I detest the word “skein” (what they call packages of yarn). Moving on…

Step 2: The foundation stitch. This took a little bit more time for me to get down than I care to admit, but once I grasped it, I felt like an old pro.

Step 3: Single crochet stitch. This is where I almost gave up. In hindsight, I can see that my problem was that I was actually doing it right (mostly), but I didn’t look like I thought it should and I did a lot of second guessing. I ended up letting my skein and crochet hook sit overnight, and like magic when I picked it up the next day, the single crochet stitch was working for me!

Step 4: Repeat single crochet stitch rows until I had about 72. During this part of the process, we moved apartments and my crocheting went untouched for a good two weeks. When I finally started back up again in my new place, I realized that my rows were looking pretty crooked. There was a point when I literally was laughing out loud at myself because it looked so bad.

Step 5: Pull out all my stitches and start again. This wasn’t an actual step in the tutorial I was following, but it’s what I ended up doing. It made a world of difference. When I started back up again, I was counting and checking to make sure my rows were even as I went along. This was the favorite part of the process. I got to put my feet up and unapologetically watch lots of tv during these glorious hours of crocheting. In addition to having a finished scarf, also I’m all caught up on New Girl, The Mindy Project and Scandal. Whohoo!

Step 6: Attach two ends to make my regular scarf into an infinity scarf. This step went down at 11pm last night, by the way. I came to realize that most of the tutorials for infinity scarves used a different method than the one I had been following, which made it really difficult to find a video that demonstrated what I was trying to achieve. After about 45 minutes of searching, I finally came across this gem, which allowed me to bring my scarf crocheting adventure to an end.

What I have loved more than learning to crochet, is connecting with some awesome creatives and being inspired by their handiwork. If you have been participating in this challenge, and haven’t joined our Facebook group yet, we would love to have you be part of our growing community! Here’s a look at just some of what was created this month:

Some of the bloggers in the group even wrote their own posts:
Tea & Tablet // Lovilee // Beauteeful Living // The Lindee Tree // DIY Passion

The second challenge (watercolor) is already underway! If you’d like to join in on this challenge, or any of the other challenges planned for the year, we would LOVE to have you on board. Until next month…#gocreatives