40 Projects Just For Fun: Chunky Cowl

I've done some thinking about what kind of content I want on my blog this year and I've come to the conclusion that I want to keep doing things that both challenge me and make me happy. Most of all they need to serve the needs of our whole family as I'm realizing more and more how precious my time with my kids is right now. Work/family balance is a whole blog post (or series) in itself but one thing I've always known is that valuing my creativity and making time for it has made me a better woman and mother. It's shaped the way we do life at our house and has provided for us financially and, even though there's usually a mess of fabric and paper on our dining room table, I'm so thankful for the place it has in my life. 

With that I've decided to formally name what I'd probably be doing on my blog this year anyway just to make it official. I'm committing to 40 Projects Just For Fun. These will include easy projects that everyone and their mother has made but with my own spin, projects made out of necessity, things I've always wanted an excuse to make, and things I have been putting off for lack of time. I've already drawn up a list of my first seven and have hopes to add to it as I go along. I think it's going to be a fun way to challenge myself creatively as I go into my sixth year of blogging and also help flesh out a few more things to make our house unique to our family. 

My first project was actually finished last week before I'd decided on a series. It's going under the category of things I needed but couldn't justify buying since I knew I could make it myself. It turned out better than I imagined and I only had to unravel the first half once. As you can see it's not exactly consistent in it's shape near the middle. We were driving home from OK to CO and listening to Peter and the Starcatchers and I think it must've been a tense part of the story because my stitches got shorter. In the end it actually folds quite nicely and keeps my neck warm without making me feel suffocated so I'm calling it a victory. I hadn't crocheted in awhile and it was the perfect mindless activity to partially fill a 10-hour car ride. 

I'm not sure how many rows I stitched but I did go through 1.5 skeins of chunky yarn from Michael's. I used a 9mm hook and tried to loosely stitch through the whole thing to give it a bit more room to fold. I still don't know how to knit (that may change this year) and I've heard knit neckwear is kind of the best but I'm really happy with my $8 cowl.

So, there's my first of forty projects just for fun. This is going to be fun!

-Rachel

P.S. Those fantastic wood veneer sunglasses were co-designed with Beca and Doug from this fancy shop. For a very limited time you can snag a similar pair here.