The Summer of 2011 Project

For some reason my summer projects often tend to take a lot longer than just the summer months, and last year's summer project was no exception. I started crocheting this bedspread in July 2011 and it took me until last week (= January 2012) to finish it. But never mind, I thoroughly enjoyed this project. I loved crocheting all these stripes (US: double crochet/ UK: treble crochet/ NL: stokjes) in all those different colours. And now that it's finished and now that I counted the number of stripes (about 285), I realized - knowing that each stripe took me about half an hour to crochet - that I must have spent at least 140 hours on crocheting this bedspread. Weaving in ends took some time too, so all in all I'm no longer surprized to see that it took me more than half a year to make this.
Today the bedspread was shown on its final location for the first time and we had a little celebration with cookies and chocolates to celebrate the 'Tadaa'-moment. As a little extra I could also proudly present the new Granny Square bedding that I bought from Snurk. I'm very happy with the way it all turned out.

Holidays Summary

So what have I been up to lately? Here you see a summary of some things I did during the holidays:
- December 24th: attended some of the festivities on the final day of this year's Serious Request campaign in Leiden.
- December 30th: attended the Dutch speedskating championships in Heereveen and saw Stefan Groothuis and Margot Boer .
- December 31st: spent the last evening of 2011 playing Rummikub and eating 'oliebollen'.

Other things I did in December and continued to do in 2012:
- Admire the necklace and bracelet that I chose for my Christmas present from work. The necklace and bracelet consist of lots and lots of small beads that were crocheted into chains by women in Nepal. For more information on this project please visit the A Beautiful Story website.
- Worked on finishing my crocheted bedspread by weaving in hundreds of ends, while listening to knitting podcasts on my new iPod. This weaving in of ends was a rather daunting task, but I'm about 3/4 done now and I'm hoping to get it finished this weekend, I can't wait!