Creating for yourself

I am all about creating gifts for others.  I love to knit and crochet to make special presents for my friends and family.  When I was new to the land of yarn I felt I had to justify yarn purchases by giving the end product to someone else.  Not any more I tell you.  I have to admit it took me a while to get to this place, I used to spend so much time, money and energy on only gifts.  Yes there was a rare thing for myself, but creating for others was my main goal.  I felt it allowed me to buy more expensive yarn because my friends and family deserved the best.  Why did I feel like I did not deserve as nice of yarn as everyone else?  After years of creating, and not seeing the people I love really use the items I made, I decided to focus more on myself, and to be okay with that.  

I got reminded of this yesterday as my MIL was visiting for the afternoon and evening.  She just came down form Milwaukee a few days ago.  She is staying with my SIL as we have stairs that are just too hard for her to get up and down.  She is 94 and frankly the most amazing person.  I have written about her in the past, I am blessed to have her in my life.  She is now suffering from short term memory loss, bless her.  She repeats the same things 4, 5, 19 times and asks with the same sense of urgency and passion.  She kept asking me what I was making and who it was for.  Well after you answer, me, me, me, 19 times it gets to sound a bit selfish, but it is not.  Who better to create for than myself.  I can pick the perfect color, weight of yarn, style of pattern and hopefully fit.  I can adjust the pattern to my liking and rip the whole thing out if it doesn't work. 

I deserve it.

So with that in mind I would like to show you my first finished project of the year.  The chevron crochet sweater I discussed previously.  I am really not a fan of chevron so I'd like to rename it the gentle ripple sweater, but since I did not write the pattern I can't do that.  I had just under 400 yards of yarn to make this sweater, so I knew it would be more like a shrug or vest.  I just kind of went with it until I ran out of yarn.  I already had the button and the yarn, so I didn't even have to run to the store for supplies.

  It fits snugly even though I went up a hook size and did the medium pattern.  I really love it.  It is made from my favorite Cascade Eco Duo yarn that I am in love with.  So in typical Meredith fashion I have started on number two with Universal Yarn Classic Shades, a beautiful cost effective yarn in a billion beautiful shades.  This one I am changing, well I always do so you should not be surprised.  I am adding sleeves like the pattern, but I am also increasing the hook size right after making the under arms, I want the bottom portion of the sweater to look more lace like and close more in the front.  We'll see how it turns out, and because it is for me, I can take my time and just roll with it.  I have decided that while counting my completed projects for the year I am also going to try to count up the yards of yarn I use up for these completed projects.  It might be a fun number to keep track of, so right now I am at 380 yards.  Not bad for January 6.

 Who is this spying on his Mother while she is taking a picture of a sweater hanging from a tree like a crazy person?