A Review, a Preview, and a Riddle

Some love it, others hate it: those obligatory "Best-of"-posts at the end of the year. I'm a huge fan of those posts! Why? Because when I write my own review-post, I flip through my archiv and discover things that I had already forgotten, so it's a nice review for myself, to see what I have accomplished this year.

I also love those 2012-summary-posts on other blogs, because when you're following lots of crochet blogs (and some of them just recently), it just happens that you miss some beautiful projects - and in those end-of-the-year-posts, you suddenly find them (again), and have all the good stuff in one post.

So let's see, what has been going on in k-town this year?

The bigger projects were the two blankets I've made this year. One was the wedding-blanket I've made for my friend in spring, the other one was the Christmas blanket I've made for my Mom later this year.

The Wedding Blanket

The Christmas Blanket

A fun and interactive highlight of my crochet year was the 3rd Annual Knitting and Crochet Blog Week in April. During this week I also introduced you to my little IKEA-stool that I had covered:

Frosta: something a little bit different

Although I still enjoy it, I haven't made as many crochet covered stones as last year. Here they are:

1: birthday-stone for my sister-in-law, 2: a gift for John's sister, 3: a gift for a friend

 And here are some more smaller items I've made this year, they were mainly gifts:

1: three Kindle-covers, 2: my first baby-hat, 3: a smartphone-cover, 4: a potholder dress for John's Mom, 5: a new pair of potholders, 6: Easter Bunnies, 7: potholder dresses for my Mom, 8: Birthday Potholders

 The most popular posts were the free patterns I've shared this year:

Little Spring Mandala

Spiral Coasters

Christmas Bowl

Last but not least, this year I've worked my way through Edie Eckman's book "Beyond the Square" - I'm sure you didn't miss The Grand Finale, did you?

Beyond the Square: The Grand Finale

Oh, and one more thing that's dear to me: I've started a second crochet-site, "The Crochet Boulevard".

It's a place dedicated to crochet link-parties only: usually there's one theme-party and one free-topic link-party every month. The whole month of December was reserved for Winter- and Christmas-Crochet, but there's still a poll going on for the first theme-party in 2013 - have you placed your vote yet?

And talking about 2013, I think it'll be a very exciting year, both in real life and on my blog. The spring will probably be filled with wedding-preparations, but there are still a few weeks of winter, which will hopefully be filled with lots of crochet-posts, both by myself and by amazing guest-bloggers.
Some of you might like to hear that I've also started a Facebook-page for my blog (although I'm not quite sure if that even makes sense, but we'll see). I had already created this page a few months ago, but then I forgot about it. But now I see more and more crochet blogs being on Facebook, too, and I thought - why not give it a try and see what happens, and so I've published the yesterday. So, if you're on Facebook, too, maybe you want to give Made in K-town the thumbs-up! :)
I'm also thinking about starting an online-shop (probably on Etsy) to sell my handmade items - but this is still future talk, I haven't given more thought to that yet.

Let's get down to the real things instead, things I've made but haven't published yet: the squares for Jill's Beautiful Blogger Blanket 2013, a custom-made R2D2-hat (the first item I've ever sold), a custom-made toilet paper cover (yes, indeed...), a beautiful shawl made with a vintage pattern, the start of a brand-new blanket,... and this:

This is my New Year's Riddle for you: tell me - what could it be? Some hints: the size of this item is approximately the size of a small dish towel (but of course it isn't one, otherwise I wouldn't have mentioned it), and it's already finished and ready to serve its purpose (i.e. it's not part of something bigger). Can you guess what it is?

With this riddle I'll leave you for today, and I'll post the solution some time next year.

In Germany we say "einen guten Rutsch (ins neue Jahr)!", a literal translation would be something like "have a good slide (into the new year)!" I kinda like that! :)

So, thanks for your visits in k-town this year, I hope to see you all happy and healthy in 2013,

Have a good slide everyone!