Last year at this time I decided that for 2011, I wanted to pursue what I termed “mindful crochet”, wherein my thoughts and my body would be focused on the same project.

Over the year, I found that coordinated mind/body focus resulted in fewer errors and greater enjoyment.

Having achieved some measure of success with setting my intentions last year, I decided to do the same this year. My new goal: finish more projects than I start.

As part of that effort, I will update my blog with new posts Thursday through Tuesday; on Wednesday, however, I will repost previous entries. This should help create a day with more uninterrupted time to manage the back log of unfinished objects that have accumulated.

Today I got to put my intentions into action.

Having gathered the tools and materials needed to complete the sixty-four small, textured squares for the textured squares afghan, I got to work.

After sorting through various piles of crochet pieces, I found sixteen squares that have accumulated over the course of trumpet lessons and other small packets of time:

and finished the day having made six additional squares and woven in a couple of dozen of the ends of the small squares. I then joined them into five of the 16 the 2×2 arrays I need for the finished afghan:

I want to finish all sixteen of the 2×2 arrays before I begin the adding the border so that I can see what patterns emerge from a large grouping of the small, textured squares:

As with last year’s intentions, I don’t have any idea where this year’s efforts will lead me, but I am am confident that the journey will be an interesting one, and if you want to read (or re-read) last year’s new year’s post, you can find it right here.

Video Tutorial: How to make the crochet textured square/magic motif