Getting Started on my Crafty Work in Progress for 2026

It's the start of the year, and I have many goals I'd like to accomplish. However, this is also the year I get married! And over the holiday season, as I was making last minute Christmas gifts, it started to occur to me while sitting at my desk, staring at the growing pile of various crafty Works in Progress (WIP), I have stuff to finish. The pile of WIP began to glare at me and express their desire to be completed by my July wedding. While I have no illusions of completing all my WIP by July, I think I can work through a few at least.

Chipping away at my crafty work in progress pile

The first project I decided to begin my Complete WIP Mission was a hand towel I started by in 2021. I only remember it was 2021, because I had just moved to Crown Heights, Brooklyn in NY. My cousin and I had moved into a 2 bedroom apartment that we were able to afford primarily because many NY landlords were still charging Covid prices on rent. Most of the money I had at the time was spent on that first month of rent plus the deposit, but we needed things. Like hand towels. With a spool of cotton yarn that I had been gifted at Christmas (we moved from Indiana to NY in February) I was determined to make whatever I could to save on expenses.

It was a noble thought and a valiant effort, but alas once I was halfway done I must have gotten bored with the progress because I didn't pick up working on the hand towel again until last month - December 2025.

Picking up where I left off

This poor half completed hand towel. I have moved this unfinished hand towel, with every intention of completing it, from Crown Heights to Flatbush, then back to Anderson, Indiana and now to Daleville - where the yarn was gifted to me in the first place.

Every time that I moved this project, I've tried to keep the same crochet hook with it so that when I did eventually pick up where I left off I would have the correct hook size and not change the tension. Here is what I did wrong and how it happened, and how it effected the completed piece:

I wasn't sure about the hook size

After the first move, I was never entirely sure that the hook I had with the project was the correct one because of how many times the hooks in the WIP bag (at one point it was just a single bag) would always get loose and collect at the bottom of the bag. I later learned to put all the pieces of a WIP into it's own bag before throwing them into a larger bag with all the rest.

I was using a different kind of hook

In addition to not knowing if the hook size was correct, and I had misplaced the ball band ages ago, I no longer use the kind of crochet hook I started with. If you're a crocheter, or you've been around crocheters, you know the one. It's metal, grey and basic in appearance. They are the easiest to acquire and are ideal for beginners and crafters not prone to hand pain. At some point after putting down the unfished hand towel and getting my fist office job in Midtown, I began using ergodynamic crochet hooks by Furls.

If you crochet and don't know about ergodynamic hooks, I would recommend looking into them especially if you experience hand or arm pain from crocheting. I love the ones that Furls makes, although I haven't tried any others.

The metal crochet hook I think I started with, the wooden Furls crochet hook I next tried to use, and the plastic Furls crochet hook I settled with.

I guessed and got it wrong

For the sake of consistency, I tried to work on the hand towel with the metal grey 5.5mm hook that I can only guess was the one I had used back in 2021. It wasn't working for me, it was just awkward and uncomfortable after 4 years of ergodynamic hooks. I pulled out my wooded 5.5 mm hook and tried again to recreate the same pattern from the stitches in the first half.

Two of the things I love about crocheting are:

1. It is a very forgiving craft. You can simply pull the yarn to undo what you've done and begin again. In some cases, you can even just add or subtract a stich to fix a small scale problem.

2. It can be very obvious right away when you're doing something wrong. In the case of the hand towel, with the first row I could tell something was off.

The first row I did in 2025 was far to wavy, like the row was wider than the rest of the rows in the pattern. My first thought was that I got the hook size wrong, so I undid that row and began again with a smaller hook, a 4.5mm instead of 5.5mm. When I worked that same pattern, but it was still just a little too wavy, I thought I had the hook size right but the stiches wrong. I tried taking out the extra chain stich in between each sc, ch, sc cluster. I worked this pattern, with the 4.5mm crochet hook for several rows before noticing something was still off.

You can see here how halfway through, the towel seems to tapper in a little and continues on with a different width.

Embracing the mistakes

By the time I was too many rows in and the end of this project was so close, I noticed a difference in the width of the towel. It's not a terrible difference and when it's folded in half hanging on the oven door you'll never know. That is, until you try to fold it and notice that the corners just barely don't meet perfectly. This tells me that the hook size was still wrong, that I probably should have kept with the 5.5mm, or even a 5mm hook.

The sides are also not as smooth in the second half as in the first half. After nearly completely the hand towel, while I was cleaning up my crochet board on Pinterest, I actually found what I think is the pattern I used for the towel.

Here is the pattern by Jessica Underwood on the website Stitching Together

The pattern specifically says not to chain at the end of the row! What had I been doing from December to that point? Ending the row with a chain, which explains why the sides were more wavy, less smooth. But again, it's not something that truly bothers me at this point. I am embracing the mistakes made during the nearly 5 year process.

You can tell in this photos, how the edge is much smoother on the bottom and more wavy at the top.

The hand towel is finally done!

I moved to NY in February 2021, so let's say I started working on this perfectly imperfect hand towel that March. Now here I am in January 2026, having just completed the hand towel - that's 2 months shy of 5 years! I'm rather excited about my hand towel. I would like to more emphasis on handmade items, clothing, and gifts over the next few years - universe knows I've got enough yarn for it!

What's next for my new hand towel?

Storage. How underwhelming right? When we got engaged, my parents suggested we move in with them to save on costs while planning the wedding. It really didn't take us long to make the decision to move in with them. We were already outgrowing our little rented house in Anderson and thinking about buying a house - all of the pieces just kind of fell together. All of that to say, the hand towel will find itself in storage until we buy our own place. When the time comes to unpack and set up our new home, I'll find this hand towel and place it in the kitchen and think "wow, I made that! It took me five years, but I made that!"