Happy New Year friends! I wish you all many blessings and much happiness in 2015.
I really like to make basic goals relating to knitting and following along with them during the year. Not only do they keep me on track as far as achieving, or coming close to achieving, particular goals, but it also provides a nice look at what I’ve accomplished at the end of the year.
First a quick look at December of 2014. Things were pretty quiet on the blog with all of the holiday hubbub, but in real life I was incredibly productive. Especially the week of Christmas, when I was at my parents’ house with very little to distract me. I plan on writing up some FO posts in the near future, but the gist is that I finished my mom’s Christmas present (a cowl I designed), my Stoney Brook (finally!), my Outlander MKAL shawl, and two hats that I also designed.
Goal re-cap
Goal 1: No buying yarn I did buy yarn—to make one of the hats, so I used most of the yarn I bought and feel okay about that.
Goal 1b: Knit the queue Didn’t knit anything from the queue this month—giving life to the ideas living in my head means I haven’t been knitting any of the already existing amazing patterns I want. Have to find some sort of balance there.
Goal 2: Selfless Knitting Mom’s Christmas gift!
Goal 3: Finished WIPs THREE OF THEM.
Last year was full of ups and downs overall, but specific to knitting, I feel pretty good about what I accomplished. I knit fewer projects in general (Ravelry link, must be signed in) than I have in previous years but I’m pretty happy with the amount that I was able to knit, especially considering how busy and stressful the year was. I don’t anticipate 2015 being much better in terms of productivity—especially now that I have a Nintendo 3DS and can play LEGO games whenever I want (eeee!)—but I do have some big plans and plenty of yarn to achieve them, so here’s hoping for a good year of knitting!
As for goals in 2015, they look a lot like last year’s goals.
Goal 1: No buying yarn unless for specific projects that will be cast on immediately That sounds like a cheat, but let me explain—apparently this is the year of the babies, and many people I care about are having babies, and I’d like to knit for them; however, I don’t have a huge selection of superwash yarn in my stash, and if people have specific color schemes I like to try to comply (though I will also deviate and do whatever I want because I can, dammit). SO, I am allowing myself that “out” in case I feel I need to buy a couple of skeins of yarn to whip up something for a new little future knitter. But otherwise, I am not looking to purchase yarn in general—I’ve been resisting sales and whatnot because I’m kind of at saturation level.
Goal 2: Finish WIPs I’ve got some long-lingering projects in progress and they need to get off the needles.
Goal 3: Simplify This is a nebulous goal, to be sure. But part of this means knitting from patterns I already own (knit from the queue), or sorting through my knitting accessories and divesting of things that aren’t getting a lot of love or that I just don’t use (do I really need multiple sets of interchangeable needles? NO because that leads to endless WIPs), or destashing when I finally realizing that I’m just not likely to knit the 100+ sock patterns or whatever I have in my queue (not that I won’t ever knit them but I’m not going to knit them soon or quickly and having all these single skeins of yarn lying around is giving me hives).
Maybe these goals are a reflection of a minimalist phase—I’m kind of at a point where I want to just throw out everything I own because it’s too much stuff—or are symptomatic of larger issues going on in my life (nothing bad, just present and weighing), but I’m hoping I can use these as guidelines to help craft a happy and productive knitting life for 2015.
And as a bonus, I’m hoping to keep up with Year of Making, which I posted about in the last Last Week on the Web. Not only am I hoping to do some quality knitting in the year, but I’m also on a mission to do more at-home cooking and maybe spread out into some other crafts (like all of the embroidery projects I have laying about), so hopefully there will be plenty of making to showcase.
What are you hoping to accomplish in 2015? Tackling any new crafts or crafting skills?
