This Year, Next Year

Here we are again, a round up of everything (an exaggeration) that has happened in my life this year. Also for a change I'd thought I'd combine the year in review with plans for next year.

And for a change I am going to start by saying happy anniversary to my lovely husband and thank you for another great year.

On the knitting (crochet) front I had 46 projects on the needles; of which 7 were frogged, including a project that I mentioned this time last year. Of the remaining 39, 5 were carried over from 2012, including one that is always being carried over, and 9 are still on the needles. That is way too many, although one of those is the aforementioned never-ending project and one is a project that stays in the car and one just needs the ends sewn in. There's also the project that got put to one side as I needed contrasting yarn and now I need beads so I have decided to finish another beaded project before going back to this one. Most projects got pushed aside when I started making baby items. By year-end I have made, 1 hat, 3 dishcloths/washcloths, 5 shawls, 4 pairs of socks, 2 baby blankets, a skirt, 3 baby jackets, 3 pairs of booties, a baby hat, a sleeveless cardigan, a scarf, a baby dress and cardigan, a sweater for a teddy bear and 2 sections for oddball blankets. 16 items were gifts and 3 for charity.

As well as having a new look for my blog this year, I added 2 yarn counters. One shows the amount of yarn I have knitted and crocheted. It is from Knitmeter.com and although it looks cool I'm not sure if it serves any useful purpose. it would probably make sense if I had counted the meterage in this year. So I'm not sure if I will continue counting in 2014. Also I added a count of balls of yarn in and balls of yarn out as an encouragement to use up stash. In fact, if I hadn't had to make baby clothes and therefore had to buy suitable yarn, the yarn out would have exceeded the yarn in.

Which brings me to my plans for 2014. Which is to use up my stash. OK I know I say that every year but having gone through my stash, it is really doable. The only spanner being the babies, as I can't not knit for them and although I have yarn left over from this year's projects, it is not enough of any one thing to make something useful. (Although it will be enough for booties and hats for the next round of babies.) So knitting for the babies will cause me to buy yarn and stop me from using stash. But I would like to make a serious dent into my stash so that I can buy at the next yarn crawl.

Wishing everybody a fantastic 2014