Mid-Year Round Up

I usually do an end of year review and a start of year plan. I’m not sure if I have written a serious review during the year before.

The reason for one now is that I am feeling relaxed about my stash. It’s almost as if adding to it made me less stressed, not more. Also when discussing the recent LYS sale with my husband he said: it will get knit eventually. So now I don’t feel obligated to knit it all up quickly and not buy anything else. And the yarn I purchased for specific patterns has been used so I have no pressure from those.

I still have not used all the previous closing sale yarn. But I did start and finish one garment with such yarn this year and have chosen a pattern and gauge swatched for another cardigan. The yarn won’t all be used by the end of the year. I am OK with that as I would rather have fewer projects on the go and finish them than start projects just to get the yarn on the needles.

I still have two works-in-progress that were started before the beginning of the year. One of them I turned into a year-long project, so, obviously, no expectation of being finished before December and the other one gets pushed aside every time I start a non-easy project. Looking at you Pi Shawl. Speaking of which, that should be finished on time towards the end of July. It turns out that it is an easy lace pattern. Also, that project is my oldest 2021 project. This is encouraging because that means I am finishing projects that I am starting. (Yes, crochet project, even you will be finished.)

I have ten projects in progress. Hmm…haven’t I said four is the ideal number? Let’s see if I can justify this number down. Two are year-long projects, two are long-term blankets and one is vacation knitting. That brings it down to five. I have one easy project and one crochet project, which means that three projects are not so easy – i.e. require concentration. That is actually better than I was expecting.

Having written this out, it is not too hard to keep my WIPs in check. As long as I have some variety I should be able to keep it that way.