Knit Meter

Sunday, December 31, 2017

On The Last Day of the Year

I enjoy this round up of the year because it makes me realize I have knitted more than I thought and reminds me of the lovely yarn in my stash. This year I am even more excited because I do not have any unfinished projects that were on my needles at the beginning of the year. My oldest project was started on 1 August and has languished because the whole KAL experience was annoying. I have decided to continue with the project because I do like it and it will not become another never-ending project.

What haven’t I done this year? Socks. I haven’t knitted any socks this year. Although I did cast on a sock at the beginning of the year but decided the yarn and pattern did not go together. And it has been frogged. Although I have enjoyed knitting socks it was nice to take a break from the knit-alongs which were certainly beginning to feel like a chore and not pleasure, making the theme fit even if I’d rather be knitting something else. This does not mean I will not knit more socks.

Not knitting socks has made me much more mindful of the sock yarn in my stash. Single-skein shawls can turn out too small. Although the first one shown in this post is a lovely shawl and nice size, I didn’t want to make one-skein projects just for the sake of it. Yarns were paired to make this shawl an extra skein of yarn was purchased to make this shawl and extra skeins were purchased on the yarn crawl to go with yarns in my stash.

In the fall of 2016 I said I was going to take a break from charity knitting. I did not take a complete break and made 6 ½ hats. I am happier that I am not stressing myself to complete something every month. I am going to use up all the “hat” yarn I have in stash and then decide where I would like to put my efforts. I am also abandoning KnitMeter. I liked it as a way to record amount knitted and comparing it with amount bought but it stopped working for me earlier this year. i.e I could not log in and contacts to the owners were not successful. I have the information in a spreadsheet, I just have to decide how I want to show all the information.

I am very excited to report that by the end of the year, the number of skeins/balls of yarn started in new projects was more than the number of new skeins added to my stash and the total length knitted was more than the total in. I’m not sure when I was last able to say that my stash was going down.

Interestingly, looking back at 2016’s post, the number of projects in that year was low, but 2017 was about the same number. I had 30 projects started this year and I frogged 6 of them. And of those frogged projects there is only one where the yarn has not been used in another project. This may not be a year for a high number of projects but it was a year for finishing things. I started the year with eight projects on the go all of which I finished and even the frogged project was restarted and finished. It feels so nice to have new projects that I want to work on.

I am starting the new year with five projects on the go including the project mentioned at the beginning. Two of these I started in December and the other two are crochet projects for charity. I am enjoying working on all of them and I am looking forward to another year of stash reduction.

And another wonderful year with my husband.

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