mid-year review

amazing yarn bombing in Brooklyn

While I'm feeling reflective, I thought I'd sit down and see how I'm doing in terms of achieving the resolutions I set back in January.

To review, my knitting goals in 2014 are:
  • Goal #1: Knit down my stash. 
Status: Okay. To date, I've finished 20 projects this year (holy cow! I didn't realize that!). And 14 of those were using yarn I purchased prior to this year. Unfortunately, my rate of purchasing yarn is not keeping up with how fast I am knitting it. So I really need to commit myself to some serious yarn dieting for the rest of this year to truly reduce my stash to a size I am more comfortable with. I'm realizing that I might need to force myself to enter my stash on Ravelry so I can better understand what I have when I'm browsing patterns I'm considering ... I've avoided it prior to now, since that would mean forcing myself to acknowledge how large my stash really is (yup, in denial!). So my goals are to finally document my stash, make some plans for it that excite me (like my summer plans I discussed yesterday), and formally start a "cold sheep" yarn diet today (zero yarn purchases). I have some AMAZING yarn that I'll never knit if I let myself get more!

  • Goal #2: Finish, frog, or otherwise eliminate my current WIPs.
I forced myself to publicly list my WIPs earlier this year. Sadly, I've only eliminated one item from that list so far, #11 my vanilla latte socks. This month I commit to frogging at least one of these projects!

This one depends on how strict I am with myself. If I only count patterns purchased prior to this year, then I've completed eight projects that utilized patterns from my library this year. Four of those patterns were from PDF files, and four were from actual books. The remaining projects utilized either free patterns or patterns I purchased this year. I haven't knit anything from one of my (many) magazine subscriptions yet this year, so that would be a good goal to devote myself to for the remainder of the year.

Thank goodness we still have a little more than half a year left!

5 comments:

Anonymous said...

I took some time last summer to put my stash into Ravelry and I like to think it helps me to plan before I start a new project. It also makes it easier to add the 2 or 3 skeins I tend to purchase on trips to it since the bulk of my madness is already entered. I tend to knit for other people more than myself and also to buy yarn for those projects because I (selfishly) do not want to share my stash yarn. Best of luck with your decision! If you do decide to put your stash on Ravelry, I highly recommend getting the Yarma app for iPhone to upload your pictures directly. The quality isn't super high, but it gets the job done and pretty quickly!

Emily said...

Great tip, thanks!

Unknown said...

Good luck in your goals! Also, if you find you don't utilize your knitting magazine subscriptions, maybe look to see if you local library has free magazines. Mine has them online - I can check out full copies of KnitScene and Interweave Knits and keep them forever. It's only a digital copy, however. I had no idea libraries had this available until this year, so I like passing it along. :)

Emily said...

WOW! I have to check this out! If my library offers this, that would be amazing!

Christine N said...

I'm jealous of how productive you've been this year. Keep it up!

I've been silently participating in your challenge again this year.
Here is a link to my mid year review as well:
http://knitcorner.blogspot.com/2014/06/mid-year-library-challenge-progress.html

2021 year in review

  Who would have thought that the second year of a pandemic would be worst than the first, in terms of crafting mojo? Not I. But this chart ...