Yarn Along - First Finished Object of the Year

Well, I did get what I wanted for Christmas, but not what I wanted for New Year's.  Instead of starting out the New Year with the intentions I wrote about in my last post, I started the year with a stomach virus and all the ickiness that goes along with that sort of sickness.  I'm simply going to call this a false start and begin again this coming weekend when hopefully we are all back to our normal selves, because, of course, it hit all three of us.  Only our poor black lab Easy escaped unscathed, unwalked sadly, but at least healthy with lots of family snuggle time.

I did manage to finish a knitting project as I was only half a dozen rows from completion.  Doing a couple rows a day in-between bouts of discomfort and 3 days later my first finished object of the year is done.  It's yet another, albeit now the last, set of 4 Cozy Coasters by Joelle Hoverson from her book More Last Minute Knitted Gifts.  I used Frog Tree Sport Melange Alpaca yarn held double and US 9/5.5mm needles to make a 4 inch/10 cm square, which I found to be a better size for our mugs than the much smaller size the pattern as written creates.  They will be the first addition to the knitted Christmas Gifts box for 2017 making them the absolute earliest knitted Christmas gift I ever completed which tickles me to no end.  The fact that I finally used up the yarn I purchased nearly four year's ago is just icing on the cake as the saying goes.

As for reading, this being Yarn Along and all, I just finished Sheepish:  Two Women, Fifty Sheep and Enough Wool to Save the Planet  by Catherine Friend.  I borrowed it from the Library on a whim and was I delighted with a wonderful story!  It's about a woman whose partner rather drags her into becoming a sheep farmer, the trials of being a writer and full time farmer and her finally understanding "Fiber Freaks" as she calls them in the beginning of the book.  It was a nice mix of reality (the romance of having my own sheep is now utterly gone), humor (animals are funny after all) and journey of discovery.  The fun fact that their farm is only a few hours from where I live was such an added treat to discover while reading, that we may actually go visit if they still do tours.  

Hopefully your beginning to 2017 went the way of your heart's desire and you are all healthy and well.  Are you finishing old projects or starting the year afresh?  I 'd love to hear all about it!

Intentions for 2017

It's Friday night and I am home writing as I sit in my favorite chair, "Mama's chair" as it's called 'round our house.  Everyone respects this, well, everyone except for the dog that is, but she readily moves when I want my spot back so I forgive her transgression.  This is where I do most of my creative work, that being mainly knitting with a little writing thrown in too.  Blogging though has been far from my thoughts for some time now.  I tried a quick stint at video podcasting this past summer to perk my creative juices, and while fun it was quite a lot more work than I can regularly fit into my days.  It was an attempt to give myself some joy and something to look forward too.  You see, like many others I had a pretty stressful, awful 2016 where I just didn't have the wherewithal to share my joy of knitting with all that was going on in our lives and world.  Now that the new year is just around the bend I find myself wanting to put my intentions for 2017 into the world.  Figuring, probably naively, that if I set my intentions for the new year in print, give it my focus, they might actually come to fruition.  So hear goes.

I intend to make more family together time.  We have a very small house so we are usually all together within sight and talking range, but most often we are parallel playing as in we are each doing our own thing.  I'm wanting to add simple activities like read aloud story time, a movie night, a game night, family walk and park times where all three of us, four is you count our dog Easy, are focusing on the same thing.  Where I put down my knitting and my son and husband walk away for their individual games or books and we enjoy each other.  

I intend to be successful in my endeavors.  By this I mean slowing down enough to create items of quality in my knitting, house upkeep and homeschooling.  I often find myself rushing to finish, usually short-cutting some element or someone along the way.  2016 was a year of frogging most of my knitting, partially finished home projects and a lot of homeschool angst between me and my son.  So, I will slow down this year, take each thing as it comes and try my best.

I intend to take care of myself mind and body.  I do well about caring for my mental health and have a good support network set up.  But my body I abuse.  I simply don't move enough as my favorite activities of reading and knitting are sedentary.  This Christmas my back had had enough and my muscles seized up on one side landing me in bed on ice for much of the Holiday.   It was a bit of a wake up call.  I won't make any lofty goals, but will simply break up my day with stretches and try to get myself out walking more.

I intend to keep up with my friendships.  In general I have a tendency towards holing up at home as often going out seems too difficult.  This is an aspect of my depression where I need to push myself to go see people.  I will then have a lovely time with them, but the getting there can be hard.  So, my friends, bless them, might not see me for long spurts of time.  This year I will make a better effort of seeing them all regularly and not let excuses get in the way.

Really the underlying theme in all of these intentions is slowing down.  Which part of me finds funny as we're not exactly living in the fast lane, and yet we haven't learned to make time for stillness.  That resting and reflecting are just as important as action.  I use the word intention as I find setting a definite goal is an easy road to failure for me which leads to depression, which leads to everything going off the rails.  My husband taught me years ago that instead of saying "Today I will paint the bathroom." say "Today I will work on painting the bathroom."  Small difference, but in the first if I don't finish painting I have failed.  Whereas in the second if I do any little thing towards the painting of the bathroom I am a success.  So, I encourage you, if you're so inclined, to make "intentions" for the new year instead of "resolutions" or "goals".  Then, now this is the important part, pat yourself on the back every time you make some effort towards those intentions.  After all, we all need to be kinder and gentler with ourselves. 
Happy New Year everyone!

Endings and New Beginnings

Ringing in the new year with a new knitting project!  Banded Turtleneck by Kathy Merrick from Vogue Knitting Magazine Fall 2010.  Using Jamieson's Shetland Aran and Clara Yarn Shetland 1.0 yarn and loving it!

This time of year has many of us acessing of how the previous year went and how the new year will move forward.  Which got me thinking I'd do a little recap here on my knitting in 2015 while sharing my vision for future knitting in 2016.

Year of 2015

Knitting Projects - 42

Yards Knitted - 19,734

Yards Spun - 1564

Ending Stash Yardage - 27,566

It was quite the bonny year for finishing knitting projects.  The Knit Girllls Stash Dash really motivated me to finish/fix a couple of my husbands' vests while also getting a lot of my gift knitting done for Christmas.  Stash Dash 2015 ran from the middle of May until the middle of August.  I completed 19 projects during that time.  It was a fun challenge, although I didn't get a lot of gardening and house projects done last summer since I was pretty much solely focused on knitting.  That really was the only downside.  

I toyed with not buying yarn and didn't do too well at that, but I did do a lot of yarn stash assessment.  After attending this retreat run by Stephanie Pearl - McPhee (I know I keep mentioning it, but it was such a game changing event for me) I learned a lot more about yarn, and figured out what qualities are most important to me.  My number 1 quality I want my yarn to possess is durability as I really want what I knit to have a long life.  Now, lots of things factor in durability, twist, strength of fiber, length of fiber etc. etc.  But basically yarn marked "wool" and not a specific brand of wool such as "merino" are usually more durable as they are a mix of many wool fibers.  Shetland and other long wool breeds are also more durable and less likely to pill as the fiber has more twists per staple length than a short hair cashmere would.  So, I really looked at my stash and sold off what wasn't durable to my standards and added in more yarn that was, namely a lot of Shetland found it's way into my stash.  I'm feeling a lot more content with what I have and since softer less durable yarns are what is popular now their siren call isn't affecting me as it once would have. 

Year of 2016

My main goal for this coming year is to be more mindful.  More mindful of what pattern I am knitting, what yarn I am using, and the when and during time that I am knitting.  Sometimes I switch to auto pilot or get too caught up in what is coming next to really enjoy the current moment.  So, I'm going to slow down and focus more on quality versus quantity this year.

My project goals for the year 2016 are to knit another sweater for my mom, a vest for my husband, and 2 sweaters for me.  Anything more will be grand, but I'm not going to plan so extensively this year as I feel it pushes me along at too fast a pace.

My stash goals for the year 2016 are to make it smaller.  That's why I thought I'd keep track of yards in the stash which I can track through my stash page on Ravelry.  I have all of the yarn for the above projects so I don't need to purchase more, but I won't come down on myself if I do add in a few skeins.  Knowing myself as I do, I think another idea to help me not purchase more yarn is to not go to any festivals this year.  I get wrapped up in the moment and can't help buying.  And really, I still have un-knit yarn from the last few festivals I went to last year.  So, a year off seems prudent as I am the type of knitter that when I have too mush stash gets overwhelmed and bogged down.  I like some stash, but too large a stash and guilt overtakes the fun.

I have no spinning goals for the coming year as I haven't really been in the mood to spin for a while now.  Thus, I'll just wait and see how the year pans out.

General goals for the year are to get more home improvement projects completed, focus more on my son's homeschooling and focus more on doing things together as a family.  I'm really looking forward to the year ahead of me and I hope you are too.  

Wishing you all a healthy and happy 2016!

Joining in with Nicole for Keep Calm Craft On.