Monday 4 January 2016

New Year Goals

I'm not especially one for New Year's Resolutions but I like the idea of having a vague plan for what I want to achieve during the year. I thought today I'd share a few of the things I'd like to achieve in 2016

Firstly, and rather easily, I'd like to get this sweater finished! I'm on to the collar now which will take a while as it's quite big and needs some short row shaping. After that it's just pocket linings and sewing in the ends. Should be straight forward...

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Just before Christmas the lovely Chrisknits sent me a pattern on ravelry. It's the gorgeous cabled cardigan Jurisfiction. I've decided to include this as one of my New Year goals because it's seamed. I've never knitted a seamed garment before as I'm not really a fan of sewing. The thing is though this limits the patterns I look at and I've also read that having seams can help support the garment so it hangs nicely when you wear it. Hopefully setting this out on here will be the motivation I need ;)

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The third project I want to tackle is a colourwork sweater for me. It might be My Kind of Sweater which I've had in my queue for a while or it might be something different. I haven't done much colourwork at all and I want to have a go at it again.

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The very "knit-worthy" Mr Soaring Sheep loves his knitted sweaters so I'd like to make another for him at some point. He really likes the Jones pattern and would love one in the same purpley pink yarn as on the ravelry page. But if I'm making a Jurisfiction for me then maybe I'll be a bit fed up of cables? The other pattern I like is Adam which has contiguous sleeves and is a bit plainer. It's bottom up construction though which I'm not the biggest fan of. Hmmm....

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Lastly I have the traditional yarn stash related goal. I'm not too worried about using up my stash this year or not buying yarn for a certain amount of time like I've done before but I would like to be more mindful of my yarn buying. So instead I'm going to try to be "Stash Neutral" this year. I'm allowed to buy yarn but I'm not allowed to buy more yardage than I've knitted up through the year. I'm not sure if I'm going to try to earn the yardage by knitting it up first before buying new or whether I'll just keep a record all the way through and see how on track I am. I've had a couple of ideas for some old stash that I'd like to get knitted up so hopefully I'll have had a good turn over of yarns by the end of the year.


So that's my short list of goals for 2016. There are of course lots of other things I'd like to knit, more socks for example, but hopefully this will be a good starting point to get me challenging myself a bit more.

Does anyone else have some craft related resolutions or goals for this year? If you've blogged about them I'd love to have a read if you can share the link below

10 comments:

  1. Stash neutral is a lovely way of putting it. I have a rule of "stash first" - shopping at home before I look to the siren call of the yarn shop and that helps to keep me pretty neutral because if I buy something I generally want to knit it right then!

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    1. I like your rule, although I think I'd probably cheat and come up with projects that I didn't have the stashed yarn for. And then as I order yarn online I'd end up adding a couple of other projects worth to get the free postage... etc. I'm very good at justifying things at the time lol

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  2. I don't really go for RESOLUTIONS either, but have just published my goals and then looked here to see you have had the same idea. I wish you the best of luck! I only allowed myself to buy souvenir yarn last year, and I'm going to try stick with that this year :) Happy 2016 :) xx

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  3. I love the idea of Stash Neutral. I'm tracking my stash yardage this year to see what happens over the year. Hopefully it will keep my spending down, but I'll have to wait and see. Here is my post of goals for 2016:
    http://simplyplaying.blogspot.com/2016/01/endings-and-new-beginnings.html

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    1. Sounds like we're coming from a similar place, hopefully we'll both finish this year with lots of satisfying projects completed and less stash than when we started lol

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  4. I hope that you can complete all of your goals this year in great knitting style! xx

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  5. Great laid out plans here. I do have a few goals. Been busy blogging about other stuff that has priority. Will sure to get to it this week.

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  6. I will be happy to help you through the seaming of Jurisdiction. Maybe do a tutorial when I get my pieces knit up. I like the Adam pattern. Learned the knitted set in sleeves ages ago, but never used the knowledge I gained. Maybe that should be one of intentions this year?

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  7. That may be a short list, but sounds ambitious to me, the knitter who has yet to knit a wearable sweater. I'm also afraid of seaming, but I think you can do it (not so sure about me...)

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