My first was a goal of 15 projects in 2015. So far I have completed 8 projects and currently have 3 in progress, so I would say I'm doing pretty well on this front. Since I'm only working, not going to school, I have more free time than ever to work on knitting and making my own clothes has taken on a lot of importance to me. I'm also learning to sew to reduce my fast fashion dependence.
As a subset of the first goal, I aimed to make at least 2 garments and 1 pair of selbuvotter. After completing my Lewis sweater, I was dreaming of all the garments that were possible. I recently started a Gemini tee and have been knitting merrily away at it for the past few days, so I think I'm making short work of this goal. I finished a pair of selbuvotter, the dala horses, but they were started last year and I'm trying to decide if I want to frog them because of their vastly different gauges. I'll start a new pair later in the year, I'm sure. I've got summer knits on the brain and wool mittens aren't capturing my imagination right now.
Gemini Tee in progress in KnitPicks Cotlin "Crème Brulee"
The next goal is the one that I knew would present my biggest challenge. I resolved to knit two balls of yarn for every one I bought. It's actually fortunate, because as I joined the third ball of Cotlin to my Gemini sweater last night, the end of the second ball squared me up on my Destash spreadsheet! I've been in the red all year, what with my first time at Madrona, the incredibly low prices of Craftsy's winter sale, and wanting to support some LYS's we've come across during day trips around Washington. I can now focus on building up some sweater quantities. Even though I'm only now in the black ball-wise, I've been steadily decreasing the yardage of my stash. As it stands right now, I've used about 1100.4 more yards than I have purchased, a conservative estimate, since I haven't included the two contrasting colors of Ringo's blanket or the 2nd ball of yarn on A's socks.
Slowing down on my yarn purchases has allowed me to evaluate how I buy yarn. Since I only started making garments this year, my stash is made up of a lot of odd single skeins intended for accessories. It also doesn't very accurately reflect how I like to dress, as I generally stick to neutrals and jewel tones when I purchase clothing. On the contrary, the sweater quantities I buy seem to be in pastel colors for some reason I can't discern. Going forward, I certainly intend to think more about what I already like to wear when making purchases.
The second part of my yarn goal was that I wanted to make an effort to try out different brands of yarn because I tend to stick to less expensive workhorse brands with some forays into expensive single skeins or some Malabrigo here and there. Honestly, I haven't been too successful on this one. Looking at the spreadsheet shows that I am buying brands I haven't before, but I'm tending to use the same old brands in my knitting. Knitpicks, especially. Granted, KP yarns are a large percentage of my stash so that explains why I'm knitting with it so much, but I still need to expand my horizons and use those odd skeins of other brands. I did finally try some madtosh and some Pickles yarn and Lewis is made in an Araucania Itata, but going forward I need to more consciously choose other brands.
The last was to take pictures of everything I knit. I started off strongly, but I've fallen off the wagon. Since warm weather has come around, the thought of donning a pair of alpaca socks or a wool hat has seemed increasingly unpleasant, but Washington weather can surprise you, so I may be back to wanting them soon.
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