A Quick Look Back At 2009...And Goals For 2010

In past years, the week between Christmas and New Years has been a time of reflection. I've spent hours in my journals, writing detailed summaries of the year while exploring my hopes for the year to come. It's been fun, educational, enlightening, time-consuming and oddly profitable.

This year, I'm just gonna keep it simple.

My Creative Endeavors for 2009 can be summed up as such:

In Knitting, I accomplished a total of 34 projects.

1. 4 adult sweaters - 2 of which were samples for a well-known designer
2. 8 shawls
3. 7 pair of socks
4. 7 mini socks (count as only one project)
5. 5 baby jackets - 4 being BSJ's
6. 3 baby bonnets
7. 2 pair of baby booties
8. 2 Jane Austin dresses with matching shrugs
9. 2 hats

For someone who proclaims to be a spinner above all, I only managed to accomplish:

1. All of those samples for the alpaca show *
2. 1 oz. silk singles
3. 2 bobbins of suri/silk (nasty fiber!) singles
4. 1 bobbin of suri (more nasty fiber!) singles
5. 1 skein of lovely 2-ply, made of a Butterfly Girl Designs batt...in fiber I can't name off the top of my head.

More importantly, 2009 was the year of the drop spindle for me, in which I learned to love and appreciate the beauty of such a simple, but elegant, tool. I've only spun one ball of merino with my drop spindle so far, but I see this becoming a tool that I turn to more and more over the years....especially now that I have a variety of different spindles in sizes and weights suited to just about any spinning project I can dream up.

*I should point out that the alpaca spinning job took up an entire six weeks of my life, during which I did NOTHING else.

My only other creative output was (sadly) that I bought fabric and cut out the pieces for a quilt. Seems like there should be more, don't you think?

Now for the Exciting Part....my.....

GOALS FOR 2010

1. Cardigan for my husband. (It is his year!)
2. Cardis for both girls
3. 1 shawl/month - using ONLY materials and patterns in my stash (More on this probably tomorrow.)
4. Finally get the Princess shawl underway.
5. Build a daily spinning practice - even if it's just a few minutes each day.
6. Knit more with my handspun.
7. Make the quilt.
8. Also sew up the project bags that I have pieces for. (Which is quite a few!)
9. Work on some embroidery.
10. Begin knitting sweaters for myself as soon as I hit my goal.
11. Make more little projects - like mittens and hats.
12. Do some Fair Isle/Stranded Colorwork.
13. Work through stash, buying as little as possible.
14. Write more.
15. Design some lace....finally getting those ideas out of my head and onto the needles.
16. Say NO to energy-sucking projects which are wolves in sheep's clothes.

That should just about do it. As always, please remember this is not a hard and fast list, but just a jumping off point for the year to come. Who knows how it will all play out in the end!