Normally I dislike sharing yearly goals, but for some reason, this year is different.

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First, I learned last year that joining project specific knit-a-longs is not for me. Invariably, as soon as I join, I no long want to make the item.

So, I’ve decided to participate in a year long gift-a-long, started by the wonderful Marce.

The goal is avoid that last minute stress of gift knitting. Even if I have a goal of knitting one thing a month, I’m still ahead of the game.

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I’ve also decided to join Dave in his ‘Spinning My Wheel‘ quest. But I’m gonna call it ‘Spinning My Spindle’.

At any rate, I’ll be spinning along and trying to keep track of my spinning efforts. But sadly, I’ve hardly spun anything this year. But the year is not over, right?

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And I have one more goal for this year. To knit a sweater – something I’ve always wanted to do. I did consider making The Cobblestone Sweater, but now Tiennie has kindly shared her pattern for The Fog Sweater, which I love very much. But that’s a decision for later. First, I’m reading ‘The Sweater Workshop‘ that I got from the library. I’m up to reading about two-color knitting and stranding. I figure, if I can get some comprehension about the different techniques first, when I actually start working on that sampler, it won’t be as scary. At least that’s my hope.

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And so as to not to be completely void of photos, here’s a photo of my scarf-in-progress.

ttfn!

I started a new project yesterday. The yarn, called fusion, is 287 yards of squishy soft merino handspun by FatCatKnits.

I love knitting with handspun. It has ‘personality’ and ‘character’, feels nice between the fingers and is generally fun to work with.

I’m making a ‘Woven Stitch Scarf’ from Ella Rae Designs Book One. It calls for US Size 15 (10 mm) needles so hopefully it’ll go quickly. You’re supposed to cast on 15 stitches, but I think this yarn is thinner than the yarn used in the pattern so I cast on 19 stitches because 15 stitches was too thin, in my opinion. I just hope I have enough yarn for a decent length scarf. This will make a nice gift for someone one day.

The fingerless mittens (which are NOT blue, by the way) are stalled. The first one is 97% finished (still needs a thumb) and the 2nd one I’ve had to rip parts out twice – first because I forgot to switch to larger sized needles, then, while working the thumb gusset, I had an odd number of stitches for the gusset when I need an even number. So, I’m working on the scarf for now and I’ll go back to the fingerless mitts in a bit.

Hope you enjoyed your weekend!