Category Archives: fiber goals

Creative Goals 2026 (Formerly Fiber Goals)

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For the past 10 years, rather than doing new year’s resolutions I’ve been doing “fiber goals.” (First 9 years in summary, last year’s wrap up was posted yesterday). The idea has always been to set goals around chasing joy, directing my creativity, and making space in my life for things I want to do rather than things I think I should do. But I don’t think that’s going to be as much about fiber this year! So I’m changing the name to “Creative Goals” and opening it up to other types of creativity explicitly in 2026.

1. Set up my new creative space

I’m moving (at the time this posts I’ll be en route to my new house!) and will have a whole new office to setup. My needs have changed a lot since I set up my old office around 12 years ago, and it’s going to take a lot of thinking and acquiring of furniture and tools, and probably a bunch of iterations before I settle on a final configuration. I’ve been slowly working my way through the book Structuring Life to Support Creativity by Sandra Tayler so I’ll probably be using some of the exercises there to help me along.

A few things already on my wishlist: I’d like a more dedicated space with better lighting for painting, journaling and photography, as well as better storage for the related tools. My dog would like a space for napping. It might be nice to have a reading/knitting chair for when I want peace and quiet. I’ll be working remotely some of the time so I may need to plan more carefully for privacy when on a call, too.

2. Crafting for my new climate

I’m moving to a much colder area, which leaves lots of room for knitting new accessories and clothes, and maybe some for sewing too. I expect to be making up some warmer mitts and hats and scarves and sweaters, but also possibly adjusting my stash and tools and pattern collections to support more heavyweight knitting.

3. Painting with Fountain Pen Ink

Towards the end of 2025 I got into watercolour painting, and I’d like to mess around more with applying those skills and tools to my fountain pen ink collection. I keep thinking about it and not actually sitting down and doing it, which makes it a perfect candidate for a yearly goal so that I make time!

4. Write for joy

Writing was my substitute goal part way through last year, but I think i’d like to carry it over for 2026 even though I don’t usually do that. I’m going to tweak the goal just a teensy bit for this year and specify that I want to write for joy.

Writing has brought me a lot of joy in 2025 and especially with so many big changes coming for me in 2026 I want to re-affirm that writing for fun (and not just necessary work documentation type stuff) is still a priority to me. Mostly I think this will take the form of more fanfic and personal journal entries, but it could mean conference talks or blog posts or original fiction too. I’ve got a story I want to finish and more I’ve barely started, I want to try more writing prompts, and I think maybe in 2026 I’ll finally try participating in a story gift exchange? There’s a bunch of other ideas down in my brainstorming section that might be worth doing too. I don’t know, but as long as it’s fun it’s going to count. The big idea behind it all is that I need to make sure I have time and space for writing and keep up a regular writing habit even as my schedule changes.

Other brainstorming ideas

These are ideas that didn’t make the cut above, but I like to record them anyhow in case I feel like working on them even if they’re not a big focus of my year.

Writing: talk transcripts/associated blog posts. I have a lot of older talks that I never really made blog posts about.

Writing: more ao3 comments. I love getting comments but I sometimes forget to leave them on other people’s stuff because I read offline a lot! I really need a better system and practice for making sure I leave comments/kudos more often because my current system is not working out great.

Writing: Hone my craft. It’s been a long time since I went to writer’s workshops or anything and honestly I feel like it’d be weird to go into that sort of thing when I’m primarily writing fanfic, but it might be fun to pick up some books on writing or listen to some podcasts or something.

Fiber art: A use what you have goal. My overflowing bins are minis and sets, so maybe one of those?

Fiber art: Publish a pattern. I’ve got at least one that’s 80% ready and would just need photos and stuff.

Fiber art: mending. I always have some to do but maybe it would be good to focus on doing a bit every month?

Fiber art: find a local crafting group?

Painting: complete some kind of challenge, book, lessons?

Music: find a choir? re-join the band? something else?

Games: More silly Scratch games

Games: Learn a “real” engine? (which one?)

Games: Try making html games. are there frameworks for this?

Games: walking game! finally!

November 2025 Ink and fiber thoughts

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Going with a spooky kitty theme this month, since I had a pair of good spooky kitty sticker sheets from last year’s stickii Halloween countdown. (I didn’t get this years halloween countdown because I still had plenty of spooky stickers.)

Stationary for journaling in November 2025. There are two stickii sticker sheets with ghost cats, witch cats, then a fall mushroom themed set of sheets from midori and another stickii sheet with happy raindrops on leaves and stuff. There are four fountain pens and ink swatches below that: a Pelikan Pura with Diamine Baltic Breeze (blue with pinkish sparkle), a Pilot Metropolitan with Diamine Twilight (dark grey), a Monteverde Ritma with Van Dieman's Last Light (purple-blue), and a Pilot E95S with Sailor Mayo Asagiri (pink). Below that are a set of 4 thin washi tapes in blue/purple/pink.
Stationary for journaling in November 2025. There are two stickii sticker sheets with ghost cats, witch cats, then a fall mushroom themed set of sheets from MU and another stickii sheet with happy raindrops on leaves and stuff. There are four fountain pens and ink swatches below that: a Pelikan Pura with Diamine Baltic Breeze (blue with pinkish sparkle), a Pilot Metropolitan with Diamine Twilight (dark grey), a Monteverde Ritma with Van Dieman’s Last Light (purple-blue), and a Pilot E95S with Sailor Mayo Asagiri (pink). Below that are a set of 4 thin washi tapes in blue/purple/pink.

Stickers

  • Fountain Pen ghost cats by Yudoart (from stickii halloween last year)
  • Witchy sticker sheet by November Rush (from stickii halloween last year)
  • MU “print on stickers” (transfers, really)
  • Droplets sheet by Starriesena (also from stickii)

Pens and Ink

  • Pelikan Pura <b> with Diamine Baltic Breeze (blue with copper? sparkle)
  • Pilot Metropolitan <cm> with Diamine Twilight (dark grey)
  • Monteverde Ritma <flex> with Van Dieman’s Last Light (purple-blue)
  • Pilot E95S <m> with Sailor Mayo Asagiri (pink)

The Van Dieman’s Last Light is a new sample I picked up from their line of two-tone inks. I actually really like the way this ink works other than the fact that I keep thinking it’s too light to read while I’m writing but it does dry darker as so many purple-ish inks do. It’s especially nice in this particular flex nib, which basically lets you pour out more ink with bit of extra pressure, and a bit more ink in this case gets more of the dual colour effect.

Using the Metropolitan right after using the Maple pen last month has cemented that the Metropolitan is significantly easier on my hands, so my ranking continues to stand.

Thoughts on last month’s selections

Some thoughts on what worked and what didn’t from last month. The architect nib in that maple pen is very fun to use but definitely tires my hands out. Not sure if that’s primarily due to the nib or it’s also the heavier and larger pen. It worked really well with Southwest Sunset except that I’d forgotten that this particular ink leaves little dots that take forever to dry, so I smeared it a few times. I had this trouble with the other noodler’s ink I had as well, and wound up giving the rest of that sample away. I like the colours of Southwest Sunset enough that I’m keeping my last tiny bit of sample but I’ll try to remember that it’s kind of annoying to use even if the shading is super pretty.

The combo of Wearingeul Frankenstein and my TWSBI Eco worked, but it was clear that all the shimmer was getting stuck in the feed and very little made it to the page, so next time that ink goes in the Pelikan to see if I can get a better effect. It is really nice without the shimmer, though, so not too sad.

Using KWZ All that Glitters Firecracker reminded me how much I enjoy their easy to use shimmers that work in all my pens. Since they’re only $10 per 30ml bottle, I just went ahead and bought the two colours I didn’t have. I don’t think they’re as pretty as the two I bought first, but I think I’ll enjoy using them anyhow!

The Pelikan Pura made Diamine Pine Needle work much better than last time I used it. Very happy with how much the Pura improves my ink collection!

The Leuchtturm1917 is working well. The paper definitely is a bit thinner so I found myself rearranging inks so the dark purple Frankenstein was mostly used on the left hand page and I wasn’t writing on something with seriously visible ghosting. I don’t find it too disruptive but it’s there and I notice and think about it regularly. It’s been nice enough for writing, though — not too slow to dry or anything. I do really love the pre-numbered pages and the way the top and bottom have wider margins, though, so the layout is great. I think my perfect notebook would be this dot grid page layout with thicker paper in a smaller page count, but I’ve still got a small collection of notebooks to try so maybe I’ll find something I enjoy even more.

Pen collection changes

Three fountain pens: the first one is a large, teal Jinhao 100, the second a dark blue marbled Noodler's flex nib, the third a light purple Hondgian M2 that is a pocket pen (as in, much smaller than the other two pens).
Three fountain pens: the first one is a large, teal Jinhao 100, the second a dark blue marbled Noodler’s flex nib, the third a light purple Hondgian M2 that is a pocket pen (as in, much smaller than the other two pens).

I passed 3 pens on to a friend this month. From left to right:

Jinhao 100 <fude>: This one has to be held at a steep angle for the width of line I want, which made it not super useful for regular use since my normal writing angle produced very thick lines. It’s probably tuned for calligraphy? It would have been nice for making cards or something, but I seldom do that. It’s a pretty pen but it really wasn’t working for me, and I have a few other fudes in my collection. My friend is a lefty and it worked better for her, so off it goes.

Noodler’s Creaper <Flex>: This is actually the only fountain pen I’ve ever had which I hated the feel of the pen body rather than the nib. It constantly gave me the vibe of one of those cheap conference giveaway pens that didn’t quite fit together right. No idea why, it wasn’t actually loose, maybe it was something about the shape. But it’s been sitting in a cup because I don’t want to use it, so I’m glad to pass it along where it might get used!

Hongdian M1 <ef>: The extra fine nib in this felt like I was writing with a toothpick, scratchy and too small. Actually, I think I’ve painted with toothpicks that I liked better than this. I’m not a huge extra fine fan, but the other ones I have don’t feel as bad as this one did to me. Could have replaced the nib but I decided it was better to give it away.

I’d intended to reduce my pen collection by not replacing these, but then Fountain Pen Day sales happened and I picked up a couple of cheaper pens on my wish list. A paragon of restraint I am not, this month. Which is fine, my unemployment can cover a few pens and inks if a bit of retail therapy is helping me survive a month of solo parenting and all the preparation for an international move and dealing with job interview stuff. I’m still feeling less burned out as a whole, but the past few weeks have been A Lot.

Countdown time

In other related news: I wound up buying both the Stickii Advent and the Diamine Inkvent calendar.

The stickers were an easy choice: I’ve used most of last year’s, and with my regular usage at around 2.5 sheets per month a December countdown isn’t so many stickers that it’s going to overwhelm me for the year. Unlike the halloween collection, these aren’t all wintery so I used last year’s year-round easily. I love picking out stickers and matching inks every month, and the stickii ones are a bit thinner, smaller and more convenient for journal use than some of the others I get from individual artists. I’d probably like their subscription club too but that one is more stickers than I use per month so this fits my life better plus I get a cute binder to store my sheets in. I use last year’s a lot.

The inkvent calendar was a harder choice: I use maybe 2ml of ink in the average month, so I strongly debated just making myself a 12-sample pack to enjoy over the holidays which would match up better with my ink usage. But then I kind of overwhelmed myself trying to pick 12 colours and the ones I chose kept going out of stock and I realized I wasn’t actually having that much fun with that plan. So in the end I decided to just get the Inkvent set and stop fussing over picking things. It’s “too much ink” but I really loved the experience last year and the excuse to swatch and use a new ink every day. And I know I won’t be sad about having more colours to use in my monthly palettes, since I know I sometimes struggle with finding something to match my chosen stickers. In hindsight, I should have just planned to trade ink samples with my friend and use those, but I didn’t think to do an ink swap until nearly a month after I ordered the inkvent calendar. Whoops.

Not sure how I feel about the sparkle-sheen gimmick for Inkvent but now that I’ve got the Pelican pens that seem able to take advantage of my shimmer inks, I’m sure they’ll get used.

Also, it’s got me thinking about painting with fountain pen inks as a way to enjoy them more. I’ve been doing a bunch of watercolour painting by going through lessons in various books I’ve gotten from the library, and it’s been really pleasant and I’m starting to get some paintings I’m proud of even if they’re just duplicating the exercises. Inks are more complicated pigments than I’m used to using but I can learn and experiment. So ink painting might go on next year’s “fiber goals” though it’s a little less fiber-y.

Speaking of fiber, I skipped out on bigger yarn advents but did get the 8 day Chanukah set from ChemKnits again because I love supporting her videos and 8 minis isn’t too much yarn. I haven’t always knit with these right away because I’m usually doing advent stuff that starts earlier in the month, but since this will be among the yarns I have with me when I get on the plane in December, it makes sense to plan some socks in January or something.

I have to actually plan a few months of projects in advance so I have the right yarns and tools on hand during the move. I usually do have rough plans of what I want to knit next, but it’s definitely different when almost all my yarn and half my tools will be packed and on a truck! So far I’ve got a half formed plan to do Grand Opening with a mini set from my stash, but I’ll figure out more soon!

Forgot a new thing!

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A book nook built from a kit. It's a diaorama showing a train going over a river with shops and cherry blossoms, and it has been lit up with leds placed inside the diorama.
A book nook built from a kit. It’s a diaorama showing a train going over a river with shops and cherry blossoms, and it has been lit up with leds placed inside the diorama.

In my previous post about fiber goals I’d claimed not to have done anything new in July, but I forgot I made a book nook! It’s not apparent from the photo but it’s sized to fit on a bookshelf.

This was a kit I bought online a year or two ago. I did decided some of the pieces needed extra glue because the friction fits were not sufficient. But other than that, it was pretty simple and relaxing to put together over a couple of days.

Not going to be a new hobby since this is the only kit I bought for myself, but it was nice to do something different!

Fiber Goals 2025 mid-year check-in

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This year’s goals were as follows:

  1. Revisit Old Goals
  2. Try Something New
  3. Something Stash Something
  4. Game Design

We’re a bit more than halfway through the year so let’s see where we’re at!

Revisit Old Goals

Started strong in January by finishing up a rainbow shawl that had been on the needles for quite some time:

A rainbow bias knit shawl/wrap of my own design.
A rainbow bias knit shawl/wrap of my own design.

I’d intended to release the pattern since I had an old goal about writing patterns but… honestly, I haven’t felt like it, and I focused my time on other stuff that was bringing me joy. But I have a bunch of pattern notes and a bit more time right now so I may publish what I have without bothering to polish it.

February I worked on an old Beanie Bag kit from Jimmy Beans Wool that spanned 3 months. It was… honestly kind of boring and the pattern had a bunch of mistakes/confusing bits, but I finished one month’s worth and will likely do the other two at some point.

The first part of the Textures of Nevada Shawl that was part of a Jimmy Beans Wool kit subscription some years back.
The first part of the Textures of Nevada Shawl that was part of a Jimmy Beans Wool kit subscription some years back.

March-April-May I finally got around to knitting Wingspan, which was on my “something famous” goal plan but I never made it. It was a pleasant knit once I got into the swing of things, but by the time I finished it was too warm to wear it here so I haven’t really gotten pictures! Here’s one from before it was blocked, though:

Wingspan shawl knit in a gradient yarn that goes from burgundy to red to orange. It has no been blocked so it looks a bit lumpy and smaller than the final product looks.
Wingspan shawl knit in a gradient yarn that goes from burgundy to red to orange. It has no been blocked so it looks a bit lumpy and smaller than the final product looks.

June I took a break from old goals (and focused on writing).

July I pulled out some gradient balls and made socks for my mom’s birthday (a bit early because the timing worked out), plus I did tour de fleece stuff.

Blue/green/yellow-green gradient socks using the Affixed pattern from Shoreland Socks by Hunter Hammersen.
Blue/green/yellow-green gradient socks using the Affixed pattern from Shoreland Socks by Hunter Hammersen.

Overall, A+ on revisiting old goals. I have a couple more “use kits from stash” ideas but I may otherwise declare this particular goal complete and focus on some other stuff.

Try Something New

January started strong with me working on a hexagon blanket, which I’m still working on between other projects.

February I tried assigned pooling and made the “Shard” shawl by Romi Hill. It was fun and I’ll likely do other assigned pooling patterns!

Me modeling my Shard shawl (pattern by Romi Hill) knit in Chemknits yarn from valentines day 2024. It's a red shawl with purple "shards" from assigned pooling.
Me modelling my Shard shawl (pattern by Romi Hill) knit in Chemknits yarn from valentines day 2024. It’s a red shawl with purple “shards” from assigned pooling.

March-April-May I worked on Wingspan for the old goals and didn’t bother doing new stuff.

June again was a break from all knitting goals. (I was writing instead.)

July was mostly finishing up work/travel and I didn’t feel like learning something new.

There’s probably some more to be done here but… honestly, I’m not sure this goal is playing well with my burnout? I’ve got some tentative plans for learning some bookbinding in August if my kid is amenable so that might be up next. But I think I may just focus on finishing up the hex blanket rather than pushing myself to come up with new things to do if I’m not feeling it. So this goal may be as complete as it’s getting unless something fun occurs to me.

Stash Something Stash / Write more

I’d planned to run some kind of stash-focused event about appreciating what you have (as opposed to feeling guilty about what you have, a common vibe in a lot of “use your stash” events) and I got as far as coming up with a nice list of prompts and ideas. But then I realized that… I didn’t actually want to run it. I was burned out on social media and wanted to spend less time on my phone. So I’ve declared this goal as complete as it’s going to be. The prompts will keep if I decide I want to run things later.

That said, I replaced this goal that no longer fit with a goal of “Write more” instead since it was what was bringing me joy and it deserved some focus and time.

I’ve done a bit more writing for this blog but the biggest part of my writing this year has been fanfic since I’m having fun. I joined a discord to hang out with other writers in my current fandom of choice and I took part in a prompt challenge (which is why I didn’t knit as much in June-July so I could write). I’m now over the 40k “that’s a novel’s worth” of words since January and I’m pretty delighted with myself.

There’s something deeply satisfying in the current economic environment about making something that is basically non-monetizable put on a website run by a nonprofit (that I donated to!) and my output only serves to make strangers/new friends happy. And I definitely made a bunch of people happy! (Including my kid, who helped with some ideas in one of my stories.) Also I’m amused that my existing community of open source people and my new community of fan writers are somewhat similar and overlapping nerds. Not a surprise that people who share their creative outputs for free have some similarities but it’s still a delight.

I expect I’ll keep writing through the end of the year (and beyond but this post is about 2025 goals). I’ll probably join another challenge or two but even if I don’t do more than finish my current story in progress, I feel like this replacement goal has been met *and* it’s brought me a lot more joy than the original goal. And these goals have always been about finding time for things that bring me joy!

Game Design

It took waaaaay too long to get approval from work saying that my silly games weren’t going to conflict with my job at which point I was so frustrated with my boss for other reasons that I was intentionally trying to get put in the layoff pool (and I succeeded). But the end result is that I haven’t actually *done* any games stuff beyond a bit of helping my kid learn Scratch programming for his robot. I’m not replacing this goal because I still want to make games, but I haven’t figured out an actual plan yet so that’s on my list for part 2 of the year. So far I’ve got my personal laptop set up a bit better for game work (attached it to the kvm with my big screen and mouse) and I think I might aim to play around with some existing frameworks and make silly things with my kid as a goal for August.

More Thoughts

It turns out this year it hasn’t been *fiber* that was really keeping me happy. I mean, I still knit/spin/whatever but it’s writing and video games that have helped me cope with the burnout and grief (particularly from losing a friend earlier this year, but there’s grief tied up in climate and politics right now too). The fact that fiber wasn’t the perfect solution for this type of burnout makes sense because I needed something that engaged more of my brain and took me away from worrying about geopolitics/work/my deceased friend. I knit to focus my brain but when my brain is spiralling that’s not the right thing to do. I do knit-and-write-in-my-head a lot so it’s compatible with what works to distract me, at least, but fiber hasn’t been as much of a focus for a few months and I’m not sure if that’s going to change. I am wondering if I should stop calling these “fiber goals” next year so I can encompass some other hobbies, though.

With work as a stressor out of the way for now but more “international move” and “find a new job” stress coming, I’m intending to just roll with what works for these goals in the second half of the year. I *am* really enjoying using my fiber and stationary stashes now that I’m trying not to spend so much money — past me bought some lovely stuff and now I have time to use it. I think doing some game stuff is going to be fun when I sit down and start playing. And I’m really enjoying writing fanfic in a way that I haven’t in a long time, so I’m happy to keep leaning into that too. Last time I was involved in a fandom I presented as an artist, and writing is a different experience, and I’m loving it so much.

Fiber Goals 2025

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This is my 10th year setting “fiber goals” as a fun way to direct my crafting for the year. I’ve come to feel like setting goals around creativity and joy and focusing on accomplishing things I want to do is important. Especially in contrast to a lot of traditional new year’s goals that are kind of guilt based.

I usually limit myself to 4 that I’m really commiting to for the year, so here they are for 2025!

Revisit old goals – I wanted to revisit some old goals in celebration of 10 years of fiber goals, but I couldn’t decide on which ones. So instead, I’m going to try rotating through them like I did with different crafts in 2024. Every month, I’m going to look at the goals and see if there’s one I want to revisit with one project. Since I know monthly isn’t the perfect cadence for crafts, but it *is* a good cadence for reflection, some of them may take several months, and some months I may not bother, but the goal is to at least look at the list monthly and make a choice.

Try Something New – to go with revisiting old goals, I’d also like to try some new things, but maybe smaller stuff spread out over the year rather than one big thing. As such, I think I’ll focus on techniques I haven’t tried rather than full new crafts: for knitting that might be entrelac, mitred squares, planned pooling, stacked stitches. For fountain pens it might be painting with fountain pen inks, new drawing techniques, mixing inks. Or maybe I’ll try making some things I haven’t made before, like felted slippers or a blanket. I think I’ll try to put something old/something new together in my monthly planning so I think about it regularly but I’m going to be flexible about having things take variable lengths of time.

Something stash something – I think I’m going to run a craft stash focused challenge thing mostly for myself but also invite folks on Mastodon to join me. I’m not sure what it’ll look like yet but planning is part of the goal!

Game design – I haven’t been a game designer in a long time (did you know I used to teach game design?) but I accidentally got my kid excited about one of my old ideas so I’m making this a goal in hopes we build something together, even if it’s not that particular game. This isn’t very fiber-y but maybe we’ll find a way to make that part of it?

Many years I’ve also included a bunch of brainstorming ideas here that didn’t make the cut, but I didn’t make a list of those this year.

Fiber Goals 2024: How did I do?

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My 2024 fiber goals were as follows:

  • gift yarn
  • lesser used crafts
  • pants
  • colour play

I already did a mid-year 2024 writeup so I’m just going to talk about the second half of the year here.

Gift yarn

I finished the lighthouse shawl:

Terri, a mixed race woman, is standing near the edge of a parking lot outside. She has a Flo Mask around her neck over top of a hand knitted lace scarf, is wearing glasses, and is holding a black choir music folder.
Image Description: Terri, a mixed race woman, is standing near the edge of a parking lot outside. She has a Flo Mask around her neck over top of a hand knitted lace scarf, is wearing glasses, and is holding a black choir music folder.

And I started in on a pair of socks with a funny colourway called “Introverts Unite” that apparently I haven’t photographed yet. And I’m still working on the weaving.

So nothing spectacular in the second half of the year, but that’s expected because I wanted to do Finish or Frog Along and the fall gnome and then start in on Christmas socks for my Mom then the winter gnome. Maybe I should knit fewer gnomes? (That may be a problem as there’s going to be a lot of them next year.) The obvious solution would be to knit gnomes with gift yarn, but most of it is too variegated for that so no luck. If anyone wants to buy me yarn, apparently I need more 20g fingering weight minis in solid colours!

Overall, I think I got what I wanted out of this goal, but I do want to keep pushing to use more gift yarn in 2025 because there’s certainly some left that I’m really excited to use!

Lesser Used Crafts

The full year of crafts:

  1. January: spindle spinning
  2. Feburary: tatting
  3. March: mending
  4. April: weaving
  5. May: Origami
  6. June Pants
  7. July: (supported) long draw spinning
  8. August: Embroidery
  9. September: Writing
  10. October: Presentations
  11. November: Sashiko
  12. December: Countdowns

I missed out on some that I thought I’d do like felting, crochet and quilting. But I was really excited to do a lot more writing (honestly, now I kind of want to work on writing fiction, which I haven’t done in forever) and presentations (I had two accepted talks in the fall/winter). By December I decided adding another craft on top of swatching inks for inkvent and taking pictures of my various swatches and countdown calendars was too much, so I know “countdowns” isn’t a craft but there’s a combo of swatching and photography and writing a lot of alt text, and all of those are crafts of sorts.

I think rotating through crafts was very good for me, and I’m glad to have pulled out some stuff that I hadn’t thought about when I set the goal. But I don’t think monthly was the right cadence, and I was kind of less excited about it by the end of the year especially once I wanted to focus on Finish or Frog Along, so I don’t think I’ll be doing it again in this format.

I think this might work better as a quarterly thing or if I doubled up some months and only ran it in the first half of the year. But I’m expecting to have a busy 2025 and likely will wind up packing up a lot of craft stuff to move, so I’m thinking that I may try to pull out some unfinished crafts like my weaving, doing them, then packing up the supplies as I go. Probably won’t formalize it so I can play it by ear instead.

Pants

I finished the pants back during the craft rotation in June! I’d still like to revisit and work on drafting a better pattern for my preferences/body, but this isn’t a priority for me.

Colour Play

The biggest new addition here was that I bought an “invent” countdown calendar full of ink and swatched something Dec 1-25. It was a lot of fun, and I particularly liked the “painting with fountain pen inks” which I honestly hadn’t done much before but seriously, the inks are very fun with the multi-shading and the shimmer and sheen (less so the scented ones, but thankfully I didn’t have an adverse reaction to the scent they were just less-nice as inks because they were so wet).

I tried a few things over the year: dyeing, different spinnning colour techniques, pulling out some rainbow shawls and colourwork, learning what fountain pen inks I loved, and just knitting different types of yarn. It was very fun, but I will admit that this is probably all stuff I’d have done even if I hadn’t set the goal. I like colour!

The “other” goals

I often have a list of goals that I brainstormed but didn’t decide to do. But sometimes they happen anyhow!

Blogging – I got obsessed with fountain pens and then started writing more blog posts. Now I kind of want to write some fiction too…

Ditching Instagram/Meta – this did happen, and it’s improved my life a lot to only occasionally post for a contest or something and pop in maybe once a month or so. Not constantly getting bombarded by ads has been good for my wallet, and not getting nausea from auto-playing videos is great. I’m also slowly removing old fb posts on the rare time that I log in, though it takes forever.

Classes – I did take a dye class at Craft Emporium and it was fantastic! I’d like to spend some time experimenting with the techniques we learned but I haven’t decided what to make yet.

In conclusion

I accomplished all of 2024’s Fiber goals and had a good time and learned more about what I want to do next. Stay tuned for 2025’s goals on January 1st!

Fiber Goals from years past

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This year is the 10th year I’ll be doing fiber goals, and I wanted to revisit some previous year’s goals, so I’m starting by making myself a mega post with all of them to contemplate. Fiber goals are meant to be fun things that bring me joy, and organizing them like this helps me prioritize some fun things in my life. So many new years resolutions are kind of chores or guilt-based, and I’d like to avoid that!

It’s kind of interesting to see the progression of what I’ve learned and where I put my focus over the years. Most of these goals were successful. There’s a few that I don’t need to revisit: the pants and that quilt are done and I’m not doing them again! But a lot of these could be revisited with new projects — I definitely have more gift yarn and brioche patterns and a few more “famous” patterns in my queue, plus I’ve got lots of beautiful stash that I want to use.

  • 2024 Fiber Goals (End of year “how did I do” post isn’t written yet. Here’s the half-year one.)
    • Gift Yarn
    • Lesser Used Crafts
    • Pants
    • Colour play
  • 2023 Fiber Goals (How did I do?)
    • Toys
    • Hand-dyed, hand-spun
    • Complicated cables
    • Patterns I own
  • 2022 Fiber Goals (How did I do?)
    • Rainbows 🌈
    • Advents past 🎄
    • Where we’re going, we don’t need patterns 🕸️
    • Finish the sabbatical quilt 🪡
  • 2021 Fiber goals (How did I do?)
    • Knit something famous
    • Self striping stuff
    • Kits in Stash
    • Crochet cables
  • 2020 Fiber goals (How did I do?)
    • Whittle down the WIPs and Query the Queue.
    • A Bit of Brioche.
    • Top to Toes
    • Some Smaller Shawls
  • 2019 Fiber goals (How did I do?)
    • Learn Steeking
    • Document better
    • Finish another sweater
    • Play with mini skeins
  • 2018 Fiber goals (How did I do?)
    • Use more of my project kits
    • More amigurumi!
    • Spin the neat fiber kit Kathy got me
    • Organize the stash
  • 2017 Fiber goals (that is the “how did I do?” post)
    • Knit a “seamless” sweater this time
    • Try some new types of needles.
    • Knit more handspun
    • Create and release more patterns
  • 2016 Fiber goals are in bottom of 2017 post above.
    • Knit a sweater for myself
    • Practice colourwork
    • Learn some new skills
    • Improve my stash for the things I make

The one highly specific goal that I never finished: I never *did* spin that fiber kit from 2018. Maybe 2025 is the year for it!

Fiber goals 2024: mid year check-in

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I’m a bit overdue for a look at this year’s fiber goals. They were as follows:

  • gift yarn
  • lesser used crafts
  • pants
  • colour play

Gift yarn

I thought gift yarn would be an easy one, but I’ve hardly used any! When I started this goal I wrote down 5 skeins/sets in hopes of inspiring myself to make plans, but so far I’ve only used half of 1 of those, and the other skein I’ve got on the go wasn’t even on the list.

First up, my weaving in progress uses 1 skein gifted to me from my friend M in a canadian national park inspired colourway (it’s the lighter weft; the other two balls of blue are from a shopping trip with M but don’t count as gift yarn):

A woven shawl in progress on a rigid heddle loom. It's being woven in two colours of yarn, one variegated blue and one variegated grey, and I'm experimenting with clasped wft which allows stripes to go parway across the weave.
Caption: A woven shawl in progress on a rigid heddle loom. It’s being woven in two colours of yarn, one variegated blue and one variegated grey, and I’m experimenting with clasped wft which allows stripes to go parway across the weave.

And here’s what I’m working on now. The shawl is from gifted yarn, a pretty “lighthouse” sock gradient from Blue Brick:

A shawl in progress in a blue-teal-yellow gradient, a pair of recently finished knit socks in a dark variegated with a blue/yellow varigated toe, and a black pottery coffee mug with a skull on it.
Caption: A shawl in progress in a blue-teal-yellow gradient, a pair of recently finished knit socks in a dark variegated with a blue/yellow varigated toe, and a black pottery coffee mug with a skull on it.

Not a *yarn* gift, but I found a fountain pen that was a gift in a drawer and finally got around to buying ink for it, and I’m hooked. More on that later.

Lesser used crafts

Lesser used crafts has been a pretty big success. I’ve rotated through the following things:

  • January: Spinning (largely spindle spinning)
  • February: Tatting
  • March: Mending
  • April: Weaving
  • May: Origami
  • June: Pants (related to my next goal)

July was supposed to be embroidery month, but we’ve been traveling and I haven’t had much time, but I did have a huge blitz on long draw spinning so I might retroactively declare this long draw month and give embroidery a second shot.

Overall I feel like this goal is working for me: in pulling out different crafts and enjoying them again, and I’ve managed to keep my excess supply buying to a minimum. The time limit helps me keep moving on some projects that might otherwise get shelved. But it also feels like a month is too small for some things. I think I’ll stick to the monthly thing for the rest of the year but I will likely change it up if I want to keep this going past the end of 2024. The months are nice because they fit into when I look at my planner and stuff, but I’ll probably sometimes do two months of the same craft, or have a periodic “make up month” to go back and finish unfinished objects.

Pants

I made them! They are not great, mostly because it feels like I made a size too big but also because the pattern was designed to be looser than I think I want. But I learned a *lot* and I’m happy I did it! I think my next attempt will be some pj shorts since that’ll take less material. While I *could* iterate on this pattern until it’s perfect I think I’m going to try at least one other one to see if I can find a better starting point.

But I’m probably going to make another linen skirt or two before going back to pants, since that’s what I wear all the time now. I should probably make some in neutral colours for travel when I go with more of a “capsule wardrobe” than I do at home.

Colour Play

I took a dye class at Craft Emporium PDX!

A set of 4 hand-dyed skeins from my workshop. The first is blue/green, the second orange, the third pink/grey/blue and the final one rainbow.
Caption: A set of 4 hand-dyed skeins from my workshop. The first is blue/green, the second orange, the third pink/grey/blue and the final one rainbow.

And I’ve even knit one of the skeins into socks so I feel like I got a better sense of how the colour really worked.

I also had a lot of fun playing with Woolly Wormhead’s new short row stitch dictionary and my own rainbow handspun from last year’s Tour de Fleece.

A triangular shawl with a rainbow of short-row leaves on it.
Caption: A triangular shawl with a rainbow of short-row leaves on it.

I did a bit of colour play in this year’s tour de fleece, splitting up a braid to make a loosely gradient skein. Haven’t knit it up yet but it looks promising in the skein.

Handspun yarn on a niddy noddy showing a messy gradient from teal to maroon.
Caption: Handspun yarn on a niddy noddy showing a messy gradient from teal to maroon.

Less fibery, but I have been diving in to the world of cool fountain pen inks. I used to use a fountain pen back in high school to limit strain on body when I had tendonitis and couldn’t write very easily, but there’s a world of very pretty inks now and it’s pretty exciting! I guess paper has fiber, right?

A page of my (intentionally) messy handwriting using a fountain pen. The text is a list of travel gear that I may review in future blog posts.
Caption: A page of my (intentionally) messy handwriting using a fountain pen. The text is a list of travel gear that I may review in future blog posts.

I feel like I’ve made a good dent in this goal, but there’s still some dyeing experiments I wanted to try and maybe some fading and other knit colour combos I could fit in, so I don’t feel like I’m done yet, per se.

Overall

I’m about where I should be for halfway through the year, but I still have a lot of things I want to do, and I’m going to have to make a stronger effort to use gift yarn in the second half of the year.

Fiber Goals 2024

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Since 2016 I’ve set “fiber goals” as a fun way to direct my crafting for the year. I’ve come to feel like setting goals around chasing joy and focusing on accomplishing things I want to do is important, and these resonate differently than many traditional new years resolutions that are kind of guilt-based. For example: “Don’t buy more yarn” would be less fun and more guilt-oriented than “use some of the pretty gradients in my stash” — it’s all about focusing on joy and creativity. I usually focus on some skill building, some “use the supplies you already have” type planning, and some things that I wouldn’t naturally do without a goal that I revisit every few months. Links to previous years are at the bottom of the post, but let’s start with this year’s goals.

Gift yarn — I’ve been lucky to receive some yarn as gifts, but sometimes it takes quite a while before I get to use it. So I’m making it a goal to do that! I’m intending to focus on yarn chosen for me by other people, but I also have a small cache of yarn I bought with birthday money that may make an appearance.

Lesser used crafts — I pretty much always have knitting on to go, and I regularly rotate in other crafts: embroidery, crochet, sewing/quilting and mending all come up throughout the year, and spinning makes a more seasonal appearance for Tour de Fleece. There are also some that rarely make it into the rotation: tatting, needle felting and Tunisian crochet come to mind. So this year’s goal is to give some some of my non-knitting crafts a little time in the spotlight. For some, that’ll mean adding them into the rotation at all, for others it might mean time learning a new technique or letting that project be a focus instead of a thing that happens when I need a break from knitting.

Pants — I bought fabric to try making pants, but it’s been sitting in my stash for a while. I had pants in my backup goals for multiple years and didn’t make ’em, so I’m promoting it to my 4 core goals to get it done this year. I’ve got some other garment-making stuff planned but pants are the only one that doesn’t seem to be happening without a bit of a shove.

Colour Play — In 2023 I had a goal for cables which put some of my focus on texture. This year, I’d like to have some fun with colours: make some more fade projects, different types of colourwork, stuff like planned/assigned pooling, maybe do some dyeing or more experiments with blending on the spinning wheel. Maybe another gradient quilt if I start collecting squares again? I’m hoping to chase some joy in colour form!

Some other ideas that didn’t make top 4 but might be fun:

Here’s some other goals that came up in brainstorming. They didn’t make the top 4 so I’m not committing to finishing them, but I like having them recorded here so I can revisit them when I’m checking in on my goals or looking for inspiration of what to work on next. Maybe some of them will get done, maybe not!

Digital knitting — in my house this often means circuit board layout, but I’m thinking more about working on pyKnit, my open source/free python library for doing knit math and charts. Though I actually would like to do some other digital stuff related to knitting: designing some stitch markers and tools with the laser cutter, spending some time to make pattern templates, updating a few existing patterns, maybe building other tools beyond pyKnit. I’ve also got grand designs for setting up a pixelfed server to replace/backup my Instagram account. And yes, I’m not ruling out some circuit board layout too.

Load balancing the stash — my stash is in one of those big cube shelves, and some cubes are over-full. So the goal here is mostly to use things from the fuller bins, but I’ll also accept giving some of it away, rearranging the bins to fit, or focusing my purchases on places I have gaps in the stash. At the time of writing the overstuffed bin is self striping yarn, and I have space for some more solid/semi-solids and some space in the bin of Knitted Wit skeins for Socks on Vacay in the summer.

Revisiting old goals — I haven’t always achieved my goals, and some are fun to revisit, but I think I’ll save this for next year which will mark my 10th year of doing these goals.

Quilting triangles — I haven’t done any patterns with triangles in years; maybe it’s time to improve my quilting skills? I’ve got an old kit from Albuquerque that would force me to learn some skills.

Make a bag for my rigid heddle loom — it’s a bit big for any of our current bags and it would be really nice to be able to put the whole thing into a safe padded bag for when I want to weave elsewhere in the house (or maybe some day at a fiber event or meetup?). Quilting might not be a bad idea here.

Embroidered knits & mending — I do a little bit of visible mending already but rarely make it super decorative. Maybe play around with this more?

More dyeing — I’ve still been watching the ChemKnits dye videos and want to try some more techniques now that I’ve actually used some of the yarns we made. I also wouldn’t mind trying more “real” acid dyes (rather than food colouring) but that’s a bit more of a hassle with my kid and having to get some more equipment.

Courses — I haven’t really picked out any classes to take this year, but I wouldn’t mind throwing some in there if I can find time. I really enjoyed spending the day at Craft Emporium for weaving class, but (understandably) it seems like a lot of local classes are beginner-oriented and I’m solidly past beginner on a lot of my crafts and I don’t really have an urge to pick up something new right this second. I’m thinking about getting the Sew Sew Fitopia pdf/videos, but I should think about fiber festivals and other stuff. I do think I’ll probably avoid anything with a monthly subscription, though: I learned from last time that it’s not a great fit for my current schedule.

Circular Sock Knitting Machine — My kid and husband are printing me one using the new 3d printer. It’s not ready at the time that I’m writing this, but I’m hoping I’ll be learning to use it and making cool things with it sometime this year!

Blogging — I’ve (once again) been letting this blog slide in favour of just posting stuff on mastodon. In some ways that’s ok: we own the mastodon server and can back it up and do whatever with it, so it’s not deeply different than the blog that I own. In other ways, I miss writing a bit more long form in general, and writing is a skill that works better when I use it regularly. I can’t decide on a good goal here: do I want to write more, do I want to write about things that aren’t crafts, do I want to write fiction, do I want to integrate mastodon to make threads about each project into blog posts? So I’m leaving this in the brainstorming section and I’ll try to think about what I want out of the blog.

Ditching Instagram/Meta — remember how a bunch of folk stopped using Ravelry because a site redesign made it unusable or dangerous for folk with migraines? Instagram is there for me with all the auto-playing reels. Plus, you know, various human rights violations, terrible moderation, etc. I’m going to reduce my usage in 2024 and I wanted to record that here (even though it doesn’t fit with my typical goals and it’s more of a resolution) while I figure out what that will look like. I expect I’ll keep accounts for contests and the odd local thing that uses it, but if you want to follow me social media style you’ll have to go to https://social.afront.org/@terri or add my rss feed to your feed reader.

Previous years

Fiber Goals 2023: How did I do?

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It’s December so it’s time to revisit my 2023 fiber goals and see how I did! You can see part 1 in my mid-year checkin post.

Toys

My kid has become really interested in Among Us so I made him a thing!

Amigurumi crewmate from the game "Among Us"
Amigurumi crewmate from the game “Among Us”

Games have really helped him practice a lot of emotional maturity things like, “you’re going to be bad at things for a while before you’re good at them” and “it’s not the end of the world if things don’t go your way” and “you shouldn’t break things just because you’re mad.” But he’s still in kindergarten and isn’t really emotionally ready for a game of lying to your friends with real humans involved, so he isn’t allowed to play the game himself yet. He *is* allowed to watch some videos of other people playing and imagine his own mods and stories. The toy inspired some pretty funny scenarios at play time.

I’m also working on the winter mystery gnome, which is going well so far:

A snow-gnome from the pattern Snow Matters What. He's got a red hat, carrot nose, big green scarf, red stick arms, and embroidered snowflakes on his bottom snow ball.
A snow-gnome from the pattern Snow Matters What. He’s got a red hat, carrot nose, big green scarf, red stick arms, and embroidered snowflakes on his bottom snow ball.

I also sewed a creature that he named “foxy dog” from a great “Teacup puppy” pattern I got on etsy:

A sewn stuffed animal shaped like a puppy with big pointy ears and fox-like colouration.
A sewn stuffed animal shaped like a puppy with big pointy ears and fox-like colouration.

And I’ve got another puppy in colours he chose (they’re very strange) that hasn’t been fully sewn yet.

I think this was a highly successful goal! There’s always more to make but I think a little focus on this went well.

Hand-dyed, hand-spun yarn

I made my big cabled shawl with one of the skeins my kid dyed last year. He provided the lighter green variegated colour and I paired it with a blue/green gradient set from Sweet Georgia:

Finished and blocked Ishneich shawl. It features a large celtic-style cable, lace border, and striped body.
Finished and blocked Ishneich shawl. It features a large celtic-style cable, lace border, and striped body.

I also did some sampling/swatching for my handspun, but nothing big yet.

A swatch of rainbow handspun yarn sits next to a tablet playing My Singing Monsters.
A swatch of rainbow handspun yarn sits next to a tablet playing My Singing Monsters.

I’d say that this goal was met, because I definitely used yarn, but I do think I could do a lot more! The good news is that I’m taking part in a 100 day spinning challenge that counts *using* your handspun as well as spinnning it, so I’ve got plans for the next few months.

Complicated Cables

I did the aforementioned big cabled shawl! This is the Ishneich pattern by Lucy Hague that I wanted to do most:

Terri wearing the cabled Ishneich shawl.
Terri wearing the cabled Isneich shawl.

It turns out that I didn’t love cabling on the reverse side. I got sick multiple times while I was making it, so I wasn’t really at my cognitive best, and I screwed up the direction and had to fix it more than once. I won’t say I’d never do it again because I loved the resulting cable, but I didn’t want to try another two-sided pattern this year while we’re slowly experiencing every kindergarten disease in the area. So my last cabling experiment was socks — no wrong side to cause confusion! This is the Thriambus socks pattern (free in Knitty) that I made for my mom and I love them:

Thriaumbus socks on feet, shown in greyscale as it was posted when I was keeping the colour a surprise for my mom.
Thriaumbus socks on feet, shown in greyscale as it was posted when I was keeping the colour a surprise for my mom.
Thriambus socks. These have been freshly blocked and are handknit out of self-striping yarn in blue/green/white and a variegated purple. The pattern features and asymmetric set of cables on each foot.
Thriambus socks. These have been freshly blocked and are handknit out of self-striping yarn in blue/green/white and a variegated purple. The pattern features and asymmetric set of cables on each foot.

This goal was absolutely met *and* I’m happy to have learned that I love cabled socks, so I’ll definitely be doing more of those in the future. Especially since I apparently have a lot of self-striping yarn in my stash and some of it will also play nicely with cables!

Patterns I Own

Honestly, I didn’t keep track of this one as much in the second half of the year. But I finished the golden poppy sweater:

Terri wearing her Golden Poppy Sweater and holding a to-go cup of coffee. The sweater features a large mosaic panel meant to look like California poppies.
Terri wearing her Golden Poppy Sweater and holding a to-go cup of coffee. The sweater features a large mosaic panel meant to look like California poppies.

And the Bubbles of Joy shawl:

Bubbles of joy shawl: a shawl with many bubble-like motifs in lace and colourwork. It features a large stripe of different coloured "bubbles" in a set of yellow/pink/red colours.
Bubbles of joy shawl: a shawl with many bubble-like motifs in lace and colourwork. It features a large stripe of different coloured “bubbles” in a set of yellow/pink/red colours.

And the summer embroidery sampler from kiriki press (shown before I found smaller frames):

A small "summer" themed embroidery sampler with strawberry vines and a 3d sunflower.
A small “summer” themed embroidery sampler with strawberry vines and a 3d sunflower.

I also did two more socks from patterns I own (both Shannon Squire patterns), and two from patterns that were free. The Thriambus one above and Comfy Soled Socks to try knitting non-wool socks:

A pair of handknit socks from the pattern "comfy soled socks" are in progress on my lap as I sit by a water play area at a park.
A pair of handknit socks from the pattern “comfy soled socks” are in progress on my lap as I sit by a water play area at a park.

Plus technically I bought Ishneich before the end of 2022.

Hatch doggy using the Ishneich shawl as a blanket.
Hatch doggy using the Ishneich shawl as a blanket.

So this one continues to be met, and I feel like I had a nice balance with some new MKALs thrown in to the mix too.

The “other” goals

Every year, I also list some ideas that didn’t make it to my chosen top 4. Usually the way I do this is that I open up a draft post for ideas shortly after I do my mid-year checkin post, and I note things down there for the next few months before settling on 4 that I’d like to focus on. But that doesn’t mean the others are bad ideas, and sometimes I manage to do those as well. So here’s a few that actually happened:

  • Sweater stash: I did indeed knit the Golden Poppy Sweater, and my kid has adopted one of the collections of minis for his own rainbow sweater (which is swatched and probably will start getting knit in January.)
  • Embroidery: I didn’t do a year-long event but I made it through a number of kits!
  • Quilting: I did indeed finish my adventureland quilt just as 2022 ended *and* a pretty rainbow one from several charm packs that turned out just as I’d hoped. I’ve started on another one for my kid that glows in the dark but it’s a few months out from finishing still:
Glow quilt in-progress shot. This quilt features halloween inspired fabrics assembled in zig zag stripes with a white glow-in-the-dark fabric featured as every other stripe.
Glow quilt in-progress shot. This quilt features halloween inspired fabrics assembled in zig zag stripes with a white glow-in-the-dark fabric featured as every other stripe.
Adventureland quilt on a couch.
Adventureland quilt on a couch.
A quilt made up of a rainbow of various patterned squares laid out in a diagonal gradient. The corner of the quilt is turned to show the moon/star pattern on the back (which glows in the dark).
A quilt made up of a rainbow of various patterned squares laid out in a diagonal gradient. The corner of the quilt is turned to show the moon/star pattern on the back (which glows in the dark).
  • Knitty patterns: I did one as mentioned above, and queued a few more. I also experimented with knitty+ a bit and figured out how best to get my knitty patterns into Knit Companion using a print-to-pdf option.
  • Weaving: I took that weaving class and have been having fun with my loom! I like it enough that I’m debating getting the “quartet” attachment one day, but I’m telling myself I need to spend time experimenting with what I’ve got before I start spending $$$ on upgrades. I’ve managed to read a weaving pattern now but I’d still got techniques to learn and practicing to do.
A weaving in progress on the loom, featuring stripes of "passionate fruit" from knitted wit and some textured white inherited from a friend's mom's stash.
A weaving in progress on the loom, featuring stripes of “passionate fruit” from knitted wit and some textured white inherited from a friend’s mom’s stash.
A pair of handwoven towels featuring a set of stripes along two sides of the rectangular piece.
A pair of handwoven towels featuring a set of stripes along two sides of the rectangular piece.
A handknit striped sock sits on a handwoven rainbow scarf.
A handknit striped sock sits on a handwoven rainbow scarf.
  • Spinning: I did manage to spin more overall this year, including keeping on after Tour de Fleece until I got sick. That’s important because it means I didn’t accidentally hurt my hands, need a break, and lose momentum!
  • e-spinning: I did indeed push myself to use the Electric Eel Wheel nano 2 more, including using it for most of Tour de Fleece. And it’s been great! I was surprised at how nice it was to focus on my drafting skills and to be able to pick it up and spin in different places around the house.
A wound hank of handspun yarn in blue/green/grey. It is surrounded by cute stickers and other small items from my kid's countdown calendar.
A wound hank of handspun yarn in blue/green/grey. It is surrounded by cute stickers and other small items from my kid’s countdown calendar.

Summary

I hit all 4 goals, and also did a whole lot of other almost-goals from the brainstorming slush pile. That’s a pretty good fiber year! Stay tuned on January 1 for 2024’s fiber goals.

Maker Objectives and Key Results

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Work made me do a training on “Objectives and Key Results” which is just a business-y version of the goal setting techniques I learned in grade school: choose something big you want to do, even if you’re not sure all the steps to get you there or it’s not a thing that ever finishes, then choose some concrete things you can do that you think might move yourself in the right direction. Then learn from what you do and adjust and iterate.

I’m starting to brainstorm about Fiber Goals for the year, and it’s got me thinking that they often fall into a few “objective” style categories:

1. Use what I have.

Like many crafters, I aquire supplies faster than I use them. I don’t necessarily consider this a bad thing: I like having the materials on hand when I get an idea or have to pivot late at night when something doesn’t work out. I also find I need a certain amount of materials on hand or I get too anxious about using things up. But there’s only so much space in my house so I don’t want to collect indefinitely! Plus I have good taste and I like using my stuff.

Example previous fiber goals that fit with this objective: using my self striping and gradient yarns, using kits.

2. Try something new.

I like learning new things, and sometimes making one into a goal for the year helps me set aside time to do it! A lot of these have been things I could take classes in like learning to spin.

3. Do something hard / push my limits

“Hard” here doesn’t always mean that the action has to be hard. Often it means doing projects that are bigger or require more concentration, or can’t be done with my kid in the room. Sometimes it means just doing something I wouldn’t normally do.

The hardest example was finishing my sabbatical quilt, which was a slog for many reasons. A fun one was revisiting brioche.

4. Have fun.

Sometimes the goals are just something I think would be fun to do! Like making more toys for my kid this year.

And also…

There’s nothing wrong with fiber goals that fit into multiple categories: Knitting rainbows, for example, used stash and was fun and was pushed my habits to do something I hadn’t been doing naturally.

I don’t know that every fiber goal I set or brainstorm quite fits into these “objectives” but I do find them useful for brainstorming next year’s goals so I can get a mix of types of fiber goals in my draft doc before I choose four.

This will be my ninth year of doing fiber goals rather than new years resolutions and I love this tradition for myself.

Fiber Goals 2023: Mid-year check-in

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It’s the middle of the year, so it’s time for a mid-year look at how my 2023 fiber goals are going!

This year’s goals were:

  1. Toys
  2. Hand-dyed, Hand-spun
  3. Complicated Cables
  4. Patterns I own

Most of these are going pretty well.

Toys

I’ve done a lot of these! I already talked about a few in April, and last week I finished this summer’s mystery gnome from Imagined Landscapes:

“Gnifty” the gnome from “The More You Gnome” (now renamed to “Big Gnose” by my kid)

I still have some stuff queued for him and a bunny kit I haven’t started, but I feel like I’ve met the goal regardless. There will always be more fun things to make!

Hand Dyed, Hand Spun

The lighter lavender and peach colours in the gnome above were dyed by my kid, and I also used one of his minis for the egg. I still haven’t gotten around to using my own handspun so that’s still on my list. Maybe doing Tour de Fleece (starting today!) will help get me in the mood for that?

Complicated Cables

I haven’t even made a dent in this goal, other than finding some yarn for the Lucy Hauge pattern that I bought. I’m going to have to prioritize that shawl for the fall, I think. And I’ve got a half-formed idea to go with a rainbow yarn I got in the spring Gauge Dyeworks club, but I haven’t even swatched that yet so I’m not sure if it’ll fit into the rest of the year.

Right now I’m back to finishing a sweater plus two things I cast on for travel (some Socks on Vacay/Pride socks and a big shawl), plus I’d like to start some socks for my mom’s birthday which should take me to mid August. It’s funny to think that I only have enough time for maybe 3 more shawl-sized projects before the end of the year, but I’m not a fast knitter and I’m planning to do baubles in November then advent/countdown something in December, so that really leaves me Aug/Sept/Oct to do something and each shawl takes me around a month so… not much time left for cables! Maybe I better make sure some of my baubles have cables? Or socks with cables?

Patterns I own

I’m currently working my way through the Golden Poppy Sweater that has been in my queue since it released:

Golden poppy sweater in progress. It features a large “poppy” panel in mosaic knitting (looks a bit more snowflake-y in the white/blue colours), and decreasing stripes at the end of the sleeves.

And I started the “Bubbles of Joy” shawl which I bought as a kit intending it for travel in 2019 and then by 2020 I wasn’t doing travel so it’s been sitting in my stash for a while.

The “bubbles of joy” shawl in progress with my kid jumping on the mattress in the background.

The story with the pattern is that it’s supposed to help you capture memories of joy, so I started it and took it on my first trip to Ottawa since 2019. I particularly enjoyed how well it matched an afghan made by my grandmother that my mom’s using in her house now. I’ll try to get the picture up later — wordpress is complaining it’s too big and I don’t feel like dealing with manual resizing right this second.

I’m also currently revisiting the Stumptown Socks pattern which I already owned:

Stumptown Sock in progress at the Nepean Concert Band concert.

Plus I finished some Glitz Mitts from a book I owned back in January and I finished an advent from 2022 in the beginning of 2023 too so it counts. So the current breakdown of knit/crochet/weaving I have listed on Ravelry looks like this:

4 patterns I owned before 2023

2 plain weavings (no pattern to buy exactly although I did take the course)

2 free patterns (amigurumi heart, a sock pattern I haven’t shown yet)

2 patterns I made up (rainbow + socks, feather shawl)

5 new patterns I bought (the gnome, romi mystery shawl, easter egg, good bear, rcyc mcal)

On the embroidery front, it’s all been stuff from stash including the Constellation Sampler and Floral Necklaces, plus I’ve got a summer sampler and a bee sampler on the go now. (I did buy a couple of extra samplers this year but on average I’m using more than I purchase. Which is definitely not something I can say about my yarn habit.)

So even though it’s only a few patterns, the ratio of “cast on new exciting thing” to “actually use what you have” is feeling pretty good. Plus most of the new things I bought were to go with knitalongs, which scratch a bit of a community itch that’s been a bit hard of late so I don’t regret finding a few opportunities for that!

Overall

I’d say 2 goals are pretty much done, the 3rd has some progress, and the 4th has a plan. Not bad!

Fiber goals 2023

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For the past many years I’ve done fiber goals in lieu of new year’s resolutions. They’re a kind of fun way to direct my crafting for the year. I usually focus on some skill building, some “use the supplies you already have” type planning, and some things that I wouldn’t naturally do without a goal that I revisit every few months. Links to previous years are at the bottom of the post, but let’s start with this year’s goals!

1. Toys. my kid loves the gnomes and I should binge on making him stuff while he’s still into that. Probably some cute veggies and stuff for pretend play since he’s been loving making fake foods, and also some uber-cute amigurumi stuff because he’s been leaning in to cuteness lately. Maybe another Susan B Anderson pattern since I really enjoyed the giraffe? Or more video game stuff? Plus if you’ve seen any cute dog patterns, let me know!

2. Hand-dyed, hand-spun. I’ve got a nice stash of yarns dyed by my kid and myself, as well as some handspun yarns I’ve made that are currently just sitting around. Let’s try to make something with at least one of each this year, but hopefully more?

3. Complicated cables. Using the motifs from the Japanese stitch dictionary my brother gave me has me itching to do more fancy stuff. I’ve long admired Lucy Hague’s Celtic Cables and more recently I’ve been interested in Paola Albergamo’s designs (have you seen Lightbeams?) and I just queued this cool Entwined Queen’s shawl, so I’m sure I can find at least a few patterns to try.

4. Patterns I own. I own a lot of patterns that I’ve never knit. Some I even bought yarn for, but a lot are because I wanted something else in the magazine/collection, they were free for a limited time/with purchase, or sometimes I buy patterns as a tipping mechanism for designers whose work I admire. I recently made mitts for my mom from a pattern I don’t even remember buying and they’re really great, so I want to poke around my collection a bit and see what else I’m missing. Let’s try to do at least 2 from patterns bought before 2023. (I’ll also count the last few years of knitty patterns in here, at least since I joined the Patreon.) Since I knit about 12-20 things per year, that definitely won’t stop me from buying new patterns but hopefully will encourage me to look through my list!

Other ideas/brainstorming:

I always start this list around when I do my mid-year checkin and generate a lot of ideas before I settle on 4. Here’s the ones that didn’t make the cut — they’re still good ideas, just maybe I’m not ready to commit to working on them right now.

Stash related goals: Actually calculating in/out to see how things are going. More knitting machine experiments to use yarn faster? More organization (there’s still a few boxes that haven’t been properly integrated into the new box sorting system). Someone was talking about using 2023g of yarn in 2023 and maybe I could try that?

Two-colour projects / Perfect pairings: I have a nice stash of pairs of yarn, but I need to use more of them because I’m acquiring pairs faster than I use them (and the box where I keep them is a bit on the over-full side). I do the big Romi mystery shawl once per year and sometimes also do the rose city yarn crawl one (though this year they upped it to 3 skeins so no help there), but I think i need to plan for some non-mystery uses. Also, I haven’t done double-knitting in a while and maybe I should? Or brioche?

Sweater stash: I currently have a few sweater quantities of yarn: a Golden Poppy kit from Black Squirrel Berkley, a fade set from Space Cadet that I’ve got a few pattern ideas for, and a Knit Picks Barnsdall Cardi kit with blue and white yarns that I honestly don’t even know if it’s worth doing now. Plus I’ve got a few big mini sets that could reasonably become sweaters but don’t have patterns selected yet: a set of summer solstice minis from Teal Torch Knits, and a Kitty Pride Fibers summertime minis set that could be something else but I kind of have my heart set on a stripey sweater, and I’ve got a smaller set from Alwan Sultan Fibers that I really want as the bottom to a sweater. 6 sweaters-in-waiting is a lot if I only knit one per year (though some could and maybe should be switched to non-sweater use), so maybe try for two (or more!) in 2023.

Embroidery. I had fun with the big year-long constellations project, maybe there’s something else I could set up for myself with quarterly kits or something? I have some kiriki press dolls, and a lot of kits left over from my Fireside Textiles patreon subscription that I really do want to do, plus a few tiny necklaces and stuff.

Sewing: make pants. Try that spiral-rainbow skirt mentioned on epbot (apparently the pattern is peppermint swirl). Do something fun with my fireside textiles stash (try contrast triangle panels & pockets in the act of sewing skirt?)

Quilting: Maybe a monthly block project? Plus I’ve got the Adventureland kit to finish and a half baked plan of putting my charm packs into something gradient-ish.

Kits: I still have kits to use. They’re not out of control or anything, but it’s always good to go through them and make sure I actually get to make them or consider gifting them to someone else if I don’t. As well as the knitting ones, I even have a felting kit that I haven’t finished.

Prune the queue: My ravelry queue has over 100 things in it, some of which are just not going to happen: some were added when my kid was little before I knew what he would and wouldn’t like, some of which were added when I actually wore worsted weight sweaters, etc. It’s time to move more things to favourites if I don’t actually have plans to knit them.

Smaller Shawls: Is it time to revisit this much-delayed goal from 2020? I still love wearing smaller shawls, but I’ve been focusing on bigger knits because I don’t need to carry them to work and because honestly I need sweaters more now that I’m walking the dog after dark. So maybe not this year.

Knitty patterns. I’ve sponsored the Knitty magazine for a while now through their Patreon, and not only do they have regular new patterns but they also have a pretty intriguing back catalogue. I’ve knit a few knitty patterns and they tend to be pretty great, but I don’t always think to look there for stuff.

Organize the books/magazines. I’ve got a few books and magazines full of patterns, and some of them don’t much use because it’s not ready to search them. I’d like to spend time getting those books up on a single shelf in our library downstairs so they’re easy to search, maybe list them in my ravelry library so they’ll show up in searches better, and of course actually knit some designs!

Weaving. I’ve really wanted to do a class at Craft Emporium PDX for weaving but it felt not viable as covid numbers surged. But I still want to do it and at this point they’re one of few places still requiring masks.

Tunisian crochet. I thought after my one shawl took a year that I probably was done with this, but now that I have the hook I kind of want to try a sampler scarf or something just to try some stitches. Could even do this as a year long 12 months of stitches to try?

Spinning. Do more spinning year-round, somehow, because blitzing for Tour de Fleece hurts my hands and I need to keep the muscles in shape. I thought the swatch-a-long might work for that but it hasn’t so far, so I may need a new spinning goal. Monthly minis or some sort of year-round rainbow thing? Trying more bulky yarns? Maybe having something like a shawl or blanket that I’m adding to year round? I was pretty happy with how the different weight yarns worked in my Steggie so maybe that would be an idea?

e-spinning: try to really get to know my new eew nano 2. I love the idea of an e-spinner but mostly I actually like treadling so given the choice I turn to the big wheel. But I need to spin more to build the muscles I need so maybe a portable setup is the way to go? (Also one my kid is less interested in sticking papers in…)

Previous Years

Fiber Goals 2022: how did I do?

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As in previous years, I chose Fiber goals for 2022. There were 4 things:

  1. Rainbows
  2. Advents Past
  3. Where we’re going we don’t need patterns (i.e. making my own designs and intentionally not planning to publish them)
  4. Finish the sabbatical quilt.

I’d actually finished most of these at my mid-year check-in point, and I’d even made headway on some of my non-goal ideas for 2022 too.So let’s talk about what happened since July!

Goal 1: Rainbows

This has been my favourite goal. I’ve knit so many things! And they’re great for a dopamine hit because they draw both social media likes and in-person compliments. But even if they didn’t, I just really enjoy buying and knitting rainbows, and I love wearing them, so I think this one is going to be a forever goal now. Some finished-post-July projects:

The Rainbow Sweater (Pattern: Playdate from Tin Can Knits, Yarn from PassionKnits yarns)

Terri wearing her rainbow playdate sweater.
The sweater with a special set of mismatched buttons.

The Queer Enough Shawl (design by me! Yarn from Knitted Wit)

Terri wearing her Queer Enough shawl.

The Spring Rainbow Shawl (design by me! Yarn from Chemknits)

Yarn minis with rainbow bag and the start of a knit shawl.
The finished Spring Rainbow shawl laid out mostly flat.
Terri sweating the Spring Rainbow shawl (also a rainbow sock arms sweater and a rainbow tie dyed shirt made this summer.

The Family Dye Day Shawl (design by me! Not written up yet. Yarn from Knit Picks but dyed by the whole family.)

A child sized Family Dye Day shawl is laid out flat on the patio stones.

I also did some rainbowy tie dye with my kid, and started a lightly rainbowy quilt.

Terri is wearing a rainbow tie dyed shirt. Hatch, a black lab mix dog, is on her lap. They are both looking to the right of the photo.
Adventureland quilt in progress.

And I’m currently working on the Rainbow of Emotions kit which is obviously pretty rainbow-y, a rainbow sock to knit in my “spare” December time (between all the countdown calendars), and i cast on a rainbow pair of mitts (because I could use some longer fingerless mitts for winter dog walks.)

Goal 2: Advents Past

I “finished” the Little Box of Crochet advent from 2018! I say “finished” because I did skip two more religious ornaments (an angel and a baby Jesus) because I just wasn’t feeling it. I’ll probably do them later since I have the yarn, and I’ve got ample supplies to duplicate the ones I like. But I *feel* done so I’m counting it. Saving the book to pull out a few times later vs not having crocheted the ones I wanted feels very different.

Tiny crocheted skates around the neck of a t-rex fighting gnomes.
Bell ornament from little box of crochet advent.
Pudding mouse from little box of crochet advent.
Drums (or as my kid prefers, fancy coffee) from the Little box of crochet advent.

I also finished the tree sampler from Dropcloth Samplers that I’d been working on for quite some time. Not an advent but the result was holiday ornaments so it feels like it’s in the same category!

Embroidered side of the dropcloth trees
Back side of the dropcloth trees, featuring some scraps from my other makes. The red one is from my wedding dress, the green from an early-pandemic mask, the other two are skirts.

That leaves me with one advent from years past that I haven’t done (mostly because I didn’t love the pattern), and one 10-day countdown that I have a plan for but haven’t cast on. Not bad! Well, plus all the ones I’m doing now, but I’m keeping up with those so far! I’ve also got two that are “yarn collecting” ones and I’ll decide what to do with them after I see the whole countdown.

Goal 3: Where we’re going we don’t need patterns

This has been a huge success in that I’ve played with a lot more of my own designs. The three rainbow ones again:

Plus the Steven the Bat socks.

I’ve found that if I don’t try to focus on designs that I can explain to others or where everything has to fit in a single chart and line up the repeats, I can be differently creative. Amusingly, this goal has resulted in me actually writing more partial patterns as you can see from the links. I feel like the notes are mostly written for my own use and if someone else finds them handy then good but I don’t stress over it. And I always have the option of writing up in detail later if I want to. This one is probably also going to be a goal I take with me forever now.

That said, my friend M really did knit the Queer Enough Shawl so that one at least can be knit (though she did have some fixes I need to add to the post).

Goal 4: Finish the Sabbatical Quilt

I did it!

The sabbatical quilt, with one corner flipped to show the back fabric.

This felt huge because I had a lot of Feelings around it — I felt shoved into taking the sabbatical and going part time at work, I was completely wiped out for most of the 7 weeks due to the first and second covid vaccines so I didn’t actually have enough time to finish it, and maybe I needed a more structured existing pattern for my first big quilt to take some of the mental load off. But the quilt is lovely, it’s on my kid’s bed and gets used every day, not only to sleep, but also he loves the little houses on the back so sometimes we make up stories about them during bedtime or spread it out and have his toys racing from house to house delivering packages.

I took a decent break after finishing, but I did start a new quilt learning from my experience with the first one: more pre-cut fabric (since I hate cutting), used an actual pattern (so I didn’t have to calculate stuff) and it’s smaller (so hopefully the actual machine quilting will be better). It’s going well, and I’m enjoying taking it slow and learning. It’s nice to have transferred this from the “hobby I have some regrets about” to “hobby I actualy enjoy on occasion.” And I’m *loving* the experience of looking at fabrics in a new way. So this goal was a success beyond where I thought it would be!

The “other” ideas

As in previous years, I fill my fiber goals brainstorming sheet with ideas all year, then just promote the chosen 4 to the top but leave the other ideas hanging around so I can read them and be inspired even if I wasn’t really ready to commit to putting them on the must-do list. So here’s some others that I did progress on:

Squishing the Stash — on top of destashing some acrylic, I’ve also been re-organizing my office. I used to have all my yarns sticking out where I can touch them, but after a few incidents with carpet beetles I had swapped them to smaller plastic boxes to reduce exposure to bugs. Unfortunately, the boxes with lids that fit in my shelves used up a fair amount of space leaving my stash in a bunch of large bins that didn’t fit on the shelf. So this year I picked up some more drawer-style things and a lot more plastic bags and I think I’ve found a reasonable solution. I still have a few bins for the bigger yarns, but I’m slowly getting things organized. I’d guess it’s around 80% there?

I haven’t resorted to vacuum sealing… yet!

More Kits – Both the advents and the rainbows helped me use things that I think of as kits, and in this second half of the year I also made a Tiny Giraffe kit from Barrett Wool Co. and made that, which was a total delight.

I also did a tiny Laura Nelkin cuff kit, which was fun! I’ll have to keep an eye out for new kits from her. They’re tiny and interesting to make.

Spinning – I did tour de fleece and tried to low-key join a spin-along immediately after, but got stalled out because I needed a physical break. But I did get all my handspun into a nice bin where I can see it and I have plans! I feel like I spun as much as I really wanted to and that’s fine, but I also want to plan so I spin a bit more year round so I don’t overdo it all during the Tour. Something to think about!

Embroidery – I continued to embroider (see: the tree sampler and the constellation sampler) but no pushing on big goals here. And that’s ok, that’s why they didn’t make the top 4! Embroidery continues to fill the niche of “I need a break from my knitting” and I think that’s about what I want out of it so we’re good.

The Act of Sewing – I made 1 shirt (it’s not great) and 4 skirts (I love them so much) but no pants yet! Expect at least one more skirt in the spring. I also have fabric and a pattern for a shirt that I think will suit me better; we’ll see.

Terri modeling a linen/cotton skirt. This one has blue/green florals on a grey background.
Terri modeling a linen cotton skirt. This one is red and black florals.

Other Crafts – I made a tiny weaving!

A very tiny (4.5cm square) weaving next to a US quarter for scale.

And I did make the Giraffe toy and some gnomes, including a giant one that has been a source of much delight and a few owies.

Overall

I am so delighted with how these goals (and bonus ideas) worked out for me.

I’m pretty happy with how I divided my time between crafts: mostly knitting (since I can multitask) with embroidery and sewing thrown in when I need to use different muscles. Then a little bit of crochet and spinning when I have something I want to do, like (Tour de Fleece or the Little Box of Crochet advent). My only concern is that I need to spread out my spinning time a bit more so I don’t overdo it in the summer.

I’ll post my goals for 2023 on January 1!

Mid-year fiber goals check-in: the “other” ideas

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As in previous years, I chose four Fiber Goals for 2022. That small number always leaves me with a bunch of ideas that I toss out there on the post that I wasn’t committing to finish but also wanted to record as ideas. A year is a long time so some of those always manage to happen even if they didn’t make the top four.

De-stashing: I was lucky enough to find a local friend to take a big box of acrylic at the beginning of the year. She’d gotten into making crocheted baskets, so this box of sturdy yarn I’d “inherited” from someone else’s mother in law was actually useful! And just recently, my sister uncovered 7 giant tubs of yarn in my grandmother’s basement, and I was able to find a different crocheting friend who could take those. Cleaning out my grandmother’s house is a huge job and I was glad to have been able to help with one tiny thing from far away even though it was kind of a drop in the bucket. This was not the first cache of yarn my sister has found, but hopefully it’ll be the last big one!

Hatch observes the crates of yarn pulled out of the closet at my house.
Layer 1 of the yarns I was able to fit in the shipping box.

Finishing some languishing WIPs: I jumped on a challenge from Sox Therapist and finished my Tunisian shawl finally as well as a Flickering Light Shawl that I’d started in New Zealand and never finished after we got back. I thought I probably wouldn’t be doing more Tunisian for a while but I keep thinking about it so maybe there’ll be some smaller swatch/dishcloths in my future?

Terri holds her completed Loveland Lite shawl, a Tunisian crochet triangle shaped two colour shawl. Yarn from Alwan Sultan Fiber.
Finished Flickering Light shawl. Yarn was a kit from Space Cadet yarns.

Year-long project: I did the Get Together Advent wrap as a 24-week project (so half-year), but I also have an embroidery constellations kit and I’m doing zodiac signs around the year. (well, ok, I’m behind by a few weeks right now, but I’ll get caught up.)

Kiriki press constellation embroidery sampler. I’ve done the zodiac constellations as they come up in the year but haven’t quite finished Gemini yet.

Fingering Weight Sweater: As mentioned in the previous post: it’s started! I’m using the “I love me more than you” box of minis from Passionknits yarn to do big chunky stripes on the Playdate sweater from Tin Can Knits. It’ll be a rainbow when it’s done!

Sweater body showing 6 colours.
Tiny rainbow sleeve swatch showing all the colours to come.

The Act of Sewing: I made the top, which was not a great fit and needs re-thinking, and the skirt with added pockets, which has become a wardrobe staple this summer. I might make a few more skirts.

Top from The Act of Sewing. Careful photography makes it look not awful here but it’s way too big.
Bicycle print skirt with giant pockets. I wear this plenty now that it’s warm!

Glowforge: I made an embroidery floss holder as part of a care package for Marlene, and a no soliciting sign for our front door.

Yarn care package for my friend Marlene. The yarn is a hobbit themed one from Valkyrie Fibers and I picked up notions and tea to be on theme. The laser cut embroidery floss holder with the silhouette of the Lord of the Rings characters is on the top left.
A wooden sign that reads “No Soliciting (The dog gets very upset)”

Knitting machine: We made a tube with some of the yarn my kid dyed and he uses it a lot for play. Most often it’s attached to a toy so he can play a fishing game involving throwing all his stuffed animals on the floor then tossing his “fishing rod” out to touch the one he wants to catch. But I haven’t done much since then!

Tube made with green/yellow hand dyed yarn.

That’s a pretty large number of non-goals achieved or in progress! Not all of them, but the destashing ones were especially a relief.

Mid year check-in: 2022 fiber goals

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For the past 7 years I’ve done fiber goals instead of new years resolutions. It’s been a fun way to guide my crafting plans. Here’s a link to my 2022 fiber goals. We’re nearly halfway through the year, so let’s talk about how it’s going.

Goal 1: Rainbows 🌈

Started strong with using half of my 2020 countdown calendar (see goal 2) to make a beautiful Steggy shawl.

Me wearing my rainbow Steggy Shawl

I also did some rainbow-adjacent Spell Shawls with one that’s pink-purple-yellow-brown and one that’s blue-green. Between the two of them they kind of make a rainbow?

I’ve started a fingering weight Playdate sweater that’s going to have a full rainbow when it’s done but it’s not too visible yet. I’m not in a hurry to finish this one now that we’re very clearly out of sweater season, but hopefully it’ll be done in the fall.

A sweater with large bands of colour is taking shape on the needles in the foreground. An inflatable pool with a rainbow floaty toy is visible in the background.

I made a fairly rainbow Diponaea hat as part of Quiet Queer Craftalong. The idea of the craftalong is to support queer creators and participate in a pride event that’s accessible to people who aren’t going to be doing pride parades and more traditional celebrations. (Like me and my sore leg!) So both the yarn dyer and pattern designer are non-binary for that project.

Hatch, a black lab mix dog, is lying with his nose on a colorful hat.

And I’m starting work on my own design (tentatively named “Queer Enough Shawl”) that will use this lovely rainbow set I have:

A small crescent shawl in progress beside a rainbow of yarn minis and a book.

This goal is about doing rainbows year round, so I expect to keep on rainbowing through 2022.🌈🌈🌈

Goal 2: Advents past 🎄

My first project was to use my 2020 Indie Untangled Countdown calendar to make that Steggie Shawl. I actually only used about half of it but that’s ok, I’m happy to save the rest for later. Maybe another shawl, though I’ll need some more yellow to make another rainbow so I’m waiting for my scraps pile to build up again.

Steggy Shawl in progress

I also used the 2018 Craftvent calendar as a weekly project, to be done during work meetings. Each box took about an hour or two, so very feasible to do during my regular meetings (one of which is my social knit group). It made a beautiful wrap. The All Together Now pattern was known and the calendar didn’t have a lot of extras so honestly I might have been more disappointed by that if I’d done it when I got it, but all these years later I was happy to have the curated prepared yarns and a weekly project.

My Little Box of Crochet advent from 2018 has a number of ornaments left to go, so I might try doing that one next. The patterns may need too much reading and counting to be good meeting fidgeting, but if they’re not a good fit for meeting times I’ll fit them into my plans another way. Goodness knows, I’ve got a whole rainbow sweater to work on that’s super easy knitting.

I’ve also got a countdown calendar that hasn’t got a pattern with it, and I’ve got a vaguely formed plan but no timeline on that one.

Goal 3: Where we’re going, we don’t need patterns 🕸️

Not as much progress on this one, but I did start that soon-to-be rainbow shawl (shown above) and my quilt (shown below) both of which are designed by me. It’s incredibly hard not to try to turn the rainbow one into a pattern but I’m compromising on a partially-formed recipe. I’ve also got a bunch of notes for a couple of mosaic knitted projects, so those might happen too.

Goal 4: Finish the sabbatical quilt 🪡

It’s actually getting close to done!

Quilt binding in foreground while my kid plays Paper Mario Origami King in the background.

I still have plans to do some embroidery on it after the binding is done, but it’s now reached the stage where I don’t need to have kid-free time for this so it’s less stressful to work on. I know, other quilters do stuff with their kids around, but my kid is way too interested in the sewing machine and … well, last time he was around I wound up having to give up and help him make a pillowcase instead.

Rainbow Quilt at the “trimming the sandwich” stage.

I won’t say I’ll never do another quilt again because I have second quilt top kit in my fabric stash (bought as a souvenir with a very Albuquerque-Mexican design). And I’ve learned a lot and enjoyed some of the process! Some thoughts on improving the experience:

  • I didn’t love cutting fabric but the jelly roll was fun so maybe more of those.
  • While I didn’t have much trouble with machine quilting on my heavy-duty signer, I’ll consider hiring someone with a longarm to do that part to save the many hours of rolling and unrolling that took.
  • Smaller might be better: I could try quilted bags or smaller throws in future.
  • I could also really use a more study desk for the sewing machine — I’m figuring out what that should be now.

Once this is done I’ll be taking a long break from quilts, but not from sewing! I’ve been enjoying making clothes, and would like to get back into bags and toys too. Maybe even make my kid some ponies if I can find that pattern.

Other non-goals: coming later

Everything is well on the way for these goals! I also had a bunch of things that didn’t quite make it to my top 4 goals but *did* make it into my life. I’ll put those in a separate post!

Fiber goals 2022

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Fiber goals time! Still more fun than new years resolutions.

Previous years:

  1. Rainbows 🌈 — I’ve taken to trying to find a rainbow project for pride month every year, but what if I just knit rainbows year round? Maybe not *every* project but more than two in the summer.
  2. Advents past 🎄– I have an Indie Untangled countdown from 2020 and a few older things that haven’t been used. It’s past time! I might try one as a 24 week project instead of a 24 day one, or just take over February which isn’t my favourite month anyhow.
  3. Where we’re going, we don’t need patterns 🕸️ — I like designing things for myself but I keep trying to notes and make it reproducible and write up a pattern. What if I just let go of that restriction and just did more freeform knitting and going off script? I like writing patterns but maybe this is not the phase of my life for that. I think this might also help me use my handspun because I can let the materials tell me what they want to be, the way my dad used to describe soapstone carving to me.
  4. Finsh the sabbatical quilt 🪡 — I started a quilt during my 8 week work sabbatical, then spent 5 of those weeks sleeping off my vaccine reactions, among other more mundane things. It was nice to have the break but it was definitely not the experience I’d imagined and waited 7 years to have. Disappointment aside, the quilt exists because I felt like I’d rather have a physical accomplishment as part of the whole less than satisfying experience, and I’d like to get it on my kid’s bed in 2022.

Other ideas

Here’s my brainstorming list of ideas that didn’t make this year’s top 4 cut, but might be fun to try or save for another year.

Squishing the stash — organizing it (and thus literally squishing it all) and also paring it down a bit for space and giving away the stuff I inherited from someone else’s mother in law that I really don’t need. I actually did a toss recently so it’s still a good goal but maybe not needed this year unless an opportunity comes up to give away that inherited yarn. Also, I bought some vacuum seal bags so I might literally squish up a bunch of that extra yarn so it can take up less space.

– other knitting ideas: more beads. More kits. Do a year long project again (maybe with the advents?). Colourwork (though I think that will happen with rainbows) Try unpopular patterns and new designers. Finsh more stuff I started (including my Tunisian crochet shawl!). Finally do that fingering weight sweater. (Maybe as the year long project?)

– Spinning ideas: finally doing my sampler kits, more fluff-to-stuff (aka, actually making more with my handspun)

– embroidery ideas: do that cute necklace kit that seems intimidating, do more of my fireside textiles patreon kits, try embroidery on clothes, finally learn to use the embroidery machine.

– sewing: Start on the first few patterns from The Act of Sewing, make pants.

-other crafts: actually make a go of weaving. Use the glowforge to make more buttons and tools. Do more with the hand cranked knitting machines. Crochet more toys.

2021 Fiber Goals: how did I do?

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My 2021 fiber goals were as follows:

  1. Knit something famous.
  2. Self striping stuff
  3. Kits in Stash
  4. Crochet cables

I’d actually done enough to feel like I’d met all of these when I did my August mid-year goals check in. Including finishing many of the goals that didn’t make the cut for top 4 last year! So this is just an update since then and some end of year thoughts.

Most of what I’ve done since then was this one sweater, which was “something famous” and “self striping” and “kit in stash” so it definitely counts:

Me wearing an unfinished sweater.

That’s the Sock Arms Cardigan, knit from a kit from Must Stash Yarn. It’s a delightful pattern, but I accidently used the wrong needle for one arm and ripped that back, then accidentally-ish put in too many body increases and didn’t like the result. So I basically knit it one and a half times and it’s still not done. I had to take a bunch of breaks because it actually started hurting my hands in repetitive strain way! (And I only very very rarely get any sort of pain from knitting, so it was a big concern and I took it seriously.)

Anyhow, I’ve taken the month of December off for advent/countdown calendar knits, so the sweater will be back on the needles at the end of the month. I’m eager to wear it despite how long it’s taking!

1. Knit something famous

Gnomes!

Gnorwen the ice cream gnome
Gnombleberry the Longest Gnight Gnome
Surprise, two gnomes!

That’s 2 gnome knit a longs, and 3 gnomes because the second knit along had two.

I also had been intending to do Wingspan in the fall, but the sweater sucked up a lot of time. Plus I made a cute Halloween knit along hat that didn’t fit into any yearly goals:

All treats, no tricks hat from kit by Jimmy Beans Wool, mashed up with some charts from the Autumn Doodle cowl

2. Self striping stuff

Honestly it was more about the gradients for the last part of the year. I couldn’t resist casting on from Michele’s new book, Brioche Knit Love:

Chai Tea Latte scarf from PDX Knitterati’s excellent new brioche book!

And then I finally gave in to the temptation to get some yarn from Gauge Dyeworks, which has a fancy gradient where you pull from one end to do the heel, and wind off some chunks in between the matching balls for colourwork on these Wildflower Meadow socks. I guess they might count as famous too?

Mom’s xmas socks
If I double-layer my socks with Mom’s you can pretend they fit me.

3. Kits in stash

I did a few more Christmas ornaments from my 2018 Little Box of Crochet advent. I knew I wouldn’t finish them in 2018 because I had a baby, but I’m impressed that I’m still doing a few in 2021. They’re kind of a delight and I’m not in a hurry, though.

The holiday gnomes also used up an old Jimmy Beans Beanie Bag kit, so that was nice. I even found some dpn holders when I was going through the kits! I seldom use dpns (I’ve gotten fond of the small circulars and occasionally magic loop) but I use dpns for gnomes so they can live in that kit now.

Tiny gnome in progress with needles in a cardboard tube dpn holder. Cute mitten stitch marker from my Monarchy Threads advent.

I also did something I haven’t done in a while and tossed my stash to see what I have on hand. I definitely still have a bunch of kits, but I was impressed by how many two-skein sets I’d paired up with no particular plan. I’ve got a huge box of those mostly in one place now to facilitate using them.

4. Crochet cables

Nothing new on this goal. And that’s ok! I learned what I wanted to know. And I learned again with that and the ornaments and the Tunisian shawl that it’s harder to fit crochet into my day, so it’s going to continue to be a sometimes thing around here.

Other

These goals worked out really well, though I’ve still got a few things on my famous knits short list that I haven’t done, and I’ve got lots of kits and self striping yarn.

I’m strangely happy with the state of my stash after moving things around a bit, in that I can almost always put together something I want to make with minimal effort. Digging through it didn’t find as many gaps as last time and left me feeling like I didn’t need to go shopping! Which would be more convenient if it hadn’t happened right when it was time to buy myself some presents (my mom sends money for my birthday/Christmas every year and I like to choose at least one tangible thing to buy from her!). I’m going with the Sincere Sheep Made Here yarn subscription again this year for my year-long birthday present. (Happy birthday to me!)

The stash still needs to shrink a bit, but I feel like that will happen in time as long as I keep knitting. Still eyeing those expensive sock machines to make it happen faster, though!

So that’s a wrap on this year. January 1 I’ll post up my 2022 goals!

Fiber goals 2021: the rejected ideas

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When I did my August check in I’d already achieved all of 2021’s goals. (August goals post.) So let’s talk about the other non-goals I’d talked about first. (2021 goals post.)

1. Spinning Techniques

I did try out core spinning! I only did a little sample but I’ve got plans for more. My real problem is that I’m not sure what to do with the finished fiber. It’s a bit thick for the stuff I usually make. Still fun just to do it, though.

I took part in a plying sample a long via Jillian Moreno’s patreon, which honestly taught me some surprising things about how much I like marled tonals at different ply levels. It turns out I loved the two and three plies a lot, and I even liked my singles more than I expected. I don’t love commercial single ply so I wasn’t expecting to like it at all, but it was ok. I do think I’ll try to go back and do her woolen to worsted one too.

I did get to know (and love) the new magnetic head for my spinning wheel. But mostly I did familiar stuff and that’s ok because it means I’ve got a bunch of handspun I’m ready to actually use.

2. Being intentional about purchases

I definitely did this one. I stopped following a number of larger yarn companies and started curating my Instagram to include more dyers who were part of marginalized communities. I bought more adorable stitch markers and patterns (even patterns I’m not sure I’ll ever get time to make!)

That said, I still have a bit of a stash problem. But I at least don’t feel like I’ve made it worse? And I do feel like I made a few creators who I admire happy!

3. Dyeing

Did some with my toddler. The solar dyeing and the “dye using tree bits” were fun. I’ve got some more ideas here now that it’s cool enough for us to be outside for this again.

4. Craftsy

I wound up using craftsy for quilting stuff while I was on sabbatical, but after that I haven’t made time for it. So I went to cancel my subscription today and… The phone number they tell you to call is a very scammy “you may have already won a gift card…” message and the whole interaction raised all my red flags as a security person when they tried to charge a cancellation fee and couldn’t use my card on file. Not sure if they were hacked or the company that bought them is just a giant scam.

Normally I’d take to social media to figure out what’s up, but Facebook is down today and no one answered on Twitter, so I’m not sure what to do next. I made sure they had an empty gift card for renewal and I’ll try to dig through my email to see if I had a different cancellation method at the beginning. But I anticipate this only ending with a stop payment on my credit card.

I expected cancellation to be a big pain but that is above and beyond. I definitely won’t be doing business with Craftsy again.

5. Embroidery

I did some! Finished my old psyanky egg, made a dent in my xmas trees, and bought a pretty constellation sampler from kiriki.

Haven’t tried to do anything special on the embroidery front, but that’s ok. Glad that I’m still enjoying it enough to do a few kits per year. It’s a very nice break when I need to do something physically different from knitting. I actually started getting sore from socks so I needed some bread time.

6. Design and design tools

I finally made pyKnit, my python knitting math open source/free project. I’ve used it to adjust things, gave a talk about it at Pycon 2021, and had people working with me on it during the pycon sprints. I’m pretty pleased with that!

I’ve got more that I want to do with it, but I’m glad to say that it got to the point of being useful and being in good enough shape documentation-wise that people could help me. Wish I had more time to hack on it, but that’s always the problem with ideas.

Didn’t release any knitting designs, but I did get one put into pyKnit’s examples, so that’s fun.

In summary…

Despite these being not really goals, I feel like I got pretty far on them. My only regret is Craftsy, which I suspect is going to turn into a giant mess because I can’t seem to cancel the auto-renewal properly.

2021 fiber goals: August progress

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Not exactly a mid-year check-in because I stopped blogging when the Moderna vaccine knocked me on my butt and I spent a month sleeping while my immune system did its thing. I’m fine now but got out of the blogging habit when I needed more naps. But when you check on after nine months instead of six, progress looks extra great!

1. Knit something famous.

Despite frequently looking at patterns with this in mind, I’ve only knit one!

Fish lips kiss heel socks, knit in Must Stash Yarn Quinceanera.

My one famous pattern is actually only part of a pattern: the Fish Lips Kiss heel. It did require a whole bunch of measurement (and optional math) that I’ll be reusing, and i really liked the doubled stitch style of short row so I’ll be using it elsewhere. (And I may rip back and reknit the first sock because I liked my second sock slip stitch mod!)

I’ve got one more famous pattern in my plans for the rest of the year, but even if I only knit the one I feel like I’ve learned a lot from having this goal by looking at how many people have knit a pattern. A lot of patterns I love and thought for sure would have gotten lots of love only show a few people knitting them on Ravelry! Maybe I need a challenge for patterns that have fewer than 20 finished projects? That would be a great knit-a-long theme if I were in to running those.

2. Self striping stuff

Okay, obviously I knit the socks above, but also…

Knitting machine tube in KnitPicks felici worsted (we made a bunch of these while a friend was visiting)
My own single ply handspun turned out self striping!
Socks for my mom in Must Stash”lavender apple picking”

And I’ve got one big self striping project to come probably starting in September.

Yarn for the Sock Arms cardigan alongside the Knit Happy With Self Striping Yarn book that’s got the pattern.

I’m definitely happy with how this goal has worked out. And I’ve still got some self-striping stash for more to come next year!

3. Kits in Stash

I did two that were full kits with a pattern:

Composition Book Mitts in Knitted Wit yarn
Cassio kit by Laura Nelkin

And a few more that I had yarn earmarked to go together but weren’t explicit kits made by someone else:

Diversity minis by Kitty Pryde yarn, turned into a More Than The Month shawl
I had made my own kit for Pdxknitterati’s beautiful Syncopation shawl out of a charcoal from Anzula and gradient from Fierce Fibers
My Berry Crumble Shawl kit, put together from Yarn Indulgences yarn a year ago. I’ll hopefully have finished pictures later; it’s on the needles now.

I’d say this was pretty successful although I still have lots of stuff kitted up in my stash.

4. Crochet cables

Made a little crochet cable towel

This was definitely the easiest goal! I didn’t do more cables but I got into doing a big Tunisian crochet shawl so I feel like I got some serious crochet in this year.

In conclusion…

I could probably mark everything on this year’s list as done right now! I do have one partially finished project related to the list, and one not yet started, so there should be some new stuff to show at the end of the year, and I’ll talk about whether I did anything on the other ideas I had when I do the final wrap up. But basically, go me!

2021 Fiber Goals

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As usual, fiber goals are more fun than new years resolutions.

Previously….

1. Knit something famous.

I’ve never knit a Find Your Fade or anything by Stephen West. But I did try something by Casapinka and some Imagined Landscapes Mystery Gnomes this year, and I had a lot of fun! I’m not going to bother to categorize what “famous” means, but I have a few things in my queue I’ve seen shared or knit or just talked about a lot. Maybe it’s time to try a few more things: they must be loved by others for a reason, right?

2. Self striping stuff

I’ve put together a nice little cache of self striping sock, but I’ve been doing sock knit a longs that don’t use those yarns. Time to give that self striping some love. Probably mostly in socks, but I’ve been eyeing that Sock Arms sweater (though I’d have to cardigan mod it). I’ll probably allow some gradients too. I just got a cool book for my birthday to help with this one!

3. Kits in Stash

Revisiting a 2018 goal: I love buying kits and making my own preplanned sets of yarn for projects but I have a habit of saving these for travel, which obviously didn’t work out in 2020 and 2021 isn’t looking so hot for that either. The queue searching this year was really helpful, so I think pulling out some of those preplanned kits (and maybe putting some in my queue if they’re not) might similarly get my mind going. And if I don’t think I’m going to do them, maybe it’s time to earmark some for gifts or release the yarn into the general stash.

4. Crochet cables

I’ve seen a couple of beautiful designs with crocheted cables, and I was sorely tempted to pick up this year’s Jimmy Beans Wool Craftvent box because I loved the design. But by the time it came around, I already had two other advent-y things in mind, so I’m putting it on this list instead. There are so many neat crochet techniques, maybe I’ll learn a few more if I get back to picking up my hook!

Other goals I’d considered:

  • Learn some new spinning techniques, but I’m pretty sure I’ll do that without putting it on a list.  Core spinning is the next technique I think I want to play with (not because I think I’ll love it but because I have a batt to use and it seems like a fun thing to try!) I also got some new equipment to learn so I’ll start with that in 2021.
  • I’m also considering being more intentional about what I buy, but I don’t really want to resolve to have a “yarn diet” because (a) no fun and (b) I have money and many small businesses in this industry could use it. But I’m low on physical space in my office for more yarn, so I need to figure out some changes that feed my love but takes up less space and still helps the fiber world. More yarn as presents? Buy ridiculously expensive fancy fibers? Make sure every nth purchase supports minority businesses? Upgrade tools? Buy more patterns? (Ok, that last one is definitely good.) But since I’m not sure how yet, this didn’t feel like a full goal yet. I’ll experiment, I guess.
  • I still want to spend more time on dyeing, since that was fun, but I may stick to food colouring so it’s still toddler friendly. My order of undyed yarn is apparently gone astray, though, so it may be a while.
  • I got the $2.49 Craftsy subscription, so I’m going to explore that some. Maybe learn some dye techniques as well as the spinning I’ve enjoyed this far.
  • I debated an embroidery goal but honestly, I’m kind of happy to just muck around and try to find my style(s). So far I know it involves a lot less satin stitch! Maybe I’ll try to do some embroidery on clothes? Learn to use the embroidery machine a friend gave me when he moved? I don’t really want to put pressure into this one.
  • I’ve got design and design tool goals in mind, but I don’t want to put them on the list because I’m trying to find space in my day for them that doesn’t take away from family time or sleep. Most of my goals I can do without isolating myself (eg, I knit while toddler finishes lunch) but not these ones.

Basically, I wanted to stick to goals that were fun for me without too much deep thinking. So that’s what made the top four. Here’s to 2021!

2020 Fiber Goals: How did I do?

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My 2020 goals were as follows:

  1. Whittle down the WIPs and Query the Queue.
  2. A Bit of Brioche.
  3.  Top to Toes
  4. Some Smaller Shawls

By my mid-year 2020 fiber-goals check in post, I’d already done 3 of them and decided that was a silly goal in a year when it was finally easy for me to work on sweaters.

1. Whittle down the WIPs and Query the Queue.

The big work in progress for me this time was my 2018 Little Box of Crochet Advent. I still haven’t finished it, but I made it further and I’m pretty happy with that. I may turn the rest into my year-long project because they’re good palette cleansers, but if I crochet too much at once sometimes I get a cramp in my hands and have to take a while off.

Robin crocheted ornament hanging on the tree.
Crocheted Holly

I didn’t hit the queue as hard, but I *did* finally finish the Aspen Leaf scarf, which was the design that inspired me to give brioche another shot!

Aspen Leaf scarf with real trembling aspen leaves!

2. A Bit of Brioche.

I did petit brioche, then the Heliotrope hat and made it to the Aspen Leaf scarf that was my brioche goal, but I’m definitely not done.

Heliotrope brioche hat

I took a second PDXKnitterari class and started her Syncopation Shawl, which I put on pause to do seasonal things but intend to finish in the new year. I may restart it, though: I’d been thinking about doing the thinnest width but after rescuing a shawl end from puppy mouth today I’m thinking the wide one might be safer to wear right now!

3. Top to Toes

I did a few more top down socks! The top down version of my favourite Sundae Socks:

And two more Made By SarahS knit a longs:

So definitely a success!

4. Some Smaller Shawls Sweaters!

As well as finishing my Pocca sweater, I did a Hazelwood sweater:

And the Stepping Stones cardi:

And I bought some lovely yarn for the california poppy one from By Hand Serial (though I got the blue colour, because having just completed a yellow sweater I didn’t think I was in the mood for a peachy one). It’s going to be my first adult sized fingering weight sweater!

It wasn’t the goal I’d planned, but I’m pretty pleased with how it worked out.

And I *did* cast on for one single-skein shawl, but it got dropped in favour of end of the year knitting, so it may be my first finish of 2021.

Plus, as I mentioned in the mid year update, I did a bunch of the goals I’d considered but hadn’t chosen too. Pretty good for a very unusual year!

I know a lot of folks have had more time for hobbies, but I’m doing a full time job in 4 hours per day and being the solo parent on duty for the other 4. So I’ve got a lot less time to craft than I used to and I spent a month pushing burnout before we got my workload right (mostly I had to drop projects that needed a lot of meetings or weren’t in good time zones, and I took up more training and documentation instead). So I’m really happy we managed to find ways to do things like the yarn dyeing as a family, and glad that kiddo is starting to enjoy more independent play so I can knit and help him build/do/pretend when he wants to do it himself.

On to 2021!