Tag Archives: fiber goals

Chilly March 2026, Life & Ink & Knitting

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It’s March!  Traditionally, February is the month where I used to feel the worst when I lived in Canada, likely because it’s when you’re sick of winter and the dark, but honestly it didn’t seem so bad this year, possibly because I wasn’t in winter in December so I haven’t really gotten sick of it.  It’s amusing that the number of people with masks on the bus seems to go up when it gets cold — a nice n95 really keeps the face warm, I guess.  Even I keep mine on on the walk from the bus stop some days just for the warmth!

A very fluffy (Eastern) Blue Jay with a peanut as large as his brain stuffed in his mouth. He's sitting on a wooden railing overlooking my snowy backyard. He was actually even more fluffy a moment before I took the photo. The weird pattern is from the screen door on my patio.

A very fluffy (Eastern) Blue Jay with a peanut as large as his brain stuffed in his mouth. He’s sitting on a wooden railing overlooking my snowy backyard. He was actually even more fluffy a moment before I took the photo. The weird pattern is from the screen door on my patio.

Possibly I’m not sick of it because of the sheer relief of being here and not there, though. As exhausting as it is to live in a house where you can’t find anything because it’s “in a box” and hasn’t yet been unearthed or it’s been broken by the movers’s terrible packing, it’s hard not to watch people’s driver’s licenses get yoinked overnight in Kansas and think “I’m so glad I got out before they yoinked my work permit like that.”  One of my new co-workers was aghast that I’d abandon a green card, but I’d definitely reached the point where no amount of getting paid more was worth the risks of being declared illegal at any moment.  And then I wasn’t even getting paid more.  Though I *did* just get my promised partial annual bonus from the old job so that was nice.

 

New job is working out, even if it doesn’t pay as well.   I like my new co-workers and we have interesting discussions about technology and security.  I’m less excited about the constant AI push in corporate land (it feels every single Microsoft product is yelling at me all the time), but I only have to use the parts that have a clear benefit to my work flow, so that’s something.  I’m spending a lot of time on the bus to commute and although I miss having more time with my kid at home, I do like having dedicated time where I don’t get interrupted.  I’ve been enjoying podcasts, audiobooks, mentally writing stories and just having time to think about whatever.  I’m not thrilled to have been hired as hybrid and told I’ll be going back to work 5 days a week in the fall (I definitely wouldn’t have applied for this job if it had been listed as 100% in office) but I’m trying to wait and see how it works out in practice.

 

Three sticker sheets featuring corgis & food, bunnies in teapots, and dogs. Four fountain pen inks and pens (described in post) and a roll of green washi tape and a small blue tooth stamp.

This month’s palette was pretty much built around matching those cute corgi stamp stickers.

Stickers

  • Corgi food stamp stickers – bought in Japantown San Jose but I don’t know the artist/company.
  • Tea Time Bunnies – ByMossyPine
  • Tiny Dogs – I think these were from Mind Wave.

Pens & Ink palette

  • Pelikan Pura <B> – Endless Alchemy Golden Sunburst.  I mostly bought this ink as a fidget because of the lovely bottle which is designed to be swirled, but I decided to see how I like it in a pen too.
  • TWSBI Eco <1.1 stub> – Diamine Apple Glory.  I bought this ink specifically for this pen!
  • Pilot Metropolitan <CM> – Ikebana Cowslip.  Accidentally got some green ink on the nib while wiping it off after filling, so this may not be the right colour in my notebook.  Oh well!
  • Pilot E95S <M> – Diamine Marie Rose.  From the latest inkvent.

Quick check in on creative goals

2026 Goals List

Creative space: My office is set up enough to be usable for work and for writing, haven’t quite figured out the desk situation enough work on painting yet.  There are still a lot of boxes but I’ve switched most of them to be clear ones so I can at least find things, and I suspect there’s at least a couple of boxes missing still. I’ve got an initial stationary shelf started (see photo below) but I’m thinking I’ll use drawers for most of my inks and samples and I haven’t decided where in the shelf those should go.

A black, square shelf with a number of small binders (of stickers), a big pencil sharpenter with googly eyes, a bottle of shimmering orange ink, and more notebooks and inks.

 

Crafting for the climate: Finished a scarf for my kid and a sweater for me.  Still working on a very complicated scarf for my husband, but it’s definitely not getting finished before it warms up this year!

Fluffy scarf made out of grey-brown fun fur yarn.A open front sweater laid on the hardwood floor so you can see the back cable. It is made in a gradient of yarns that go from bright pink at the shoulders to deeper purple at the bottom.

 

Painting with fountain pen ink: not set up for this yet but I did get some more watercolour painting books from the library so I’ve got some exercises to do once I figure out where the heck my watercolour paper got packed (or give up and buy more; I’ll use it eventually.)

 

Writing: wrote a bunch of fanfic for a valentines event and I’m really happy with how things turned out.  Got a few things in progress and with all the ao3 downtime the past couple of days I fit some extra writing time in.

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.