2012: A Good Year

2012 was a good year for knitting for me. I accomplished so much more than I ever would have thought possible! My knitting tallied up to something like this:

• 24 projects finished
• 8,908 yards knitted
• 7,487 yards gifted, sold or traded
• 47,525 yards of new stash added (who thought tracking was a good idea again?)
• and learning new things like steeking, socks, and gaining more confidence with knitting lace.

I'm still sorting out my goals for 2013 and will be working through them again with the Pre-Process Knitters group on Ravelry. If you want some inspiration and motivation of your own, you should definitely check them out!

Side Project

Sadly, there isn't much knitting of late to report. I've been completely sidetracked by another project and for once I haven't dropped what's on my needles in favour of a new pattern, yarn, UFO or some other temptation.

My latest project is our flat. Since our things arrived from Canada three weeks ago I've been to IKEA at least that many times, taken deliveries of various furniture, opened and emptied or organised about 50 boxes into some semblance of order, and moved those same boxes around in various rooms as we've made space for furniture to be assembled and put to use.

Once we're a little further along with getting settled, I'll give you a tour of how things came together. In the meantime I will say this: our flat is fantastic. We had to wade through some lovely and not so lovely options of the 30 different flats we saw, and everyday I still think we found the one that suits us perfectly.

I'd write more, but I have to go make another list and take some more measurements for this weekend's run to IKEA.

The stash is here!!!

There is no better Facebook status than what I posted on Wednesday: Allison has been reunited with her yarn, and her shoes. To say that I am beyond thrilled would be an understatement. Not that my traveling stash didn't get me through, but it's just not the same, ya know? This pile of boxes is from the sunroom in our old house, that was my office/studio/craft space. It doesn't include all my books, but there is definitely a wardrobe box in there filled with yarn and two of those boxes are spinning wheels. Squeee! More to come as things are unpacked and the new craft space evolves. Stay tuned!

Travel Knitting

I tend to overthink my knitting for when I'm traveling. This often means I pack too many WIPs. I mean, how am I going to know what I feel like knitting?

In an effort to keep myself under control though, I packed modestly for a week away from the boys (I'm currently in Florida for one of my stitchy gals' wedding). This meant a project for the plane - my new shawl in Tunisian crochet to practice the technique I learned in last weekend's class at Loop - and a second project for later on in the week (I was optimistically hoping to finish the shawl on the way over. Ha!).

And then I threw in a third project just in case I got bored with the other two. Because I know me.

Of course, while working on one of the projects, I've identified that I am missing some yarn. And a darning needle. The cute knitting shop in Coral Gables opens at 11am. I'll let you know how I get on.

Something New

I know it's been an up and down time on my blog lately. My apologies. Lots has been going on but since I've been blogging from my iPad, it's difficult for me to post a lot of pics. Due to some technical quirkiness of the Squarespace app, I have to manually resize photos from a proper computer after the fact and since my access to one of those is limited and it ends up being labour intensive anyway, I'm just saving tons of pics for later on when we're settled in our new flat and have our new iMac for me to go crazy with (yes, we are an Apple family!).

The settling in continues though, and this past weekend I took my first class at Loop in Islington. It was in Tunisian crochet, taught by the lovely Aoibhe Ni (pronounced Ava, although she graciously said we could call her "O'Sullivan" as one of her profs at uni had). This particular technique is one that Aoibhe has invented herself to create beautiful lace crochet creations.

I blissfully spent some more of my Loop gift certificate (from the lovely Birgit, Laura, Jen, Karen and Esther) and got some gorgeous Alice Lace by Juno who is an indie hand-dyer here in the UK. The base is a cashmere, baby alpaca and silk mix and while it's a bit of a rich fibre to be learning a new technique with, I think the resulting Pax shawl (a freebie by Aoibhe on her website!) will be marvelously decadent! The neutral colour should make it a favourite basic moving forward too.

I'll keep you posted how I get on!