A Bitter Knitter

This November, rather than NaKniSweMo (a sweater in 30 days), I participated in NaKnitMo, knitting as much as possible in 30 days.  Over the course of those 30 days, I competed: A blessing dress for my little one : Booties to go with it : (somehow already lost one, and she's not even born yet.  Ah, well.  Just have to knit some more...) And a Dalek jumper for my little one as well: Plus  I finished another Gaptastic Cowl for a friend of my mother's , a pair of stealth projects (Christmas presents) for my biggest and smallest nephews, and got good progress made on a couple other stealth projects for Christmas as well.  The Gaptastic is pictured on my Red-Headed Sister below: So, all in all I completed three works in progress, started and finished three new projects, and got half-way through two more... all in November!  I feel highly accomplished, especially in comparison to a few months ago!  I aim to finish the two half-done...

If I would stop stealth knitting, you would get blog posts.  I'm planning a post for late March that will show you what I've been up to in January and February, but you're going to have to wait until then for most of my knitting progress. For today, however, I have some good yarn-y news. I have finished all the pieces for my sweater! Yes, my NaKniSweMo sweater is finally cast off.  It's currently blocking (perched precariously on my piano) and looks like a puzzle waiting to be put together...  A sweater sized jigsaw puzzle... The second sleeve is hiding down on the piano bench.  Each sleeve took a whole skein of yarn.  Or, to rephrase, it took 200 yards per sleeve to make them long enough for me.  Of course, it was after  knitting all 400 yards (or 50 inches) of sleeve and putting the whole thing in to soak that I noticed the mistake below: Two stitches that should have been knit that I distractedly purled instead.  If I had noticed before...

We're now over a week into the new year.  I've been mulling over the past year and what I want to "resolve" to do this year, so here's my 2011 knitting goal: Complete at least 24 knit projects. That's an average of two a month.  (Last year, my first complete year as a knitter, I finished 20 projects of various sizes, so I think this goal is extremely reasonable, as I was also in school for half the year.) Among those projects I want to: Knit a project with beads. Knit a pair of mittens. Knit a pair of gloves. Knit a pair of toe-up socks. Among my list of things to knit "someday" are the following: Knit an afghan Knit with 100% silk Knit with cashmere Knit a drop stitch pattern Knit a pullover sweater Knit a cardigan with buttons Knit something that has steeks Knit something with entrelac Knit something intarsia I also want to learn how to knit Continental and how to knit and purl backwards.  If any of these happen this year, great...