Plans, Goals, and Challenges

Hi all,

I just wanted to do another little check in post. I’ve definitely missed writing on this blog over the course of this year and wanted to talk a bit about where I currently sit with some of my goals and plans.

I’ve always kind of struggled with the idea of setting knitting goals or deadlines. This whole crafting thing is supposed to be fun, and I never want to feel like I’m slogging through a project just to get it done. But on the other hand, I tend to want to reach for the next new shiny fun thing and if I do that for too long, I tend to get overwhelmed or just exhausted by the amount of unfinished projects I have. I also tend to like to work on one, maybe two projects at a time because I find it really satisfying to see significant progress each day. And it can be fun to see my tracking tools being put to good use since I spent so long building them and making them good.

But knitting can take a lot of time and mental energy. And I also have another big life thing that takes a lot of time and mental energy, stage managing. I definitely can knit and stage manage, especially early in the process, but sometimes it just gets too exhausting. Or I get distracted by another project. The past two summers I’ve been really into embroidery/ cross stitching and so then I get behind on my knitting “goals.” And this summer especially, I had the project to make all the cross stitch people, so that didn’t help.

If you’ve been around for a while, you know I set a yearly stitch goal, and in 2021 it was 1M. Well, this year, knowing I would be stage managing for 6 months straight, I set what I thought was a modest goal of 547,500, which is 1,500 stitches per day. I still had more than 2K st/day last year, so I felt like it was achievable. Well friends, it’s not going great. I’ve actually done no knitting at all for 113 of 255 total days this year. As of writing this, I’ve only managed about 1,100 stitches per day, which is set to leave me more than 100K total short of my goal.

Total Stitches	281,648
Avg St Per Day	1,105
Projected Year End St @ Current Rate	403,143
Av St Needed to Meet Goal	2,4117

Now it’s not impossible to make up this difference, I need to manage 2,400 stitches per day which is not completely out there, considering I averaged 3,030 per day from Aug-Dec 2012 and 2,818 for all of 2021. But those were, of course, pandemic years where I didn’t really do anything much with my non-work time except knit. So we’ll see. I do have a vacation coming up which includes a 6 hour train trip each way and lots of free time. But at the same time, I auditioned for the next show at the theater, which will be about the same amount of time commitment, but with less mental energy, though I can’t really knit at all during rehearsals when I’m in it! I think I just need to be ok with not meeting a goal, it’s interesting to see what I thought I could do in January vs what this year has actually turned out to be. It’s also possible that I knit a ton during the next 2.5 months and meet the goal. I definitely have the next two nights free so at least there’s that lol.

So, what am I going to work on to at least update the knitting totals for the year? Well, for a good chunk of the past week, I was working on finishing up my Rheinbeck sweater! More info to come about this soon once i block it and get actual photos but here’s a sneak peak.

My only other two active projects on the needles right now are two socks. One is a pair of afterthought stripy socks I started at a baseball game earlier this summer, the other is a pair I started when I traveled for work this spring and then ignored for 6 months. I’m hoping to at least get one of these done in the next week or so, I plowed through most of the leg on the blue socks yesterday when I was listening in to a bunch of meetings.

My other big plan is doing the West Knits Mystery Knitalong for the fourth year in a row! Even though I didn’t end up loving last years, I did mostly finish it (still have unwoven ends and it’s unblocked), and I do like the idea of having that nice structured knitting plan. It works even better this year since I’m done with my Rhinebeck sweater before release, and it starts right after my trip. This year uses 100 g of 4 colors in a gradient, so I was able to pull from stash pretty easily with all the blues and teals I tend to be drawn to. I’m really looking forward to this one!

So yeah, that’s where we stand! Just writing this post has actually made me more excited about knitting than I have been in a while so that’s good! I’ll need something to do between now and casting on the MKAL, so I will probably start another purse knitting project once I’m done with socks, and I might start to look at one of my two long term hibernating projects. But I also have a bunch of cross stitch/ embroidery projects I want to continue to work on (more to come on that soon), so we’ll see!