Happy weekend everyone! I’ve been enjoying a couple of chill days with a lot of knitting. We’re less than a month until the production of the show I’m stage managing, and I’m recovering from getting COVID over last weekend, so these calm days are really valuable to me right now.

In an effort to try and commit to both crafting and blogging about it more this year, I decided to dive back in to Year of Projects. Year of Projects is a group of bloggers who make a plan for their crafting, and then post weekly updates about it. I only did this consistently in 2021/22, but I’m looking forward to trying the challenge of being more committed to this space. Will it work? I don’t know, I tend to lose steam sometimes when it comes to blogging as you’ve seen if you’ve been around since I started in 2020. I love the community and camaraderie of the group, and I want to get back into focusing on my crafting, so I hope this will help.

The only real problem is I’m kind of bad about planning projects. I’m definitely largely a “work on what interests me in the moment” type of crafter, and making a consistent plan for projects is never really going to work for me. While I haven’t been able to commit to it since I’ve been doing theater, I have really enjoyed test knitting in the past, and that’s impossible to plan for. But, I have some goals that I want to meet this year and I figure it can’t hurt to at least put this in the void. While the “official” Year of Projects runs from July – June, I’ll be shifting a quarter and doing an October – September YOP year. So here’s my list, it’s a bit random because I try not to overplan.

• Knitting
  • WestKnits MKAL – finishing by the end of November would be a bonus!
  • Ripple Bralette
  • Finish my altered “Geogradient”
  • Recently I’ve felt a little… uninspired by the garments I’ve made, so I’d love to make 3 tops this year and really fall in love with something again. I’ve got several things in stash (or soon to be in stash), so in theory some options could be:
    • Stonecrop cardi with my Christmas 2020(!!) yarn
    • Deren pullover from the Embody collection with the green yarn I bought at Rhinebeck last year
    • Something with my Poirot yarn coming from Republica Unicornia
    • Whatever the Rhinebeck sweater next year happens to be
  • At least 4 pairs of socks
  • At least 2 hats
  • At least one other shawl
• Crocheting – mainly want to finish off the current items I’ve started
  • Ocean apron
  • Basic top
  • Palace steps blanket
• Needlework – again mostly want to finish stuff here!
  • Dragonfly cross stitch
  • Tulips cross stitch
  • Cat in the garden cross stitch
  • Small embroidery project tbd for my art wall
• Other crafty stuff/ general
  • 600,000 stitches knit/ crocheted over the course of the YOP year – this is just over 1,600 stitches per day, which I did in 2021 and 2022, I didn’t come close to this in 2023, but I’m just about at that this year so it feels
  • At least 30 blog posts this year
  • Keep active knit/ crochet WIPs to less than 5
  • Finish Master Project list Google Doc
  • Publish for sale updated versions of:
    • Yearly Stitches
    • Master Project List
    • Project Tracker
  • Spend some time on Airtable to see if that’s better for tracking stuff
  • Yarn/ Fabric organization – clean some stuff out