It's That Time Again...

Have you looked at the calendar? It's January, and you know what that means: New Year's resolutions, or, in my case, the annual goals post on the blog.

I tried really hard last year to not have too many goals, and I'm not sure that worked very well. I wanted to post more photos on the blog, and I did that to a certain extent, but the total number of posts was down significantly last year, so I'm not sure I accomplished much.

I also didn't have a hiking goal last year, and hiking was almost completely absent from the blog, and wasn't a big part of my life, either. (I blame the hottest summer in Seattle history for that.)

One area where I can report a bit of success was my goal to "significantly reduce my stash" in 2015. I didn't reduce it any, but it didn't grow, either.  I have exactly the same number of skeins in my stash as I had a year ago, so that means that my purchases were balanced by what I knit up and donated during the year. And, another small victory: I spent about $200 less on yarn than I did in 2014.

So, where do I go from here? I have come up with a fun challenge to use the older yarns in my stash. I love doing random drawings for projects, and have been randomly drawing the names of my self-striping and self-patterning yarns from a hat for my vanilla sock projects for the past couple of years. This year, I have something a little more extensive in mind.

1. I have listed the years 2008-2014 on slips of paper.

2. I've written items from my queue paired with stash yarns on other slips of paper.

3. I've written some ideas that set parameters for a project on still more slips of paper.

The photographs above are just a sample, so there are more project possibilities that I have included.  I have enough items to keep me knitting from my stash for at least two years.

The plan is to randomly choose one slip per month and cast on. For January, because I hadn't put together my choices for random drawings, I just picked a yarn and pattern that had been on my radar for a while. I'll leave the pattern as a surprise for now, and will reveal it in a later post. The yarn, which is shown below, was purchased in 2012 while I was at the Knitajourney Midwinter Retreat. The colorway is called Yarn Harbor, named after the yarn store in Duluth where it was purchased, and it's a store exclusive.

So that is my plan for stash reduction for this year, and perhaps for next year, as well. It should be fun, and I'll keep you posted on my projects as the year progresses.

So, how about you? What are your knitting goals or resolutions for 2016?

P.S. I photographed the slips of paper on three of my knitted shawls, Castanets, Burning Branch and Streusel. Follow the links if you want more information on those projects.