As of mid-day on 31 December, I have finished six projects this year: 3 pairs of socks for me, 1 baby sweater and 1 scarf. Currently, in my active project queue I have three pairs of socks, two adult sweaters and a shawl. I am halfway through knitting the buttonband on an adult cardigan. Also lurking in the WIP/UFO pile are two half finished baby sweaters (one of which is a patterned nordic sweater for learning/practicing two-handed knitting), three or four pairs of socks, three adult sweaters, and probably a shawl. All told, I knit up just over 4000 yards of yarn into finished projects and another 500 yards on WsIP.
For the coming year, I've got a hankering to try brioche stitch and have purchased yarn for two-color brioche projects. I also want to finish some of the adult-sized sweaters I have started. This will require finally getting my gauge sorted out and perhaps if I focus on a single project at a time, I won't have so much trouble with gauge consistency and also with making good progress. Splitting my time between a multitude of projects generally results in little progress on any of them and plenty of drive to start something else new. Paradoxical but true.
Over the past day or so, I have re-ordered my Ravelry queue to more accurately reflect my knitting priorities and the parts of my stash that are currently living with me. I'll keep with my practice of traveling with moderately difficult socks to keep my hands occupied but will target my knitting efforts at colors for work socks. At home I'll work on more complex knitting or larger projects like adult sweaters. With less goofing around on the internet and more audiobooks, I think I can make a bigger dent in my local stash and get more projects finished. I think I can largely avoid all yarn purchases, with the possible exception of spending gift certificates.
I haven't figured out yet if I'll set spinning goals. There is certainly some fiber I want to finish spinning this year, even if it means adding to my yarn stash. Once I finish the current batch of plain merino roving and the brown Shetland, I may dive into the luscious Coopworth that I've been saving for a while. A nice light worsted or DK weight would make a lovely sweater and I'm sure I can find a good pattern in my overly large Ravelry queue and library.
At the end of the year, my stash contains 142,048 yards of yarn. It appears that I added approximately 20,000 yards of yarn, though I know some of that was due to missing items in my Rav inventory and I did purchase 7000 yards of cobweb weight yarn with which to knit a Queen Susan Shawl. I also picked up a small stash of crochet cotton for a dollar a ball. My plan is to knit more yardage than I purchase in 2017, resulting in a net reduction in stash size, no matter how small. Adding to my yarn stash via spinning up more fiber won't count. I haven't decided if this means I'll skip MD Sheep and Wool or not. It was a fun day out.
