Ravellenic Games 2014

Things have been quiet on the blog front, but that doesn't mean I haven't been knitting. I've been working on my first pattern and finally, finally got a finished product that I'm happy with. I just need to unscramble my pages of notes, take some awesome pictures, and figure out how to produce and publish a pattern, and then it will be ready to go! I'm really excited to finally get something out there.




I've also been planning my projects for the 2014 Ravellenic Games and have finally landed on a good combo. For Team TARDIS I'll be making a pair of Knotty Gloves out of Wollmeise Sockenwolle 80/20 Twin in Nazar Boncugu WD, which I caked up last night. This was actually the first skein of Wollmeise I ever purchased. I've knit 2 DK sweaters but have yet to break into my fingering weight yarn, so I'm excited to try it out.

For Team Knit Picks Lovers I'll be using the Knit Picks Shine Sport left over from my Sperry sweater to make an Isabella Bonnet. I made one of these for my friend's daughter and love that it's such a quick and easy knit. Plus, hi, bows. It's mostly an excuse to use up most of this leftover yarn and will be added to my handy dandy Gifting Basket.







I fell off the cold sheep wagon pretty hard when I found out that Knit Picks was discontinuing Felici. I wish I was joking when I said I'm having trouble coming to grips with this decision, but unfortunately I really am being that dramatic. I have 12 skeins that should be arriving at my house next week and may try to fit in a pair of Felici socks if I have time. I know that I won't have time, since I can only knit so fast, but for some reason that doesn't matter. I guess it's like how we always pack an absurd amount of knitting whenever we go on a trip so that we don't have to deal with the hell that is being stuck somewhere without knitting. Except that I'm not going anywhere and will be right next to my stash whenever I need it. And also that being stuck somewhere without knitting is not fatal, as much as I think it is.

Project Planning

One of my favorite parts of knitting is planning out my projects. I'll spend hours on Ravelry looking up patterns, which is time that would be much more useful if it was put towards knitting. Since I'm planning to only knit from stash during 2014, though, I decided to allow myself to plan out all of my projects in advance. All of my stash yarns now have a project attached to them, which means that I should be able to power through a ton of knitting this year.

I'm an accountant and therefore love spreadsheets, so of course my first instinct was to create a spreadsheet for my projects. Looking at all of this organized neatly makes me very happy.

The blue table is all of the projects I made in 2013, which added up to 7,435 yards. Unfortunately, I bought 9,020 yards...hence this whole stashdown thing. I obviously won't make it through all of the projects on the left within the next year, but they're all in my Ravelry queue and every yarn in my stash is attached to one of them. It's a long list, but I'm actually really excited to finally get to some of these skeins that I've had for years.