2020 Year End Totals

I said that my tracking for 2019 "wasn't great." My tracking for 2020 just didn't happen at all. Most of the things I finished after July didn't even get photographed, let alone get their own blog posts. I'm going to try to do better next year, but I'm not making any promises. There are a lot of things that I hope go better in 2021 and project tracking is the least of them. 

I finished some projects that I'd started in previous years...

And stitched patterns designed for being well and stitching during the pandemic...

And stitched some things I wanted to start in 2020...

There are also a lot of projects I started but didn't finish, most of it in the first half of the year. 

For someone who usually knits when she'd stressed there was a surprising lack of knitting. I finished the Finding the Yellow Brick Road Socks in March.  They're the most ambitious pair of socks I've knit in a very long time. It's the first time I'd tried that style of cable and I think the sock heel was also something new. I also finished three other pairs of plain stockinette socks in fingering weight Toes in the Sand, a pink pair in Drops Fabel, and a pair in Lion Brand Sockease Toffee)  and two in worsted weight (one with clearance Hobby Lobby yarn and one with Dollar Tree acrylic) 

I knitted the Jette Shawl, a striped garter stitch shawl, in Woolike, a fingering weight acrylic. There are no pictures of the finished shawl, so lets go with a screen capture from the yarn review video I did. 

There have been stressful years before this one. I'm hoping that 2021 will be better, but I'm not expecting things to be magically better when the clock strikes midnight on New Year's Eve. 

2019 Year End Totals

I think this is all of it! My tracking for 2019 wasn't great. I've gone through the blog and the photos on my computer and done my best to include everything. 

It doesn't look like I did as much knitting as usual. 

Maybe that's because stitching takes so much longer than knitting? In the time that  I spent on Little Girl with Cosmos or the Hedgehogs, I could've knit four or five shawls. That's a total guess, but I don't think I'm that far off.

Crocuses on the Windowsill needs a little more back stitching and the upper edge of the window filled in, but I'm counting it as a 2019 finish because it's SO close to done. 

I'm ending the year with a lot of unfinished cross stitch projects, which I'm totally fine about. My productivity was definitely off, but I couldn't explain how or why. 

2020 will be whatever it's going to be. The last thing I'm going to stress about is how many shawls I might or might not knit. 

2018 Year End Totals

This was the year of skipping things. I accidentally missed the sign up date for Sock Madness, decided not to make the drive to the Sisters Outdoor Quilt Show, decided to skip the Row by Row Experience because I didn't love the theme and was busy with a bunch of other stuff, and missed the Retro Gaming Expo because I was waiting for a replacement tire and there was no way on God's green earth that I was driving up to Portland in the pickup. The only one I regret is the gaming expo. 

I still haven't gotten my sewing machine looked at so there's been very little quilting. I turned two finished quilts in to the church group and got one top done. 

At the beginning of the year, I decided that maybe instead of knitting sooooo many pairs of socks I should dig into my stash and knit some shawls. I wound up with fourteen finished and one more still on the needles. With only a few exceptions, these were all really simple, with easy to memorize patterns. 

Of course there were socks, fifteen pairs this time.

I did a lot more cross-stitching (and one crewel project.)

My four big projects will be carried forward into 2018. If I hadn't started the hedgehogs and All is Calm, or if I hadn't done so many smaller projects, A Little Girl's Fancy and Girl With Cosmos might be done by now. But I'd have missed out on other things. (If I need any more justification, I finished a UFO that I hadn't touched since 2004. Full coverage and confetti stitching provides a LOT of justification as far as I'm concerned!)

This year is going to be remembered as the year of The Hobby Lobby Incident. Just in time for me to spend some birthday money, they marked down cross-stitch kits to 75% off. I bought kits in Albany, then drove up to Salem and bought a few more kits...then a few more later when they were 90% off.  A few more kits that Mom picked up for me aren't in the  pictures. In June, they clearanced the yarn and I got there on the morning they were first marking it down. I think those were my only big stash purchases of the year.

 It's time to start planning for 2019 -- what's on your list?

2017 Year End Totals

This has been a fun year! The family took a trip to Hawaii and we got to sort of see a total eclipse of the sun and I made things. I made a lot more things than I made the year before or the year before that.  Some crappy stuff also happened, but when I look back the good stuff definitely overshadowed it.

One of the most exciting things I did was to start cross-stitching again. After packing my supplies shortly before we moved into this house, I'd thought I was done with it for good. I'd picked up a couple of kits and patterns in the ensuing thirteen years, but I didn't do any actual stitching until I found a cheap little Halloween kit at the thrift shop. While I was still working on that, I stumbled across an estate sale where I found a ton of cheap kits, including that lighthouse, and then I stitched the little tiny Mona Lisa pattern I found in a library book, and the village scene which had been packed away for years in the sewing room...

They're relatively small projects, but I stitched them. And, at just about the time I was realizing I still enjoyed counted cross-stitch, I saw an ad for the estate sale with all the cross-stitch kits. Two months later, we visited the thrift shop and someone had donated all the other cross-stitch kits. And then I went up to my sewing room and dug around until I found all of the kits I'd packed away when I thought I gave up cross-stitching. Then the same store where I found the first batch of kits had all of the vintage crewel kits. (If you're thinking I'm out of my mind, the new-to-me kits I bought this year ranged in price from seventy-five cents to two dollars. You can't buy the fabric for that.)

Clockwise from upper left: the first estate sale, the second visit to the same estate sale after they'd marked prices down, the thrift shop haul, the second thrift shop haul, and my own stash from the sewing room

I made twenty-seven pairs of socks. That's a record for me, three more pairs than I made in 2014, which was the year hubby was laid up and I kept my nerves steady by knitting endless pairs of socks.

It's ten more pairs than I made in 2016. I've stopped questioning the socks. They just happen without my planning for them or thinking about them and periodically I buy more yarn so that they can keep happening. They make me happy. 

That last pair in the collage may or may not be done by the time the clock strikes midnight.

I made fifteen new bags. Vinyl is fun and projects bags are fun and I can always use more bags, especially the big tote bags which I planned for and didn't get around to. There will be more bags, probably lots of them, in 2018.

Do we have to talk about the quilting? This is the same picture I used for my mid-year totals and, except for some block I added to the pink churn dash quilt, not much has been added since then. I lost my will to piece tops at about the same time my machine lost its ability to free-motion quilt.

What's in store for 2018? I plan on getting the sewing machine fixed so that I can finish quilts again. Hopefully that will give me the motivation to piece the quilts. I've been snuggling up in the Snoqualmie Wrap since the weather turned cold and I found out how amazingly useful it is. Now that I realize how warm and cozy it is, I'm digging out a bunch of acrylic that was originally intended for sweaters and adding a ton of shawls to my Ravelry queue, along with all of the socks and other projects that were already there. 

2016 Year End Totals

I don't want to talk about whether or not 2016 was a good year. I thought it was better than 2014 (among others), but apparently just letting that idea cross my mind jinxed me and now we're dealing with "new ways to have fun" that will probably take us well into January. So I'm done with the score keeping and comparing, at least when it comes to good and bad luck. 

It's probably better to think of bad moments instead of bad days or months or weeks or years... (That idea comes from this post by Sandra Dodd. A lot of the things she has to say about parenting also apply to just living life as a human being.) 

Now let's get on to the happy and productive things that happened in my sewing room this year! 

I mostly conquered my fear/hatred of zippers by making a bunch of different bags... 

I made another seventeen pairs of socks...

Three of these pairs were "competetive sock knitting" which meant following the pattern exactly as written while trying to either meet a deadline or beat other knitters. Trying to learn a new cast on, especially one with beads, on a deadline was scary and fun and I'm sure I'll be signing up for both Sock Madness and Super Sock Scarefest again in 2017.

There was also a shawl, and 1000 yards of old green acrylic that I knit into squares for a Minecraft inspired afghan that got abandoned along the way.

I did a little bit of quilting...

There were two other baby quilt tops that didn't get quilted because when I tried the Janome threw a hissy fit. I started some new quilting projects that I'm still excited about.

I can't wait for the Row by Row Experience to start up again next summer. The plan is to head up into Washington to visit some shops we haven't seen before.

Final Stash Report of 2017

Fabric used this week: 0 yards
Fabric used year to date: 7 1/4 yards
Fabric added this week:  0 yards
Fabric added year  to date: 30 1/4 yards (+4 sheets)
Net added for 2016: 24 yards

Yarn used this Week:  0  yards
Yarn used year to Date: 7950 yards
Yarn added this Week: 0 yards
Yarn added Year to Date: 9518 yards
Net added for 2016: 1568 yards

Those numbers are NOT bad. For years I've been thinking I should try for a year where I used more stash than I bought. Don't look at how much fabric I used, that's just sad. Look at how little I purchased! It would have been even better if I hadn't bought five yards of brown print for a quilt and then chickened out once I took a closer look at the pattern.  I'm happy with the yarn added because what I did buy was good yarn at great prices and I've been burning through my yarn stash like crazy. (If I'd finished that afghan and the pair of socks I thought I'd have done by the end of the year, it would have come out almost even.) 

What can't you wait to do again in 2017? Are you starting new projects or finishing off the UFOs? Buying new stash or playing with what you've already got?

2015 Year End Totals

This is usually one of my favorite posts of the year, but this time around I keep looking at my totals and refusing to believe that I only finished three quilts -- two baby quilts and little wall hanging -- in 2015. That can't be right!

What seems even less possible are the socks -- twenty five pairs this year. After 2014, I thought I might want to take a break from the sock knitting, but that's not what happened. I decided to try some more complex patterns and wound up knitting more pairs than ever before. But knitting soothes frazzled nerves and my nerves have needed soothing.

There was lots of mindless stockinette and ribbing, letting the pretty yarn do most of the work....

And there were some more challenging socks. Some, like Fischernetze and the Catnip socks, weren't as complicated as I thought they'd be. The Owlie socks and the Fly socks just about did me in. They weren't that hard, but they were  sure nerve-wracking.

I embroidered a bunch more vintage designs for the Garden Party quilt and although I've probably got enough done for a lap quilt, I'm still having too much fun to think about stopping anytime soon.

2015 was a wild year.  I don't know what 2016 has in store, but I definitely hope there's a lot more quilting involved!

Mid Year Totals

I thought that last year, with seventeen pairs finished, was my year of the sock, but I'm still at it. Eleven pairs so far this year (ten in the picture, because I haven't taken pictures of the most recent pair) and two more pairs half done. I'm sure I'll beat my record. Not that I'm trying!

I've finished two baby quilts.

And I've made progress on some bigger projects that still aren't finished...

My Garden Party Quilt continues to grow, block by block. 

Weekly Stash Report

Fabric Used this Week: 0 yards
Fabric Used year to Date: 4 3/4 yards
Added this Week: 0 yards
Added Year to Date: 41 yards
Net Added for 2015: 36 1/4 yards

Yarn Used this Week: 400 yards
Yarn Used year to Date: 4400 yards
Yarn Added this Week: 0 yards
Yarn Added Year to Date: 3675 yards
Net Used for 2015:   725 yards

This post is linked to Patchwork Times.

2014 Year End Totals

2014 was not our best year. My husband was in a head on collision with a drunk driver and the aftermath of that dictated most of our decisions and activities for the year. Things have finally started to settle down over the past two months, so I'm hopeful for 2015. 

As far as my knitting and quilting goes, it was my year for endless socks -- seventeen pairs total. One pair, the Mock Croc Socks, had some texture to it. The rest were just plain mindless knitting.  (I've also had the year of the scrappy baby quilt, the year I made more quilts than I knew what do to with, and the year of knitting big flat things that didn't have to fit anyone.)

I needed mindless projects to soothe my frazzled nerves and those socks definitely fit the bill. Even after I was thoroughly sick of them, I'd find myself casting on another pair, then another, then another...

In addition to the socks, I knit a few little stuffed things. Before this year, my track record for stuffed animals was horrible. I don't like sewing together lots of itty-bitty pieces, but the Monkey and Tardis Mouse and Egg to Alligator might have cured me of that. And Teenage Daughter's request for a Weasley Sweater in Slytherin colors reminded me that I can still knit sweaters, even if I do get the Intarsia letter upside down.

I finished fourteen new baby quilts...

I embroidered a lot of squares for what is going to become the Garden Party Quilt. It's not a finish, but it's a lot of progress, and searching Pinterest and Google for the craziest vintage patterns I could find was a great distraction.

Things have finally started feeling normal again over the past few weeks, so I pulled out and finished my Drab Postage Stamps and Cheddar Bowties. And two new projects -- Chocolate Covered Cherries and Little Letters.

2013 Year End Totals

Going back through my pictures for your year, I really got more done in 2013 than I realized. One large quilt quilted and finished. Three small lace shawls, six pairs of socks, a tote bag that I love to pieces and still carry almost every day, a possum costume, a gargoyle, a Sasquatch hunting backpack...a kindle cover, a couple of pin cushions, a mug rug and a pot holder...

After going through the baby quilts a second time, I was sure I had them all in chronological order...but now Sid is missing. He brings the total to twenty-nine instead of the twenty-eight I thought I'd finished. Short of my goal, but definitely better than the sixteen I finished last year. Especially considering that they're larger quilts and I also wrote tutorials for a bunch of them.

All year, I've felt like I was getting nothing done, definitely less than last year. Looking at it all together, I finished more than I realized.  Twenty-eight baby quilts was short of my goal, but it's definitely better than the sixteen I finished in 2012. Especially considering that they're larger quilts and I also wrote tutorials for a bunch of them. 2010 was my gold-standard year for baby quilts


Weekly Stash Report

Fabric Used this Week: 0 yards
Fabric Used year to Date: 69 3/4 yards
Added this Week: 10 yards
Added Year to Date: 321 1/2 yards
Net Added for 2013: 251 3/4 yards

Yarn Used this Week: 0 yards
Yarn Used year to Date: 3615 yards
Yarn Added this Week: 0 yards
Yarn Added Year to Date: 9486 yards
Net Added for 2013: 5871 yards

I'm linking up to Patchwork Times.

2012 Year End Totals

I don't expect to finish any more projects in the next few days, so I'm including my year end totals with the last stash report of the year.

I got more done than I realized this year! Sixteen baby quilts, four big quilts from start to finish, three squares for Jo's Quilt Square Quilt Along, four wall quilts, and a handful of smaller projects. I didn't mangage to keep track of the knitting, but there were seventeen baby hats in the batch I donated to the NICU just before Halloween.

Weekly Stash Report

Fabric Used this Week: 1.5 yards 
Fabric Used year to Date: 74.25 yards
Added this Week: 2.5 yards   
Added Year to Date: 498.5 yards
Net Added for 2012: 424.25 yards

I flung 104 yards of unusable stuff during my sewing room clean up.

Yarn Used this Week:  300 yards
Yarn Used year to Date: 1395 yards
Yarn Added this Week: 0 yards
Yarn Added Year to Date: 4250 yards
Net Added for 2012: 2855 yards

To see more weekly stash reports, click over to Patchwork Times.

2011 year end totals

I'm still working to escape that weird limbo I fall into when I've been working like crazy to finish one project and suddenly it's done and a couple of days later I can't even remember what I was working on. Do you ever get that feeling, which is immediately followed by "How could I forget I was working on THAT?!"

Yesterday and this morning, I managed to put together one last baby quilt top for 2011. It's a nine-patch and snowball variation that I hadn't tried before and, although I tend to avoid borders whenever I can and this one was a bit of a hassle, I really think the quilt needs those little points around the edges.



This is going on my list of baby quilts I want to make bigger versions of.

I've had the year of the scrappy baby quilt, the year I made more quilts than I knew what do to with, and the year of knitting big flat things that didn't have to fit anyone. 2011 seems to have been my year of trying to keep my head above water.

I'd hoped to make more baby quilts than I made last year, but that didn't happen. My final total for 2011 was, I think, 26. Did I mention that my record keeping this year hasn't been the best?





The only two big quilts I finished this year were Cabbage Roses and the one I can't show you yet. <!- 30s barnraising>

Six or so UFOs got crossed of the list, mostly thanks to the Stashbusters UFO challenge. Nine more got added, bringing my current total up to 32. I can live with that. Counting the ones that got crossed off the list but not counted because they shouldn't have been there in the first place, I think I'm about even. But I like the new projects more than I like the ones I crossed off, so I'm actually ahead!

I made videos this year, and wrote patterns. And played with applique and pieced curves. I'm so ready to start sorting through my sewing room and corner and get started on some new projects. And dig out the UFOs to see where I left off and what I can get done next.

Weekly Stash Report -- 2011 Totals

Fabric Used this Week: 0 yards
Fabric Used year to Date: 88.25 yards
Added this Week: 0 yards
Added Year to Date: 1033.5 yards
Fabric Trashed This Year: 54 yards
Net Added for 2011: 891.25 yards

Yarn Used this Week: 0 yards
Yarn Used year to Date: 6640 yards
Yarn Added this Week: 0 yards
Yarn Added Year to Date: 14925 yards
Net Added for 2011: 8285 yards

So that means I added (roughly) 891 yards of fabric and 8285 yards of yarn to my stash this year. For more weekly stash reports, head over to Patchwork Times.


That big finish I haven't been able to show you yet? It's scheduled to appear on the Moda Bake Shop this Thursday and The Fat Quarter Shop is sponsoring a giveaway of enough fabric to make the whole quilt top -- so be sure to check back and enter!

2010 Year End Totals

This has been the year of the scrappy little baby quilt -- I finished 47 of them and would probably still be going strong if the group I was giving them to hadn't stopped putting together baby layettes and left me trying to figure out a home for future quilts.

I've got some new plans, but haven't quite got my enthusiasm for the scrappy little quilts back yet. Right now I'm in the mood to tackle UFOs, which wouldn't be such a bad thing. I'm hoping to settle into a mix of UFOs and scrappy little things and maybe a couple of new projects for me.

I only made four quilts (five, if you want to count Strawberry Fields, which is little and not finished yet) for my own household this year, and with the possible exception of Madder Snowballs, I'm madly in love with them all.



I couldn't choose a favorite between Grandma's Donuts and "38" and Courthouse Steps. They were challenges. They're the type of quilts I love.

Poor Madder Snowballs was easy, and really just an excuse to use a particular fabric line. It's a pattern I'd been wanting to try, I still like the colors and prints, but it doesn't make my heart go pitty pat like the other three do.

Knitting

I'm still not knitting anything big. This year, I did a scarf and a pair of fingerless mitts and a hat for Quinn that doesn't count because it came out so badly.

To keep my hands moving when we're watching television at night, I've been knitting baby hats and booties -- 31 pairs of Stay on Booties, 1 pair of Quick and Easy Baby Socks, 25 striped hats, 39 Baby's First Hats, and 4 hats from other patterns.

Thread

Over on Stashbusters, some of us kept track of how many spools of thread we emptied over the course of the year. My monthly totals are over in the sidebar -- it worked out to 14 1200 yard spools and 4 500 yard spools...18,800 yards of thread...forty bucks worth of just thread this year. That's kind of shocking, how much it costs to keep me in thread, even ordering from Connecting Threads.

That's not a bad year of quilting, despite my reinjured knee and Janome troubles. Would it be too much to ask for a cooperative sewing machine and no car wrecks in 2011?

2009 Year End Totals

Things are starting to make more sense now that I've gone back through my blog posts and added up my year end totals for 2009.

There wasn't any knitting.

Over the entire year, I made two dishcloths, a lace scarf from a single skein of Knit Picks Crayon, a pair of worsted weight baby socks, three pairs of booties, a pair of worsted weight adult size socks, and two bulky hats. That's all -- eleven finishes, nothing that took more than a single skein of yarn, compared to the fifty I finished in 2007 and more than sixty in 2008.

All year that lack of knitting bugged me. How does a knitter go from complete obsession to a screeching halt like that?

It was the quilts. I didn't realize that so many of the quilts draped all overy my house happened this year.

I made eighteen quilts from start to finish, finished eight more tops, quilted four tops that were left over from the previous year, not to mention the bagsket and the strippy cat bed which is probably equal to another quilt all by itself.

Start to Finish Quilts

Scrappy Mountain Majesties
Birds in the Air
A's Quilt
One Thrifty Quilt
Scrappy Irish Chain
Red Quilt
Weed Whacker
Simple Pleasures
Leif's Snails
Cheerful Buzz Saws
applique flowers
30's baskets

Start to Finish Baby Quilts

blue disappearing nine patch
girly disappearing nine patch
pink lattice
yellow fun with bricks
white framed nine patch
scrappy hearts

Unquilted Tops

sparklng gems
scrappy irish chain
bento box
blue fun with bricks
ugly nameless baby quilt
chinese coins
my fun with bricks
30's buzz cake

I have a hard time figuring out how to count quilting finishes, mostly because I consider assembled tops as a finish category of their own. So I wound up with several lists of finishes. I guess that works.