Report Card for 2009

It's time for the final grading on my New Year's Resolution for 2009 to knit from stash and refrain from purchasing yarn (except travel yarn). To be fair, there are really two resolutions in there, so let's look at each separately:

1. Knit from Stash

Total items knit in 2009: 27
Items knit from stash: 20 (74%)
Items knit from new yarn: 7 (26%)

Final grade: C

(Do some items knit from new yarns get a "pass" for being completely justifiable, i.e. when your best friend gets married and wants you to knit a shawl for her yet you have no appropriate lace-weight yarn for a wedding? Of course! So maybe we should call it a C+?)

2. No Yarn Purchases (Except Travel Yarn)

Total yarn purchases made in 2009: 16
Travel yarns: 6 (38%)
Falling off the wagon yarns: 10 (63%)

Final grade: F

(Do some of these illegal yarn purchases come packaged with really awesome excuses and dreams for their ultimate destinies as knitted items? Of course! Does that make it okay? No way! Well, sort of okay for some of them. At least I love all of the yarn I purchased this year, instead of buying some skeins for no apparent reason just because I'm in a yarn store. Grade stands at F.)

So rather than focusing on how I'm clearly a below-average student of restraint when it comes to knitting, let's just look at the pretty yarns, shall we?
Travel yarn! It's allowed and I don't have to make any excuses, but I will say that I specifically sought out yellow yarn on this trip (San Francisco in April) because I never knit anything yellow (it's a really gorgeous marigold in real life). It's still marinating in the stash, but I have a feeling it could be a very nice yarn to pull out sometime in the next few (frigid) months.

Mother's Day purchase at Shepherd's Harvest. It's always easy to justify yarn purchases on Mother's Day...

More Mother's Day purchases with a little Living Green Expo loot thrown in for good measure. Apparently, I was feeling that my stash was lacking in the Natural Colored Wool Department. Remedied.

Travel yarn! Again, it's allowed. Purchased enough for a sweater for Amelia and in another colorway for Jackson when we visited family out East. (Working on his sweater currently, stay tuned.)

More travel yarn!

Oops. Loring Park Art Festival. The sun was in my eyes and before I knew it I was passing over the cash. No excuses here. (But it's super gorgeous cotton yarn that must be a summer shawl...)

State Fair purchase. Cheap, good, Lopi wool. Not a good enough excuse, but good to have in the stash in case I want to make another one of these.

Travel yarn! Allowed! It's from the Farmer's Market in Santa Fe when I visited for this Kristina's wedding and got to hang out with this Christina too. Met the yarn artist, listened to his stories, love this wool. (Scratchy and much more beautiful in person. Very appropriate desert colorway.)

This is sort of justifiable because I went stash-diving for worsted-weight yarn a lot this fall and came up short repeatedly. I purchased a bunch of colors of very basic wool from Paton's on sale at the cheap craft shops. Everyone needs some basic worsted on hand, right?

But then I couldn't stop buying worsted...

Uh, does this count? It was purchased from my rewards card at a LYS so it was technically "free" yarn...but I don't think that's all I bought that day... Look! Gorgeous deep red lace-weight yarn! Over there!

I have no idea what happened here. I was considering filing a police report for the suspicious purchase on my credit card but when the yarn showed up on my doorstep, I just decided to start knitting with it instead. (And I completely futzed up the sweater sizing, so it's a do-over anyway. Double failure.)

And finally, the sock yarn. The yellow/orange and the terra cotta/turquoise ones are cleared, since they're both travel yarns. But the red/green one was purely local. Unless I can claim it as travel yarn since I traveled all the way to Stillwater this fall to visit this new yarn store? Yeah, I didn't think so either. (It's an AWESOME store though.)

And to end on a positive note, I'm adding another grade:

3. Completion of Projects Outlined in Resolution:

Total projects outlined: 6 (I know it looks like 7, but Dan removed his interest from the mittens, so it's 6.)
Projects completed as outlined: 4
Projects left hanging in the queue: 2

Final Grade: B (being generous here, it's hard to stay on track with all of the beautiful patterns that keep springing up everywhere!)

Here's to a new year of knitting from stash (again), refraining from yarn purchases (again) and not being all that surprised when pretty yarns end up in my bag and my wallet is a little lighter (inevitable). I think my *official* New Year's Resolutions this year are going to be in the neighborhood of remembering to water my one plant and floss my teeth each night. Much more doable.