I suppose while I’m sitting here thinking about how I should be writing all sorts of blog posts and then not actually writing them (and digging myself into a bigger hole of “I have to write about all these things and I don’t know where to start” while accumulating more things I have to write about) I may as well start with my February resolutions accountability post.
February. I really dislike February. For so many reasons. First, it’s almost always the point at which I just start to get 100% DONE with winter around here. It’s cold, it sometimes snows but not that much, and all the holidays/my birthday are done. Plus, I was raised to think “March = spring” but around here, it doesn’t. So there’s this part where February feels like a neverending Thursday before the weekend starts and then Friday never actually
happens. For someone like me who suffers from the whole reduced photoperiod/Seasonal Affective Disorder business this is bad news. It basically means that although I know there are things I want to be accomplishing, my brain just doesn’t have the motivation to actually accomplish them. And then I feel bad about not accomplishing them. Which leads me to more inability to accomplish
things. Add to this that I have (for the past eight years) had a major freelance design/layout project I do for a local non-profit and all the work for that happens in February. Which means that in addition to my regular job and my other hobbies (and now my yarn dyeing job) and my real life, I have to put all that together. Ordinarily, I take a week off of work and I knock most
of it out in a week, but this year I had to head to an out-of-town work conference the week I’d be doing that, so I quite literally spent all of February trying to work this in to my spare time. Which means that things like blogging and knitting suffered. Oddly enough . . . yarn dyeing didn’t. Hopefully you’ll be hearing about all of that soon.
So. I’m going to make references to some things here that I meant to blog about and didn’t. It’s my sincerest hope that March and I can make a fresh start and I can actually tell you about all these things in the coming days so you can fill in the gaps. I was trying to put off this post until I managed to post about all the things I’m going to reference, but I realised that if I did that, I’d never get anything posted, so I just have to start here and work backward through time.
All that is a long way of saying, sorry I fell off the posting wagon, I’ll try to be better now. Words you’ve heard before. I really do mean them every time.
Goal 1—Destash
Ha. HAHAHAHA.
Because of a string of unfortunate and probably hilarious once I look back on them sometime setbacks I managed to complete TWO projects in February. They were not large projects.
To recap, my goal was to rid myself (through knitting and/or destash) of 24,000m of yarn by
the end of 2015. To help me better measure this in small increments, I have a goal to be 2000m of yarn lighter by the end of each month.
Progress: It’s a good thing I had such a head start after January because I just . . . yep.
Although I started the High Tea Cuffs (iteration 2) in January, I finished them on February 4. In addition, I finished a pair of the Flutterby socks (which I alluded to in this post where I ripped out a mostly finished sock and started over . . . more on that comedy of errors later) on February 25. That’s it.
High Tea Cuffs – 20g/80.1m of yarn used
Flutterby Socks – 100g/365.8m of yarn used
I guess the bonus here is that I didn’t buy any yarn this month, although I did receive two skeins in my Downton Abbey swap package and finally received a skein I had won from a podfic contest back in the fall sometime. So I added:
The Yarn Sisters Willow in Blueberry – 100g/256m
Knit Picks Andean Silk in Jade – 100g/175.6m
So I destashed a total of 120g/448.6m of yarn and I added a total of 200g/431.6m. Which brings me to +80g and -17m for February. Not stellar.
Adding that to the January total, I’m at 3917.73 m destashed for the year, 82.27m behind my current YTD goal. I’m really hoping to make that up in March, but all I have on the horizon are socks, small projects, and things I’m reknitting that will probably actually cause me to gain stash. The future’s not looking bright right now.
Goal 2 – Get my yarn dyeing business up and running
I definitely did some yarn dyeing in February. You read about the class I took, which was hugely beneficial and inspired me to create a bunch of new colourways
for Downton Abbey and Game of Thrones. The Downton ones are posted, the Game of Thrones ones are not yet.
I also listed all the Downton yarns (and will list all future yarns) on my new Etsy store:
TheGirlWhoCrafted. I wanted to move things there just so I could keep them
separate from other interests and dye under a consistent brand. I haven’t moved any of the Dragon Age yarns there yet, just because I was starting to build such a base at the old site with them, but I’m thinking that will need to become a project in March and I’ll just have them listed in two places and hope people find them and can transition to the new site.
I actually feel like I made progress on this front. I finished a 4-skein order of one of
the hand painted yarns (from the new site) and shipped it out yesterday and while I’m still in the hole, I’m generating more ideas than I have time to keep up with, so I feel good here.
Goal 3—Blog more regularly
Well, this certainly didn’t happen. I see from my post count that I managed six total posts in the month of February. According to my resolutions I was supposed to have three posts per week minimum, which would mean a total of 12 posts. I certainly didn’t hit that. I could have, but for all the reasons mentioned above, blogging just fell by the wayside. Expect some pretty serious content coming up as I work to back post everything I slacked off on posting in February.
Goal 4—Sew more
I did do a sewing project (and then didn’t tell you about it), although the actual goal is to sew at least one project a month from existing stash, and I definitely ordered in yarn for this. It was a part of the Downton Abbey swap,
and it was a project I’d never tried before. It was easier than I thought it would be and I really could have had it done in one day if I’d just had a few more available brain cells. So, while I wouldn’t say I met the goal of sewing more, I certainly did sew. So I guess that’s something.
So there you have it. I definitely fell off the wagon on all my resolutions (both crafting-related and non-crafting related) in February,but as of now I’m working up the motivation to conquer March with a vengeance. Hopefully real life doesn’t have other plans.
Good luck to all of you on your goals. I hope for those of
you in the northern hemisphere that spring will come to you soon!
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