I’m just popping in quickly because L and I are hosting a New Year’s dinner party tonight and I’ve been instructed to take a break. So far our main course is chilling in the fridge, the soup is half-finished (the other half all has to happen mere moments before serving) and the cake is in the oven. I am no feeling so confident that I’m blogging instead of getting dressed (I have showered, though).

Anyway, it’s Dec. 31 and that means it’s time for some sort of end-of-year list. I’m not going to rehash everything, but here’s how 2012 played out for me knitting-wise:

Hats: 5 (two were for babies)
Pairs of socks: 9 (that is way more socks than I realized)
Pairs of Mittens: 7 (three were fingerless)
Shawls/scarves: 4
Baby Sweaters: 2
Tea cozies: 2

That makes 27 finished projects, assuming I’m not forgetting something – I wasn’t so good at Ravelry this time last year. In fact, this time last year I was just finishing my second pair of socks and had never attempted a cable or lace or fair isle, which makes 2012 a pretty huge learning year for me. This was the year that I went from muddling through little projects on my own to throwing myself at new things with confident abandon. I taught myself cables, lace, and fair isle, then started actually teaching knitting, and amassed a rather unwieldy stash. I am also a much quicker knitter now, which isn’t something I realized was happening, but considering I went from needing a month to knit a pair of socks to knitting my Cranberry Biscotti socks in a week, I’d say I picked up speed.

(So, people started arriving and I had to go get dressed and whatnot and didn’t manage to finish on time. Rather than rewriting the top, I’m just going to keep going… Happy New Year!)

I didn’t manage to finish everything I started last year, but I’m not doing too badly. The Seafoam socks are half finished, and I’ll wrap those up pretty soon. My Lonely Tree Shawl is also pretty close to finished, and I still like both the pattern and the yarn, and am starting to feel a lace itch coming on, so I suspect that won’t take long to finish either. I ripped out my Woodstove Cardigan (as you know) and then got distracted by Christmas and didn’t get back to it until Saturday. It’s moving along now, though, and I’m guessing it’ll be finished sometime in February (there are a few knits due to various people in the meantime that will take priority). My albatross, though, is Buckwheat. It only needs a sleeve and a half, but it’s been languishing because all the plain stockinette made me want to poke my eyes out. I do want it finished, though, so I’m going to buckle down in the next few months and get it done.

My last finished project of 2012 was my Cranberry Biscotti Socks, and since they didn’t get a post of their own, I’m going to add those details here. I read through some other pattern notes before starting and people mentioned that the stitch pattern wasn’t very stretchy, so I decided to go with a 2.5 mm needle and not change the stitch count. Honestly, I could easily have both decreased the stitch count and gone down a needle size, but oh well, they fit and they’re comfortable and warm, so I’m not really complaining.

Details
Pattern: Cranberry Biscotti by Elizabeth Sullivan
Yarn: Koigu KPM in #1180 (red), #2403 (grey), and #1305 (brown)
Needle: 2.5 mm dpns
Modifications: No major ones. I misread the pattern at the top of my first sock (only one wide band of grey) and then repeated that on the second sock so they would match. I also changed my last pattern repeat slightly so I wouldn’t end up with the last four inches of the sock all in red, and then repeated that on the second sock so they match. In a way, this pattern is kind of like knitting with a self-patterning yarn, except you do all the work. It was a great knit though, and because it takes relatively small amount of each colour (the secondary colours used about 30 grams each and the main colour used only about 70 grams) it’s a good pattern for using fingering weight yarn that might be leftover after a shawl or something. It would have been perfect, for example, for my Colour Affection leftovers.