The Plan

Happy New Year! As frantic as the holidays can be - especially when you own and/or work in a retail store, I do love the fresh clean slate the New Year brings.


2007 has been a great year - certainly not without it's issues and such, but as I reflect back the issues truly seem minor in the grand scheme of things. It's certainly been a great year for fiber arts! Knitting has stayed strong and everyone's enthusiasm both in the store and on-line has been simply awesome. So many great new yarns, so many new books and what I think has been the biggest influence - the on-line community. From indy bloggers to forums to the world known as Ravelry, there is no question that the internet has had a significant influence and will continue to do so. The simple fact that we can all communicate, share ideas, discuss patterns, resolve problems and just simply enjoy communicating with others who share a similar passion, despite where we live, is simply awesome. That's not to say this mode of communication is perfect. Those "send" and "post" buttons can sometimes be clicked so quickly that we sometimes "type" before we "think".



As Pixie and I discussed on last week's podcast, I am pretty pleased with some of the new skills I've developed this year as a knitter, but I'd have to say that overall, I'm disappointed with my FO's or should I say, lack there of. There is no question that I have a finishing issue. I could resolve to not start another project before I finish the ones already in progress, but quite honestly, that is simply setting myself up to fail. There are enough things in life that don't go as planned, I don't need to add to that knowingly. I am going to try to concurrently work on something new and a WIP. I leave for TNNA next week and I'll be bringing along a long-in-the-works sweater and a new project for an event we're doing next month. I honestly get the best knitting/crocheting done when I'm flying - even more so than in the car.



Pixie and I also talked about some of the projects that we are going to work on this year on the podcast and they are definitely centered around skills I want to work on such as colorwork and mittens. I also want to get more competent with socks - yes I knit them this year, but I still really have to think about what I'm doing with a lot of stops and starts and double checking notes or with someone at the store. In general, I'm most interested in just knitting and crocheting more. I also want to dabble a bit more in designing both for our catalog and beyond. Please know, I use the word "designing" very loosely, but that little Vermont Felted Bag certainly held it's own this year.



What about all of you? What's your plan for the year? What are you hoping to accomplish both skillwise and project wise? Do you even have a plan or are you just going to go with the flow?



I've got some pictures to catch you all up on - a great sweater that appeared during the mayhem, some shots from our after Christmas pandemonium, I mean sale and a few other nuggets, including a few behind the scenes shots of one of our big projects that we've had in the works. I'll get to all of the that in the next day or so. I'll simply leave you with what truly the past couple of weeks have been all about, no matter how chaotic work and such have been:

Treats for Santa and the reindeer and Christmas morning.

Kathy

P.S. How is this larger picture format?