5KCBWDAY7: The ghosts and goals of KCBW past

Looking Back, Looking Forward.  If you took part in last year’s Knitting & Crochet Blog Week, look back on your Day Seven post. Did any of the techniques, ideas and hopes for the last 12 months that you wrote about at that time ever make it onto the hook or needles?...And there is also time to look forward again: One year from now, when the 6th Knitting & Crochet Blog Week rolls around, where do you hope your crafting will have taken you to? What new skills, projects and experiences do you hope you might have conquered or tried? Do you have any wishes for your blogging that you’d like to follow?

My hopes from last year's Day Seven were:

Finishing my first cardigan.

Bam!  It took me most of the twelve months between blog weeks to get this one done, but I did it!  In a fit of impetuousness I actually knit a swatch to possibly test knit a pattern as my second cardigan.  But then I realized that the stress of an actual deadline and the higher possibility of errata was probably not conducive to success.  Plus, I have several other cardigans with patterns and corresponding yarn already picked out.

Racing through another Tour de Fleece.

I finished Mom's handspun yarn, but since then, I've been spending too much time knitting with commercially-spun yarn to do any spinning of my own.  But I hope to get my Ashford spinning soon.  I think taking it to Yarnorama for one of their first Saturday spin-ins to get started will be a gentle introduction, with the peer pressure/social support to keep me motivated.

More experiments in dyeing.

Yes and no with this one.  Earlier this year I dyed up another batch of mini skeins, this time inspired by Jane Austen.  But I stuck to my Kool-Aid comfort zone.  I have another planned yarn dye coming up that will again be using Kool-Aid, but I'd like to try some other dyeing methods, both in the dyes and the effects, soon.

Trying my hand at sewing.

Unfortunately, this bag was sewn by my mother, and I am still woefully unskilled in this arena.  I helped with the fox pillow for Christmas, but I'm still more observer than crafter.  I'm hoping that this will change as soon as next weekend, though, because I the same knitting friends who we celebrate foodie holidays with are also quilters.  So we're going to spend one day out of the three-day weekend doing a little sew-in.  And they already enabled me into buying some fabric yesterday to add to my aspirational stash, so they've promised to help me along in learning how to actually put it all to use.

Owning my stash.

Well, I have gotten better about logging my yarn purchases in Ravelry so that I know what I have and can match skeins to projects.  Outside of the interwebs, though, my stash organization still has room for improvement.  The hanging organizer in the spare room closet works, but can't hold everything, and Mom and I both really want to make sure we're doing everything we can to keep stash and FOs moth-free.  We have some ideas that we're working on, but I'm still open to suggestions and inspiration if you have any.

For the coming year, I hope to continue to make progress on what I laid out for myself last year, because the cardigan was really the only one I expected to be completed in twelve months.  The rest are all about gradual improvement.  And even counting the cardigan, now I want to try a top-down, seamless pattern, and the completely-differently-constructed Spoked Cardigan.  I think that when it comes down to crafting in the next year, I just hope that I can enjoy what I create and express myself through it.

And speaking of expression, I have some more specific ideas and hopes for this blog.  I'll be making some behind the scenes changes like going self-hosted and buying a domain, but you'll see some of the results on this side of the curtain because I'll probably be changing the name.  Basically, I want to turn this into a more complete expression of myself, from knitting to baking to writing to everything. You might even be seeing more of my cupcake alter ego from day three.

It's not going to happen overnight, and right now I'm in cautious research mode to make sure that when I make the switch everything goes smoothly and I don't lose any of you.  But just so you know, even when I'm not posting, I'm still thinking about this blog and how to make it better.

I'm looking forward to the next year, whatever it holds.  I feel comfortable in what I know I can do and excited about what more I can learn.  I hope you'll all enjoy coming along with me.

For more 'Looking Back, Looking Forward' posts from day seven of Knitting & Crochet Blog Week, search on the 5KCBWDAY7 tag.