Looking Forward into 2022

I'm surprised, but I haven't really seen people posting Make Nines for 2022 yet on Instagram.  Maybe that trend has passed?  Maybe I just need to give it a few days.  I made one a few years ago and then knit maybe half the things I posted on it.  Last year I just made a list for myself in a notebook.  The only thing I didn't get to was brioche.

I think I am going to skip listing specific patterns I want to knit.  New patterns come out and then I want to knit those instead and the old patterns start to feel like obligations.  I would rather look at my fiber and yarn and think about what I want to prioritize working with this coming year.

In general, I have to be careful not to make my fiber arts into a to-do list.  I find myself trying to balance my making between it just being pure play and following whatever creative urge I get and also setting up challenges for myself and staying disciplined enough to eventually finish what I start.  Along the same lines, I belong to many groups or follow podcasts or IG accounts or whatever that host challenges and KALs and everything.  On one hand I find that to be really inspiring sometimes and at times it has introduced me to elements of craft I hadn't encountered before and it can be a lot of fun to participate in a community activity.  On the other hand, sometimes I worry that I spend so much of my creative energy following along with what other people set up that I'm not able to follow my own instincts or really allow my own creativity to flourish.  I wonder if anyone else struggles with that as well.  

So with all that said, I am trying to keep my 2022 goals or ideas somewhat vague and allow for a lot of flexibility in them.  I still want to give myself some direction and parameters, but I want to avoid it feeling like a big checklist.  Here are some of the things I want to do in 2022:

1. Knit a sweater from my 2021 Jacob fleece.  The yarn is spun and ready to knit with, I need to swatch and then settle on a pattern.  I will be starting this soon, I signed up for the Shave 'Em to Save 'Em Sweater Challenge that starts mid-January.
2. I still want to learn to do brioche.  I plan to knit Andrea Mowry's Harlow Worsted as a learning project.  I have some other more complicated brioche hat patterns I would really like to knit, if I like it I might do a few of those patterns as well.  
3. Socks are still going to be one of those things I always have going.  I plan to always have a vanilla pair in my purse and I will often have a second pair going as well.  Socks are definitely low-pressure though.  They take as long as they take unless I am at a point where I just really want to finish a pair they probably won't hold top priority.  This leads into the next thing, wish is...
4. Specifically, this year I would like to keep using my sock yarn stash.  I have some skeins I would like to get knit up, but I would also like to play around with scrappy socks and holding yarn double for thicker (and quicker!) socks.  I want to use a lot of my sock leftovers, if not for more socks, I would like to weave with them or use multiple strands for mittens and hats.
5. At the moment I have 3 sweaters going.  I would like to finish all of them, as well as that Jacob sweater I will be starting soon.
6. I would like to make a colorful sweater from handspun as well.  I might do a sort of fade with my existing skeins.  Or...
7. I would like to play with my blending board a lot more.  I would really like to blend up enough for a sweater.
8. In 2019 I bought 5 lbs. of raw Corriedale.  I scoured it and started combing it, but mostly it has sat.  This is in part because I find combing really hard on my body so I have to limit how much I do.  Prior combing was directed at a Polled Dorset fleece and a couple pounds of Shropshire.  It is time this Corriedale gets some attention.  For Christmas my husband gave me a Clemes & Clemes Lock Pop.  I think having this tool will make the combing less arduous.  The locks are very dense and so it is really easy to overload the comb.  If I "pop" the locks open first and then load the comb I get a better amount of wool to comb, but I also reduce the number of passes I need.  I weighed what I have right now, and I have about 9 ounces of combed nests.  I think I will start spinning those before long and then just keep working on combing up the remaining 3 lbs. of clean fleece.  
9. With the exception of my mill ends/add ins/sample fiber stash that I have for blending, I would like to spin up my existing fiber.  I worked through a lot of it in 2021.  Excluding the aforementioned Corriedale, I have about 3 pounds.  That is 8 braids and around a pound of Oxford that I drum carded.  If I hit a spinning slump this might not happen, but if I keep going as I have been I have a good chance of getting this done.  I have given a lot of thought to my fiber stash and how I want it to function, that is another post for another day.
10. I purchased a Selection Box from The Woolly Thistle this holiday season.  I would like to use a lot of that yarn for projects in 2022.  There were 9 skeins in that box, but one project will probably use (at least part of) 4 skeins and another project I will be holding 2 skeins together, so that reduces the number of projects to 5. I would like to prioritize using that yarn this year.

So there you have it.  This sort of thing doesn't really fit into a neat little grid anyway.