Fiber Goals 2024

[terriko]

This is crossposted from Curiousity.ca, my personal maker blog. If you want to link to this post, please use the original link since the formatting there is usually better.

Since 2016 I’ve set “fiber goals” as a fun way to direct my crafting for the year. I’ve come to feel like setting goals around chasing joy and focusing on accomplishing things I want to do is important, and these resonate differently than many traditional new years resolutions that are kind of guilt-based. For example: “Don’t buy more yarn” would be less fun and more guilt-oriented than “use some of the pretty gradients in my stash” — it’s all about focusing on joy and creativity. I usually focus on some skill building, some “use the supplies you already have” type planning, and some things that I wouldn’t naturally do without a goal that I revisit every few months. Links to previous years are at the bottom of the post, but let’s start with this year’s goals.

Gift yarn — I’ve been lucky to receive some yarn as gifts, but sometimes it takes quite a while before I get to use it. So I’m making it a goal to do that! I’m intending to focus on yarn chosen for me by other people, but I also have a small cache of yarn I bought with birthday money that may make an appearance.

Lesser used crafts — I pretty much always have knitting on to go, and I regularly rotate in other crafts: embroidery, crochet, sewing/quilting and mending all come up throughout the year, and spinning makes a more seasonal appearance for Tour de Fleece. There are also some that rarely make it into the rotation: tatting, needle felting and Tunisian crochet come to mind. So this year’s goal is to give some some of my non-knitting crafts a little time in the spotlight. For some, that’ll mean adding them into the rotation at all, for others it might mean time learning a new technique or letting that project be a focus instead of a thing that happens when I need a break from knitting.

Pants — I bought fabric to try making pants, but it’s been sitting in my stash for a while. I had pants in my backup goals for multiple years and didn’t make ’em, so I’m promoting it to my 4 core goals to get it done this year. I’ve got some other garment-making stuff planned but pants are the only one that doesn’t seem to be happening without a bit of a shove.

Colour Play — In 2023 I had a goal for cables which put some of my focus on texture. This year, I’d like to have some fun with colours: make some more fade projects, different types of colourwork, stuff like planned/assigned pooling, maybe do some dyeing or more experiments with blending on the spinning wheel. Maybe another gradient quilt if I start collecting squares again? I’m hoping to chase some joy in colour form!

Some other ideas that didn’t make top 4 but might be fun:

Here’s some other goals that came up in brainstorming. They didn’t make the top 4 so I’m not committing to finishing them, but I like having them recorded here so I can revisit them when I’m checking in on my goals or looking for inspiration of what to work on next. Maybe some of them will get done, maybe not!

Digital knitting — in my house this often means circuit board layout, but I’m thinking more about working on pyKnit, my open source/free python library for doing knit math and charts. Though I actually would like to do some other digital stuff related to knitting: designing some stitch markers and tools with the laser cutter, spending some time to make pattern templates, updating a few existing patterns, maybe building other tools beyond pyKnit. I’ve also got grand designs for setting up a pixelfed server to replace/backup my Instagram account. And yes, I’m not ruling out some circuit board layout too.

Load balancing the stash — my stash is in one of those big cube shelves, and some cubes are over-full. So the goal here is mostly to use things from the fuller bins, but I’ll also accept giving some of it away, rearranging the bins to fit, or focusing my purchases on places I have gaps in the stash. At the time of writing the overstuffed bin is self striping yarn, and I have space for some more solid/semi-solids and some space in the bin of Knitted Wit skeins for Socks on Vacay in the summer.

Revisiting old goals — I haven’t always achieved my goals, and some are fun to revisit, but I think I’ll save this for next year which will mark my 10th year of doing these goals.

Quilting triangles — I haven’t done any patterns with triangles in years; maybe it’s time to improve my quilting skills? I’ve got an old kit from Albuquerque that would force me to learn some skills.

Make a bag for my rigid heddle loom — it’s a bit big for any of our current bags and it would be really nice to be able to put the whole thing into a safe padded bag for when I want to weave elsewhere in the house (or maybe some day at a fiber event or meetup?). Quilting might not be a bad idea here.

Embroidered knits & mending — I do a little bit of visible mending already but rarely make it super decorative. Maybe play around with this more?

More dyeing — I’ve still been watching the ChemKnits dye videos and want to try some more techniques now that I’ve actually used some of the yarns we made. I also wouldn’t mind trying more “real” acid dyes (rather than food colouring) but that’s a bit more of a hassle with my kid and having to get some more equipment.

Courses — I haven’t really picked out any classes to take this year, but I wouldn’t mind throwing some in there if I can find time. I really enjoyed spending the day at Craft Emporium for weaving class, but (understandably) it seems like a lot of local classes are beginner-oriented and I’m solidly past beginner on a lot of my crafts and I don’t really have an urge to pick up something new right this second. I’m thinking about getting the Sew Sew Fitopia pdf/videos, but I should think about fiber festivals and other stuff. I do think I’ll probably avoid anything with a monthly subscription, though: I learned from last time that it’s not a great fit for my current schedule.

Circular Sock Knitting Machine — My kid and husband are printing me one using the new 3d printer. It’s not ready at the time that I’m writing this, but I’m hoping I’ll be learning to use it and making cool things with it sometime this year!

Blogging — I’ve (once again) been letting this blog slide in favour of just posting stuff on mastodon. In some ways that’s ok: we own the mastodon server and can back it up and do whatever with it, so it’s not deeply different than the blog that I own. In other ways, I miss writing a bit more long form in general, and writing is a skill that works better when I use it regularly. I can’t decide on a good goal here: do I want to write more, do I want to write about things that aren’t crafts, do I want to write fiction, do I want to integrate mastodon to make threads about each project into blog posts? So I’m leaving this in the brainstorming section and I’ll try to think about what I want out of the blog.

Ditching Instagram/Meta — remember how a bunch of folk stopped using Ravelry because a site redesign made it unusable or dangerous for folk with migraines? Instagram is there for me with all the auto-playing reels. Plus, you know, various human rights violations, terrible moderation, etc. I’m going to reduce my usage in 2024 and I wanted to record that here (even though it doesn’t fit with my typical goals and it’s more of a resolution) while I figure out what that will look like. I expect I’ll keep accounts for contests and the odd local thing that uses it, but if you want to follow me social media style you’ll have to go to https://social.afront.org/@terri or add my rss feed to your feed reader.

Previous years

• 2023 Fiber Goals





• 2022 Fiber Goals





• 2021 Fiber goals





• 2020 Fiber goals





• 2019 Fiber goals





• 2018 Fiber goals





• 2017 Fiber goals





• 2016 Fiber goals are in bottom of 2017 post above.