terriko

This year’s goals were as follows:

1. Revisit Old Goals





2. Try Something New





3. Something Stash Something





4. Game Design

We’re a bit more than halfway through the year so let’s see where we’re at!

Revisit Old Goals

Started strong in January by finishing up a rainbow shawl that had been on the needles for quite some time:

I’d intended to release the pattern since I had an old goal about writing patterns but… honestly, I haven’t felt like it, and I focused my time on other stuff that was bringing me joy. But I have a bunch of pattern notes and a bit more time right now so I may publish what I have without bothering to polish it.

February I worked on an old Beanie Bag kit from Jimmy Beans Wool that spanned 3 months. It was… honestly kind of boring and the pattern had a bunch of mistakes/confusing bits, but I finished one month’s worth and will likely do the other two at some point.

March-April-May I finally got around to knitting Wingspan, which was on my “something famous” goal plan but I never made it. It was a pleasant knit once I got into the swing of things, but by the time I finished it was too warm to wear it here so I haven’t really gotten pictures! Here’s one from before it was blocked, though:

June I took a break from old goals (and focused on writing).

July I pulled out some gradient balls and made socks for my mom’s birthday (a bit early because the timing worked out), plus I did tour de fleece stuff.

Overall, A+ on revisiting old goals. I have a couple more “use kits from stash” ideas but I may otherwise declare this particular goal complete and focus on some other stuff.

Try Something New

January started strong with me working on a hexagon blanket, which I’m still working on between other projects.

February I tried assigned pooling and made the “Shard” shawl by Romi Hill. It was fun and I’ll likely do other assigned pooling patterns!

March-April-May I worked on Wingspan for the old goals and didn’t bother doing new stuff.

June again was a break from all knitting goals. (I was writing instead.)

July was mostly finishing up work/travel and I didn’t feel like learning something new.

There’s probably some more to be done here but… honestly, I’m not sure this goal is playing well with my burnout? I’ve got some tentative plans for learning some bookbinding in August if my kid is amenable so that might be up next. But I think I may just focus on finishing up the hex blanket rather than pushing myself to come up with new things to do if I’m not feeling it. So this goal may be as complete as it’s getting unless something fun occurs to me.

Stash Something Stash / Write more

I’d planned to run some kind of stash-focused event about appreciating what you have (as opposed to feeling guilty about what you have, a common vibe in a lot of “use your stash” events) and I got as far as coming up with a nice list of prompts and ideas. But then I realized that… I didn’t actually want to run it. I was burned out on social media and wanted to spend less time on my phone. So I’ve declared this goal as complete as it’s going to be. The prompts will keep if I decide I want to run things later.

That said, I replaced this goal that no longer fit with a goal of “Write more” instead since it was what was bringing me joy and it deserved some focus and time.

I’ve done a bit more writing for this blog but the biggest part of my writing this year has been fanfic since I’m having fun. I joined a discord to hang out with other writers in my current fandom of choice and I took part in a prompt challenge (which is why I didn’t knit as much in June-July so I could write). I’m now over the 40k “that’s a novel’s worth” of words since January and I’m pretty delighted with myself.

There’s something deeply satisfying in the current economic environment about making something that is basically non-monetizable put on a website run by a nonprofit (that I donated to!) and my output only serves to make strangers/new friends happy. And I definitely made a bunch of people happy! (Including my kid, who helped with some ideas in one of my stories.) Also I’m amused that my existing community of open source people and my new community of fan writers are somewhat similar and overlapping nerds. Not a surprise that people who share their creative outputs for free have some similarities but it’s still a delight.

I expect I’ll keep writing through the end of the year (and beyond but this post is about 2025 goals). I’ll probably join another challenge or two but even if I don’t do more than finish my current story in progress, I feel like this replacement goal has been met *and* it’s brought me a lot more joy than the original goal. And these goals have always been about finding time for things that bring me joy!

Game Design

It took waaaaay too long to get approval from work saying that my silly games weren’t going to conflict with my job at which point I was so frustrated with my boss for other reasons that I was intentionally trying to get put in the layoff pool (and I succeeded). But the end result is that I haven’t actually *done* any games stuff beyond a bit of helping my kid learn Scratch programming for his robot. I’m not replacing this goal because I still want to make games, but I haven’t figured out an actual plan yet so that’s on my list for part 2 of the year. So far I’ve got my personal laptop set up a bit better for game work (attached it to the kvm with my big screen and mouse) and I think I might aim to play around with some existing frameworks and make silly things with my kid as a goal for August.

More Thoughts

It turns out this year it hasn’t been *fiber* that was really keeping me happy. I mean, I still knit/spin/whatever but it’s writing and video games that have helped me cope with the burnout and grief (particularly from losing a friend earlier this year, but there’s grief tied up in climate and politics right now too). The fact that fiber wasn’t the perfect solution for this type of burnout makes sense because I needed something that engaged more of my brain and took me away from worrying about geopolitics/work/my deceased friend. I knit to focus my brain but when my brain is spiralling that’s not the right thing to do. I do knit-and-write-in-my-head a lot so it’s compatible with what works to distract me, at least, but fiber hasn’t been as much of a focus for a few months and I’m not sure if that’s going to change. I am wondering if I should stop calling these “fiber goals” next year so I can encompass some other hobbies, though.

With work as a stressor out of the way for now but more “international move” and “find a new job” stress coming, I’m intending to just roll with what works for these goals in the second half of the year. I *am* really enjoying using my fiber and stationary stashes now that I’m trying not to spend so much money — past me bought some lovely stuff and now I have time to use it. I think doing some game stuff is going to be fun when I sit down and start playing. And I’m really enjoying writing fanfic in a way that I haven’t in a long time, so I’m happy to keep leaning into that too. Last time I was involved in a fandom I presented as an artist, and writing is a different experience, and I’m loving it so much.

This is my 10th year setting “fiber goals” as a fun way to direct my crafting for the year. I’ve come to feel like setting goals around creativity and joy and focusing on accomplishing things I want to do is important. Especially in contrast to a lot of traditional new year’s goals that are kind of guilt based.

I usually limit myself to 4 that I’m really commiting to for the year, so here they are for 2025!

Revisit old goals – I wanted to revisit some old goals in celebration of 10 years of fiber goals, but I couldn’t decide on which ones. So instead, I’m going to try rotating through them like I did with different crafts in 2024. Every month, I’m going to look at the goals and see if there’s one I want to revisit with one project. Since I know monthly isn’t the perfect cadence for crafts, but it *is* a good cadence for reflection, some of them may take several months, and some months I may not bother, but the goal is to at least look at the list monthly and make a choice.

Try Something New – to go with revisiting old goals, I’d also like to try some new things, but maybe smaller stuff spread out over the year rather than one big thing. As such, I think I’ll focus on techniques I haven’t tried rather than full new crafts: for knitting that might be entrelac, mitred squares, planned pooling, stacked stitches. For fountain pens it might be painting with fountain pen inks, new drawing techniques, mixing inks. Or maybe I’ll try making some things I haven’t made before, like felted slippers or a blanket. I think I’ll try to put something old/something new together in my monthly planning so I think about it regularly but I’m going to be flexible about having things take variable lengths of time.

Something stash something – I think I’m going to run a craft stash focused challenge thing mostly for myself but also invite folks on Mastodon to join me. I’m not sure what it’ll look like yet but planning is part of the goal!

Game design – I haven’t been a game designer in a long time (did you know I used to teach game design?) but I accidentally got my kid excited about one of my old ideas so I’m making this a goal in hopes we build something together, even if it’s not that particular game. This isn’t very fiber-y but maybe we’ll find a way to make that part of it?

Many years I’ve also included a bunch of brainstorming ideas here that didn’t make the cut, but I didn’t make a list of those this year.

This year is the 10th year I’ll be doing fiber goals, and I wanted to revisit some previous year’s goals, so I’m starting by making myself a mega post with all of them to contemplate. Fiber goals are meant to be fun things that bring me joy, and organizing them like this helps me prioritize some fun things in my life. So many new years resolutions are kind of chores or guilt-based, and I’d like to avoid that!

It’s kind of interesting to see the progression of what I’ve learned and where I put my focus over the years. Most of these goals were successful. There’s a few that I don’t need to revisit: the pants and that quilt are done and I’m not doing them again! But a lot of these could be revisited with new projects — I definitely have more gift yarn and brioche patterns and a few more “famous” patterns in my queue, plus I’ve got lots of beautiful stash that I want to use.

• 2024 Fiber Goals (End of year “how did I do” post isn’t written yet. Here’s the half-year one.)
  
  
  
  • Gift Yarn
  
  
  
  
  
  • Lesser Used Crafts
  
  
  
  
  
  • Pants
  
  
  
  
  
  • Colour play
  
  
  
  





• 2023 Fiber Goals (How did I do?)
  
  
  
  • Toys
  
  
  
  
  
  • Hand-dyed, hand-spun
  
  
  
  
  
  • Complicated cables
  
  
  
  
  
  • Patterns I own
  
  
  
  





• 2022 Fiber Goals (How did I do?)
  
  
  
  • Rainbows 🌈
  
  
  
  
  
  • Advents past 🎄
  
  
  
  
  
  • Where we’re going, we don’t need patterns 🕸️
  
  
  
  
  
  • Finish the sabbatical quilt 🪡
  
  
  
  





• 2021 Fiber goals (How did I do?)
  
  
  
  • Knit something famous
  
  
  
  
  
  • Self striping stuff
  
  
  
  
  
  • Kits in Stash
  
  
  
  
  
  • Crochet cables
  
  
  
  





• 2020 Fiber goals (How did I do?)
  
  
  
  • Whittle down the WIPs and Query the Queue.
  
  
  
  
  
  • A Bit of Brioche.
  
  
  
  
  
  • Top to Toes
  
  
  
  
  
  • Some Smaller Shawls
  
  
  
  





• 2019 Fiber goals (How did I do?)
  
  
  
  • Learn Steeking
  
  
  
  
  
  • Document better
  
  
  
  
  
  • Finish another sweater
  
  
  
  
  
  • Play with mini skeins
  
  
  
  





• 2018 Fiber goals (How did I do?)
  
  
  
  • Use more of my project kits
  
  
  
  
  
  • More amigurumi!
  
  
  
  
  
  • Spin the neat fiber kit Kathy got me
  
  
  
  
  
  • Organize the stash
  
  
  
  





• 2017 Fiber goals (that is the “how did I do?” post)
  
  
  
  • Knit a “seamless” sweater this time
  
  
  
  
  
  • Try some new types of needles.
  
  
  
  
  
  • Knit more handspun
  
  
  
  
  
  • Create and release more patterns
  
  
  
  





• 2016 Fiber goals are in bottom of 2017 post above.
  
  
  
  • Knit a sweater for myself
  
  
  
  
  
  • Practice colourwork
  
  
  
  
  
  • Learn some new skills
  
  
  
  
  
  • Improve my stash for the things I make
  
  
  
  

The one highly specific goal that I never finished: I never *did* spin that fiber kit from 2018. Maybe 2025 is the year for it!