Planning for next year

As the tryptophan plus medicine induced haze is wearing off and I’m slowly (slowly) coming to grips with the amount of yarn I bought over the past weekend/year (so much yarn), I feel an overwhelming need to match yarn to projects in my queue and figure out what I’m going to knit next year.

Last year I set the goal of knitting 12 pairs of socks this year. That’s not quite happening, as June and July got away from me, but if I knit another pair in December, that’s 10 pairs of socks, and I don’t think that’s too shabby at all. Next year, I’m focusing less on a the type or number and more on the reduction of my queue.

I love that Ravelry allows us to make sub-queues, and I’ve been working on a queue that is full of projects for which I have both the yarn and patterns to knit. There are a lot of socks on there, for sure, but there’s also hats and scarves and shawls and sweaters; plenty of projects to provide variety and keep me going toward my goal. The bonus is that there are some projects in that queue that will also help me learn new skills.

One project I want to knit is Elinor Brown’s Pod of Cetaceans Cardigan.

Not only is this pattern super dee duper cute, but it would also force me to learn how to steek! Never fear, I would practice on a swatch first. But I picked up these yarns specifically for this cardigan on Friday, and I’m super excited about this sweater. I have no idea which small child around me will be forced to sent a whale cardigan, but this is going to happen.

I also wanted to try double-knitting, and I picked up this Elsa Wool on Friday knowing that I wanted to work some kind of stranded project.

Over the weekend I decided that it needed to be houndstooth (don’t question me, I love houndstooth patterns), and found this scarf on Ravelry. Rather than striping the second side, I’ll just work the houndstooth in reverse.

Planning for next year in November seems a little silly, but we all know how crazy December can be. Have you thought about any knitting goals for 2012?