01 January 2011

Welcome 2011!

My main goals for 2010 were to read 30,000 pages and to knit 10 projects.

I always go by pages rather books because if I bail on a book because it's boring or because the writing sucks, I figure I should still get credit for the pages I managed to get through.  Plus, if I pick through parts of an anthology, I can still get credit for those parts, too.

And I picked 10 projects because a found a "10 in 2010" group on Ravelry.  But they had all these pesky rules (and, truth be told, some of the people there were scary), so I couldn't be bothered to join.  I mean, srsly.  Some of the people already knew in January which ten projects they were doing and which yarns they were using to do which projects.  Dude.

Sometime in June or July, I revised my reading to 25,000 pages when it became painfully obvious that I would NOT be meeting 30,000 pages.  (Side note: My goal for 2009 was 35,000 and I fell short, but I didn't have any knitting goals then, either.  This is when I was reminded of the saying "if you chase two rabbits, you will catch neither one.")

I ended up reading at least 25,530 pages.  I didn't count magazine pages, which is too difficult since I read several cooking magazines and I'm not really sure how to count magazine pages since some articles are on partial pages, etc.  And there are some partially-read books at home whose titles are on my spreadsheet but the pages read aren't.  But that's okay.  The point is that I made my goal, and I'm okay with not knowing an exact number.  I think my goal for this year will be 26,000.  Ten of the books I read this year were YA (young adult) novels, as I got on a kick when I decided to relive some of my middle school reading days.  While it's still reading, it felt like cheating to be able to breeze through 200 pages in a just a couple of hours.  So while 26,000 may not seem like that much more, it really is.  Plus, I'm hope that 2011 will NOT be a repeat of The Year that I Had No Job.

As for my knitting goal, I also met that.  In 2010, I completed 13 projects: George (a baby blanket for Brook), Gossamer Stars Scarf, my first pair of socks (which I've worn but have yet to take pictures of, log into Rav, or blog about!), two baby cardigans, two Christmas stockings, two short row scarves, a cowl, a crocheted bag, a scarf for my grandma, and a hunting hat for my mom's husband.

To answer a question that Naomi asked me via Twitter several days ago (and I didn't answer because I've been pondering the answer since), I think my knitting goal for 2011 will be some kind of combination of working on WIPs (works in progress) and stash-busting.  Does anyone have any ideas on this?

2 comments:

  1. Don't know if this helps you or not. But in addition to the 52 in 52 goal this year, I want to finish or frog 12 of the 15 long abandoned WIP/UFOs I know about. To average one a month. I may revise this to 6, am looking at them (ie that sock we discussed a long time ago with a heavily revised unknown pattern. If I have to figure it out from the completed sock it will take a long time.)

    I have also set the goal of (except for maybe gifts) every other project I cast on will be from.stash..

    Don't know if this helps.

    BTW the Orange keyhole scarf & mitts were from the yarn u gave me.

    ReplyDelete
  2. I want pictures of the socks! Or you can wear them on Wednesday if that's easier.

    ReplyDelete