2021, a year knitting

Was 2021 a bad year for you? I guess it was for most people, if for no other reason, because of this never ending pandemic. As for myself, I'm not even sure what's wrong. Everything is like a fog. I've lost all sense of time, days melt together without highlights. I can't seem to do anything right. When something goes wrong, I don't have the energy or the mental lucidity to fight it and I also lack the enthusiasm necessary to get things right.

I hadn't realised just how bad 2021 had been for me, until I checked out my list of knitting projects for 2021. It's strange how my knitting illustrates so well everything that is wrong with my life right now.

I thought I'd knitted quite a lot this year, but I have knitted mostly small projects and not that many. But what I found truly disappointing is that I've not knitted a single project that I love. On the contrary, everything I knitted the past year was so boring that I struggled to pick some pictures to illustrate this post.

To prove I'm not complaining for no reason, I start with the first two projects I knitted this year. Here is their story: after I learned a friend of mine was pregnant with twin girls, I immediately started knitting them some matching projects. Everything went wrong from there: I couldn't find yarn I liked and hated the colour of what I finally got (it's so hard to choose yarn online), I couldn't find projects that I liked either, I felt completely uninspired and defeated. I ended up finishing these two cardigans well before their birth, but I made two lethal mistakes: one, to make sure they were ready on time I knitted the smallest size, two, instead of sending them as soon as I finished them, I put it in my head, for some reason I now find absurd, that I could only gift them after the birth. Result: by the time my friend had time to inform me of it, the babies were one month old and I feared the cardigans wouldn't fit. I probably should have sent them anyway, but I really felt it would be wrong to gift something that didn't fit. So, these are still in my wardrobe and they'll probably stay there forever. These two projects were, individually, the largest projects I did this year.

After that, I started knitting something else for the babies. I decided on some toys so I didn't have to worry about size. But I never knitted toys before, I hated the yarn, I was sure my friend was going to hate them, I was feeling like I was being undeservedly punished for past mistakes, so I went through a knitting slump. By the time I finally concluded and sent them, the girls were probably too old for such simple toys. I felt this overwhelming sense of shame. I hadn't tried hard enough, I should have bought better yarn, I should have knitted something better. I felt selfish. I felt my life didn't make sense, so much time wasted on something so unworthy.

After that I knitted two projects that involved a lot of mosaic knitting. I don't really like the yarn or the colours all that much, but, at least mosaic knitting is fun. These are placemats, by the way, and the stitch patterns were both taken from Barbara Walker's Treasuries.

I've knitted 7 dishcloths these year. I knit these for quick gratification when I'm feeling down. Here are my two favourites.

I've knitted 5 pair of socks. Most of them were knitted with yarn held-double and 4mm needles. I love to knit these for many reasons, chiefly: they're super quick, super warm, I love the marled effect, and they use extra yarn. A few years ago things got a little out of control and I bought a lot more sock yarn than I needed or wanted, hence the last. Again, here are my two favourites.

I concluded a total of 25 projects this year, started and frogged 2 projects only and started but didn't get very far on 2 other projects, which I very much hope I will conclude on 2022. Here are my two favourite projects: the only pair of "standard" socks I knitted (my own design and I am quite proud of it) and some Christmas decoration which turned out a lot prettier than I expected (specially considering I was using up yarn I really didn't like and regretted buying).