Hope for 2022

After publishing last weeks very depressing post, I started thinking that I need to make sure 2022 goes a lot better than the previous year. I'm going to confess that it's not beginning any better than 2021, on the contrary. I'm quite sick, the doctors are clueless and not trying at all, my family is going through a very hard time. But it's all this that forces me to face the fact that if I don't start making very conscious choices about how I choose to live it, this year is pretty much doomed from the start.

There were several things that went wrong in 2021, but, as my knitting shows so well, the main problem was that, I felt so drained of energy, I put very little effort in anything. Most of the times I just went with the flow and most of the decisions I made were made for the wrong reasons: not bothering, not putting an effort thinking before I started, not putting an effort correcting when anything went astray.

To be honest, at the beginning of 2021 I was relatively optimistic and I would've not predicted the complete failure this year ended up being. What is more, even at the end of it, I was not aware of it. It took some thought and attention to detail to be more objective about it. This is how I've reached the conclusion that, more than anything else, I need to put the effort in making the right decisions. Not just going with the flow, but, as I said before, making conscious decisions. First and foremost, making sure I use the little strength I have in worthy projects.

The reason I was completely taken by surprise about my knitting in 2021 is that I was convinced that I'd made a break through in 2020 and my knitting had reached a new level. Basically, in 2020, I'd had this epiphany that I'd been limiting myself as a knitter. I thought I was a beginner, not someone who could knit extraordinary things, I thought I was not really into fashion, not someone who could wear some of the really beautiful projects I was seeing on Ravelry (some of them quite easy too). I realised that two things had changed over the last years: I had gained experience as a knitter, I had learned a lot about my personal taste (for example, that I love bright clashing colours on the skein, but prefer to wear neutrals), I had looked at a lot (and I mean a lot) of patterns on Ravelry and further sharpened my personal taste. So, after that, it came as a complete surprise that 2021 was the worst year of my knitting life.

Here are some of my new year resolutions (is February too late to make these?) when in comes to knitting:

• Buy pretty, good quality yarn. Forget the price, forget sales, think before buying. Most yarn I bought in the past has been a disappointment.
• Buy yarn with specific projects in mind. This actually is the best way to assure the above.
• Keep a good queue that includes both exciting and sophisticated, but also some mindless knitting projects. Don't start projects on a whim, stick to well thought of ones.
• Designing is great, but following a pattern requires a lot, and I mean a lot, less effort. There are some great patterns out there which definitely deserve a chance.
• Spend a lot less time looking at pretty things on Ravelry and use it to knit (or anything else).

I'd like to finish in a more positive note and I did find something that I think may be quite positive about 2021 and which, I hope, may yield fruit in the future. This year might have been very unproductive, but I have put a lot of effort in organising my ideas. As I mention above, through the years I've spent a lot of time looking at pretty patterns, projects and yarns on Ravelry and elsewhere. The obvious problem, when dealing with this huge amount of information, is the need to organise all of it in a way that is adapted to my own tastes and easily accessible if/when I need it. I've been doing this for a long time, as this blog proves, but in 2021 I really put a lot of time and energy in this effort. And what is more, I made important progress in getting it right.