Wednesday, March 21, 2007

a year in review

This is kind of embarrassing, but… I managed to miss my own blog anniversary! I didn’t completely forget, but I just didn’t check the date early enough, and the actual anniversary passed already. And I was going to make a big deal out of it and everything… oh, well. I’ll just have to do it now!

Happy birthday my blog! :)

It has been so much fun sharing my work with you, and starting to get comments has been just thrilling to me! I’m so glad I started a blog, and even though time might be scarce sometimes, I try to keep a fairly regular schedule of posting, because that’s what I appreciate in others’ blogs, too.

I wanted to reflect back at the things I made during the year, and especially all the new things I learned. I usually try to incorporate something new in each project I start so as not to get bored with the process. I rarely knit the same thing twice and even if I do, I try to do it a little differently the second time. Here are some of the new things I’ve learned/done this past year:

A lace scarf (believe it or not, I had never made one before)


Provisional cast on


Provisional cast off
Kitchener stitch

Toe up socks


Short row heel

Dutch heel

Entrelac

Dyeing yarn using different methods


Twist cables and frilly cast on in the Latvian mittens


I-cord edging

Twisted stitch ribbing


Steeks


Swirl knitting

Attaching a zipper to a knitted cardigan


Felting in the washer

Beaded stitch markers

Crochet cast off


Three needle cast off

Slip stitch patterns


Quite the list, huh? I’m not sure if I can find as many new techniques to learn this year, but I’ll try! If it weren’t for all the knitting blogs out there, I would still be knitting all my projects using the few basic techniques I learned years ago. Reading blogs has taught me so much, and I am a firm believer in the power of the global community! And not only have I learned new things, but I’ve also gotten new friends that I otherwise would never have met.

To add a little excitement, I want to give away a prize, and I want to do it by the way of a contest. Sort of. The task is to vote for your favorite FO (finished object) from the past year, and we’ll see, who can match mine. Now, I know that those, who know me well have the advantage of being better able to guess what my favorite piece of work might be, so I will draw the winner of some hand dyed sock yarn from all the commenters (heh, that word doesn’t pass the spell check…), not just the ones that guessed right. So if you haven’t been reading this blog since the beginning, browse through the archives and find your favorite thing! In my next post I will reveal what was my favorite thing to knit.

12 comments:

Sigga Sif said...

Congratulations on the blogiversary!

For the contest, I'm going to be patriotic and say Hyrna Herborgar. :-)

Annelie said...

Happy blogiversary! Remember it is never to late to celebrate with yarn shopping. ;-)

What a great tip to try some new tecnique in every knitting. I also vote for the Hyrna Herborgar.

Have a nice day!

Anonymous said...

Ok, I must first thank you for sharing your handicraft activities, I have really enjoyed your blog and read it regularly!

I had a very hard time picking my favourite, but finally I decided to vote for the Latvian mittens!

BTW, I myself enjoyed the wavy socks... I made a few pairs for X-mas for my friends.

Keep up the nice work - and congratulations!!! =)

Anonymous said...

Onnittelut blogille!! Upeita käsitöitä!! Olen kateellinen taidostasi!

Tervetuloa taas vastavierailulle!! ;)

Anonymous said...

What an amazing year of knitting - I am SO glad that I recently found your blog!!!

Anonymous said...

Wow! What a year you've had! I'm going to vote for the Steeks as your favorite project of the year. Steeks can be SO empowering :-)

Anonymous said...

I totally missed the contest part! Thanks for the reminder. My guess is the way socks. But you made alot a great things last year, so it's almost impossible to guess right.

Lisa said...

I missed the contest earlier too. (I am so far behind on my bloglines.)

Oh, I can't choose just one. I love the stripey vest and the tweed sweater. I would definitely make both of those if I had a pattern. You had so many gorgeous projects to choose from. What a great year!

Arianne said...

My favourite project of yours this year was your entrelac beret/tam. I really love it! The colour is spectacular as well I love the way the colours move across the little entrelac panels. I'm not sure it's your favourite but it's mine so I vote for that one.
But I also LOVE your Fina Hyrnan...I love the leaf pattern. It's just gorgeous. I wish I knew how to modify the pattern to knit one myself because I love how you've changed it!

Anyway, that's my vote. :) Happy Blogiversary!

Anonymous said...

Congratulations on the anniversary!
I vote the entrelack cap and it's Excel sheet. Also the dyeing experiments were interesting.

ikkinlala said...

(Belated) congrats on the anniversary!

I'm going to guess the Latvian mittens, because I think they're pretty.

Anonymous said...

Happy Blogiversary! That's a cool way of doing a "year in review" -- techniques tried/learned vs projects finished. :)