I've been writing down projects I've finished on a paper on a pinboard since... 2021 I think? I think I started doing it during lockdowns to make myself feel better. Well, the list for 2025 is fit to make one feel worse: there are only three items. And one of them is this:
- a tiny knitted Christmas ornament I made as a gift for the work Christmas party. I used two acrylic yarns from the stash (one destash from my mum, one bought in a charity sale) and two metallic / Lurex yarns from my huge yarn haul from my previous job. Did I mention that here? Yeah, I must have in connection to the baby blanket from last Christmas. So, yeah. That happened and now I have SO MUCH YARN and so much knitting to do. So this was also a bit of a proof of concept for me for working with those metallic yarns. I declare it quite successful.
Also, it's a tiny thing, but it still took me about three hours to make, so it's not a quick thing, necessarily.
But that short list of three finished projects is a very misleading review of things, because there was quite a bit more I worked on in 2025 - I just hadn't managed to finish most of the projects by the end of the year.
As a most striking example, there's the singlet I knit for my little niece that is already finished - all that's left to do is to sew it up and give it to the intended recipient. Photos to come then.
This I can / want to show. I'm working on a sontag for my grandma from the same yarn that baby blanket was made in. I currently got fed up with it but on the whole, it's a very exciting project because - you may notice I have that 1860s knitalong badge on the right. It's been sitting there since 2010, a reminder of a failure. It didn't work out for me back then; a big part of the problem were terrible old circular needles. Also, I think the yarn wasn't that great either. I have nice new circular needles now, and a yarn that's almost too luxurious (although it tangles a lot in its current unwashed, doubled up state). I recalculated the pattern a bit to work better with my gauge, and of course it won't be in the original design, with this marled yarn (is that what it is called?). But I WILL finish that sontag! Soon! Soonish!
I got fed up with it right now, though, so today I reached for a ball of mystery yarn from that same haul, and started knitting a Monmouth Cap. Well, a modern version. Here is the pattern. I started a hat from the yarn last year (I think it was), trying to figure out a historically inspired top-down construction. But it wasn't working out the way I thought it would (it was far more flying by the seat of my pants than I realised at the time, life's been A Lot), and it was sitting in the naughty pile. Then, going through my Ravelry library today, I realised this yarn was the perfect gauge for this pattern (well, not row gauge, but that's par for the course for me), meaning this pattern was perfect for this yarn and my intentions for it, and off I go. Unlike the written pattern, I'm doing the whole thing on DPNs, and because I don't think I'd have enough yarn if I made it as written, I intend to make the body of the hat an inch shorter. It should still fit me and work for me as a modern winter hat.
There's also the mitered square blanket (separate squares this time) I'm making out of the acrylic I'm never ever gonna wear. It's intended as a baby blanket to be sent to Ukraine. One of the yarns I used turned out to actually have wool in it, and a number of my finished squares shrunk in the wash, so I need to make more. Again, it even could have been finished in 2025, were it not for that. (Well, and the priority Christmas gifts took.)
So that's some of the things that should be finished soonish in 2026, and if all goes well, this year will be better on the finished projects front than last year was.
Of course, things going well really isn't a given these days...
