Resolutions and looking ahead

Football champion Kevin Bartlett says that the start of each footy season is the best time of the year for every single footy fan because no-one's lost a game yet. All dreams are uncrushed and hope is eternal. This time of year for me is exactly the same. I'm going to finish all my WIPs! I'm going to knit down my stash! Everything I knit will fit perfectly, wear like a dream and draw compliments from everyone who sees me! All deadlines will be met, with days or even weeks to spare!

Actually, I'm pretty good at deadlines (an incredibly focused attention on due dates and planning is really the reason I'm so busy all the time), but I'm also really good at casting on and buying yarn, so the chances of me finishing the year with a smaller stash and fewer projects on the needles is not good. That said, a girl can dream and, who knows, maybe this will be the year? 

One thing I really do want to do this year is knit more clothes. Sam and I both have drawers full of socks and I have lots of lovely scarves and shawls that I wear all the time. Clothes, particular jumpers, are useful wardrobe items that I could get a lot of wear out of.  In order to meet this aim, I cast on Joji Locatelli's Japan Sleeves on New Year's Eve with some Knit Pick's kettle-dyed Hawthorne I got in their big sale last year.

However, I'm a bit stuck on that project. I'm slowly working through the lace while I wait for the rest of the yarn to arrive because I only have one of the three balls required to knit the jumper. Although I placed the order before Christmas, it looks like it's still sitting in the Knit Picks warehouse, which means it still needs to travel across the sea and through Australian customs before it can be part of my jumper. 

Also in that same order is some black yarn for the heels and toes of this pair of socks, made in Knit Picks Felici Dark Side.

I love Felici! I swear I knit faster when the yarn is striping all by itself. It's like cheap yarny magic. I'm waiting to see how it wears though - I am suspicious of sock yarn that is very soft to knit with. Again, though, not much more I can do until the yarn arrives.

So, since I'm stymied with my current projects until my package arrives, then surely it is time to start more? Like socks made with the first instalment off my Little Yellow Cat yarn club yarn?

I also ordered a copy of Hannah Fettig's Home and Away book. This might have been a bad idea, because as soon as I pressed "confirm" I started thinking about how Bendigo Woollen Mills have really speedy service and how I could order a jumper's worth of wool from there for about $50 which would arrive at about the same time as the book, both of which will probably arrive before the Knit Picks order. Surely it makes sense to get a headstart on this year's winter, so I have a jumper ready to be worn when the cold weather starts?

So soon in to the new year, so little ability to stick to my goals.