Welcome back, everyone!  Thanks for taking the time to catch up with my New Year’s post.  Ready to look at my plans for the year ahead?  Me too!*

If you’re on Instagram, you’ve probably seen the Make Nine challenge, where sewists and other makers pick out nine projects they’d like to complete in the year ahead.  I love that idea, and the spiffy little montages that come with, but then I came across Amanda Scott’s (@browngyrlknits on Instagram) #stashdown2020 project and something clicked.  I have a stash full of projects waiting to be knitted into being! I miss the joy of actually knitting projects instead of just daydreaming about knitting them! This is something I could do too!

You probably noticed these images aren’t mine, all creators are credited in the image metadata!

So I created a brand new stash spreadsheet (ok, I duplicated the old one and deleted last year’s data) and started plugging in projects at the top of my mental wish-to-knit list.  I added yardage, tagged by quarter, and then hopped over to Ravelry.  Get this.  I CLEANED OUT MY QUEUE.  Is that a thing any of you do, or are you all like pre-2020 me and just keep adding projects you think are super neat as the fancy strikes?  Well, as of right now I am the sort of person who only has things in her queue that she actually intends to knit in the next 12 months…and the very first sweater she queued (because it makes me happy and I have the occasional archivist tendency).

Add the three projects I entered the year with, plus one patternless project I have in mind for a Christmas gift…and I’m looking at a mere 23 projects for the year.  Those 23 projects clock in at 17,543 yards, which is *ahem* a percentage of my stash.  I don’t know that I’m quite prepared to share how much (or little) of a percentage that is, so we’ll just go with A Percentage.

Some of these projects have been in my mental queue since they were published, and don’t reflect current best practices in pattern sizing.  Similarly, I have yarn in my stash from companies I wouldn’t choose to buy from now.  I am considering strategies for how to handle these–Yelley (@yelleyknits on Instagram) has several thoughtful suggestions for handling precisely this situation–and will probably end up taking a multipronged approach.

So there you have it! A year of knitting all planned out, a year of yarn to play with and enjoy instead of squirreling away. I tried that last year, and it just wasn’t as much fun.  Maybe they won’t all get finished, maybe I’ll swap them out for an entirely different 23 projects, but I am really excited to get started.

What are your goals for the new year?

*I am actually supposed to be unpacking right now.  Über avoidance mode has been activated