Knitting Resolutions: 2016 Review

I wrote this post about what I hoped to achieve in 2016, knitting wise, back in January. I had it in the back of my mind that I would try to wind down as much of the stash as possible. To this end, I turned out about three bags for the charity table at Wonderwool and tried to prevent myself from buying too much.

I bought yarn twice this year: Wonderwool and the John Arbon open day. This amounted to roughly 10,000m of yarn in. I have knitted up (officially) 7,600m and I gave away 4,500m, so I have managed to get rid of about 20% more than I brought in. Not TOO bad. Not as good as I'd hoped - definitely not one third - but not too bad.

I did make some very specific resolutions:

1. Knit up all of the Cascade I have hanging around for roses for the rose chair. This might actually be enough roses to cover the chair. We'll see.
Nope. Not even one. Didn't even look out the pattern. I did carry around the 12mm needle tips for some time - one is still in my handbag. I don't know where the other one is. This is about as big a fail as it is possible to get, short of destroying the flowers I have already knitted. I'm currently sitting on the chair that needs upholstering, on a sheet, because the seat covering is worn so thin it might need professional attention if drastic action is not taken.
On the bright side, I'm starting a knitting club as an after-school enrichment from January and I intend to use it for this. We're all going to knit flowers.

2. Knit up all the single skeins of Lion and Lamb I have into hexagons for the epic blanket of gorgeousness. That's six skeins; seven if I count Bated Breath which is the colour I am currently knitting. I use the word 'currently' under advisement there.
I finished the Bated Breath, a partial skein of Georgetown (which wasn't part of the original count) and managed three more. I'm at 24 hexagons now, up from 2. Not a complete win, but not a complete fail either.
This isn't counted into the total above, because I decided that yarn only counts as used in the year that the project is finished. This adds another 1000m to the year's total to pass across the needles, though, which makes it easily my most productive knitting year ever, especially considering that everything I've FO'd this year was started this year - another first, come to think of it.

3. Knit another Central Park Hoody out of the black chunky tweed I bought from Emma's destash. That takes up shedloads of room.
Not a CPH, which calls for aran weight instead of chunky, but this yarn is currently being knitted into the cable yoke jacket. I fear the cable yoke jacket might be too warm for me to wear, ever, but that's another story.

4. Knit up the shawl kit I bought from Knitpicks in 2013.
Nope. I got it out and realised I'd lost the pattern, bought the pattern again online, found the original pattern immediately afterwards, carried it around with me for a while, but never started it.

5. Knit two other projects that use multiple yarns and that I have plans for - a several-coloured shawl for several blue DK skeins, and a variation on Ravello in an aran weight.
YES! I have done both of these things, of a fashion - the two-coloured blue shawl and the stripey cardigan.

Here are my completed projects, as per my Ravelry page:

...and the associated Flickr set, if you want to see them all in glorious detail, alongside many pictures of various buttons I was agonising over.

Liking the fact that some of these projects have a strong memory attached to them. Everytime I look at that red feather and fan sweater, for example, I think of watching War and Peace on the beeb.