happy new year!

We ended up making an impromptu trip to Columbus for New Years this year, after finding out that my parents would be visiting my brother there for the holiday. My husband’s family lives there, too, and my father-in-law was born on New Years Day, so it ended up being a wonderful opportunity to visit both sides of the family at the same time. Alas, living where we do, our trips “home” force us to travel between two Great Lakes and the Alleghenies, which is not a very fun thing to do this time of year, so we probably won’t travel over Winter Break again. We made it home in one piece, though, and it was wonderful to get to surprise our parents with a visit!

So, it’s a New Year. I dubbed last year the “Year of the Yoke”, and I did manage to knit up (and design!) several yoked sweaters over the course of the year. It was also the year in which the seamless set-in sleeve was added to my repertoire, and I’ve already used it in two different designs (both of which have yet to be written up). But really, for me, it was the Year of the Sweater…in particular, the year I really got the hang of designing them, and proudly accepted the fact that I am, in fact, a sweater-obsessed knitter. Now, sweaters are not the most convenient thing to be obsessed with, as a knitter, seeing as they take much longer to knit (and much more yarn) than a pair of mittens or a hat or what have you. But the magic of creating an actual garment, one that you can wear as clothing, is just too much for me to resist. I’ll keep knitting mittens and hats and scarves and socks, here and there, but my heart is set on sweaters, and that’s ok.

Last year was also the year in which I really started feeling the creative push towards designing my own knits, and in which I published my first actual design. If you’ve been following the blog for awhile, you know that I have several other designs that I am either in the process of writing, or of knitting up the initial sample, and I thought I would do myself a favor by making a list here, since after a year filled with comprehensive exams and teaching for the first time, my mind has gotten a bit scattered on the knitting front. So, here are the designs you should expect to see me put out this year:

Garter Whimsy (working name)

A pattern/tutorial (a la Stripes!) for a seamless, set-in sleeve v-neck sweater with mix-and-match options for garter accents at the wrists and neckline. The pattern won’t take me too long to write up, if I just focus on it for a day or two.

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Vahtralehe (new working name: it means “maple leaf” in Estonian)

A pattern for a yoked sweater featuring large-scale, traditional Estonian lace in a maple-leaf motif. This pattern is currently causing me sizing headaches because of the very large motif, but I hope to get it finished by the end of the month.

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Estonian mittens (will need a name)

A pattern for those mittens with the Estonian colorwork motifs that I wore to Rhinebeck (and pretty much every day). I’m also hoping to create a matching double-knit hat, in a lighter weight yarn.

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Ganseyette (working name)

A pattern for a seamless, set-in short-sleeved, gansey-inspired sweater. This pattern will probably be a tricky one to resize, but we’ll just have to see.

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babyStripes!

A pattern for a baby-sized, cardiganized version of Stripes! I have to admit, I completely forgot about babyStripes! for awhile there, and feel guilty about it since I know at least a couple of people were hoping to knit one for babies that have either already been born or will be born in the very near future.

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Hollyberry Cardigan (working name)

A pattern for the Estonian-inspired, yoked cardigan sweater I am currently knitting in St-Denis “Nordique”. I may try to come up with a better, more Estonian-inspired name for it.

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I have a whole bunch of other ideas written down, but these are the ones that are already at least partway “there”, in terms of patterns, and I’m hoping to avoid dragging them out any longer. Of course, being a graduate student means that my teaching and research duties will always come first, and I won’t ever be able to knit up everything I can dream up. But c’est la vie!

So anyway, that’s (part of) the plan for the upcoming year, as far as knitting and designing is concerned. Happy 2010, y’all! We are totally living in the future now.