December Knitting

I'm almost finished my december knitting! There are two last small projects to complete before New Years Day when I go to the last Christmassy party and give them away. One is a hat and the other is a secret project and will be revealed soon. For Christmas this year I got a wheel! Its beautiful and I was able to start spinning with it right away! The only difficult part was putting it back together. I kinda wish it had a dvd or more Ikea-like instructions because it may as well have been in another language for me. I seem to require pictures to compare things to, now just one that points to items on the finished product. I looked at the first line of the instructions I don't know how many times before DH sat down to help. Once he started reading out the instructions I felt a little less overwhelmed and was able to concentrate on the parts and found what the first line was referring to...it was sitting beside me the whole time. I spun up 4oz of some Waterloo Wools beauty and now I'm working on 4oz of the corridale fibre that came with the wheel. Its a little difficult to draft at first but I do find that its easier to draft when I draft really really thin. No complaints there :)

My goals from earlier in the year:
1) Learn to crochet...turn out at least 1 crochet item.
2) Fill my sock drawer with hand-knit socks or, to be more specific, have at least one pair of hand-knit socks for each day of the week.
3) Now that my stash has grown quite larger than I expected - use what is in the stash and only buy at special knitting events (needle emporium tent sale, knitter's frolic, knitter's fair). Disclaimer: yarn bought with gift cards doesn't count :D
4) Knit another sweater for myself

The 1st I completed! I crocheted a few things. I worked on one of the adorable dolls from Creepy Cute Crochet. I didn't finish the stuffing and putting it all together but other than that it is done. I also crocheted a few baby bibs that were given away as gifts. I'm told they are loved. :) I failed on the 2nd but I'm going to transfer that over to the new years goals. The 3rd I did ok. I bought some extra yarn for gifts and I did buy fibre but I don't know if I'm going to count that because while it will become yarn, it wasn't yarn when I bought it :D I also failed on the the 4th...but I did start one! Really I did. I would have finished it if October hadn't come by so fast with the Christmas knitting. Ah well.

New goals for next year - knitting & spinning!
1) Knit a pair of socks each month
2) Spin a sweaters worth of yarn
3) Spin a sock weight yarn
4) Yarn dieting - same as last year, buy yarn only at special knitting events
5) Participate in the Rare Breeds Challenge with the Spin Doctor Podcast group
6) Knit myself a sweater
7) Learn to spin woolen and worsted