Hello 2022!

Hello and Happy New Year to you! Thank you so much for stopping by. I can't believe that it's 2022 already! Normally at the start of a new year, I look back at my year of crafting and see how many of my goals I've achieved. I'm not going to do that as my attempts have been pitiful, to say the least. I set myself the challenge of 9 things to make, and am sad to say that I only managed to do one of them. That was knitting the Habitation Throw. I used Attic24's Meadow yarn pack to make it. (If you're interested in seeing what I was hoping to achieve in 2021, you can read about it here.) I'm really pleased with how the blanket ended up, a nice size without swamping you, and it resides next to me sofa within easy reach.

My top nine posts on Instagram showed me that my health played a big part in 2021, which probably accounts for less productivity on the yarn front. Being diagnosed with cancer and then having surgery definitely wasn't in my plan; thankfully my 3-monthly checkups have all been good so far, so that's a huge relief. My myositis is still proving very challenging.

Flo was most miffed that she only featured once in my top 9, so to appease her, I created a Flo montage! 

I was surprised that knitting was only in one photo too, and that was me knitting a pair of socks the morning after my surgery! But I feel so lucky to have people's support on social media, so thank you for that. I took a look at some of my makes this year, and I have been quite busy as you can see from the photos below. I had two sock designs in The Knitter magazine, and I also released my Bee Cosy bed socks pattern and my PJ Day socks pattern. (Ravelry links) The lovely team at Stylecraft turned my notes from my Softie jumper into a fully graded pattern which can be downloaded for free. I learnt how to crochet amigurumi toys thanks to a great kit from Emma Varnam. I released my first shawl pattern, the Southwold Summer Wrap,  which proved popular in the Stylecraft makealong group on Facebook. I also had a little mat featured in Crochet Now magazine. 

My proudest achievement this year has got to be my fundraising for Myositis UK. When I started fundraising, I didn't ever expect my total to get to anywhere near £26,000! That's an amazing amount of money that can really do something good to help people like me who have this incurable muscle disease. I'll talk a bit more about my fundraising when I share my final raffle prize later in the week. But thank you so much for supporting my fundraising. 

I happened to spot a friend on Instagram who had decided to sign up to Makers Dozen 2022. The idea is to knit or crochet things from stash rather than buy more yarn. Although I've managed to reduce the size of my stash by donating prizes to my fundraising, I do still have A LOT of yarn. I always told Mr JK that it was good for insulating the house, and I still stand by that! But I do actually have a lot of gorgeous yarn that I have rediscovered when rummaging for prizes and it would be great to actually use some of it up. So I need to make 12 things using stash yarn over the course of 2022 which I think is definitely doable, as long as I don't decide that they will all be jumpers or blankets! Anyone can join in, so look for the tag #makersdozen2022 or check out @hadabashery's Instagram page for more details. I promise that I will confess to you about any squishy yarn parcels that arrive chez JK that I have ordered.

So what are your plans for 2022? I'm hoping that the time that's been taken up by fundraising will give me a chance to get back to spinning again as well as sewing too. Please leave a comment and tell me what projects you've got in the pipeline. I'll sign off now with a photo of Flo taken on New Year's Day. (In case you're interested, Flo's resolutions are to sleep lots! No change there then!) xxx