I'll start by telling the truth: 2011 was a tough year for me. I ended it feeling I had lost track of who I was and where I was going. And so I began 2012 vowing I needed to spend more time doing things I love doing rather than doing things I thought I ought to be doing.

This is what I wrote at the end of 2011:

• I’m already working on more patterns. I have sketchbook filled with what is essentially 2-and-a-half collections worth of patterns. Hopefully I will be able to devote more time to this in 2012.

Tick.

• I’d really love to knit a few garments in 2012. Quality over quantity.

Not really, but I'll write more about that in a future blog post.

• And I still need more hats.

Moths did their best to destroy my hat collection so I did knit myself a handful of hats. I still need more. Cannot have too many hats.

• Keeping on top of the stash. I cannot promise ‘more yarn out than in’ but at least I won’t do the ‘oh, I fancy a ball of that’ thing because that way madness lies. I am getting far better at curating my stash already. May it continue.

I was much better at resisting temptation in 2012. I still added to the stash but I did so in a thoughtful way. I bought very little yarn (and only yarn I needed for specific projects) and I turned down offers & gifts of yarn.

• More conscious allocation of my knitting time: what is ‘work’ knitting and what is ‘me’ knitting?

Definitely.

2012 has been an interesting year. I did stick to my nebulous plan of "doing things I love doing" and it worked out pretty well.

I can roughly divide my 2012 knitting into two piles:  a bit of knitting for friends..

• One friend had a baby. I knitted Bagl a cardigan.
• Another friend got married. I helped knit her & her husband a blanket.

.. and a lot of knitting for work:

• I self-published Elsinore, Roskilde, Elvan, and Florence.
• My Windsor Hat  was published by Rowan.
• I collaborated with Old Maiden Aunt on a yarn club and published Serpentine Avenue, Baskerville, and Baker Street as a result.
• Kirkja was published by Knit Now magazine (and it made the cover!).
• I worked with Glasgow University on a series of workshops on handknitting & textiles in Scotland and gave a paper on working within the knitting industry.
• I gave an interview to Handmade Living.
• And I also addressed the re-emergence of handknitting on STV News.
• I worked briefly with Kaffe Fassett.
• And I met so many people this year! None mentioned, none forgotten. All incredibly creative people with interesting backgrounds and unique stories to tell.

I feel tired just looking at that. I also felt rather tired of my own voice at one point, but that's something for the 2013 list!

I feel like I didn't do much personal knitting in 2012.  I finished a shrug, frogged a couple of half-done garments and began knitting Acer and Bute. Both are still on the needles. But I cleared my head of all the oughts and that counts for a lot.

A couple of links to patterns and books I coveted this past year. A massive amount of good stuff seems to have come from the British Isles this year!

• The Bunty Mitts by Ella Austin
• By George! by Julia Duren
• Ella Jo by Allison Jane
• Diamonds Are Forever by Susan Crawford (from Coronation Knits)
• Radial by Cookie A
• The Underleaf Hat and Mitts by Kyoko Nakayoshi (from Cloudy Apples)
• Bute by Lisa Richardson (actually most of Rowan 52)
• The Puffin Sweater by Kate Davies (from Colours of Shetland)

And I loved listening to the following podcasts (among so many others):

• Electric Sheep by Hoxton Handmade
• A Playful Day by greentrianglegirl
• Stickpodden (in Swedish) by Elin & Karin.

Also a few fist bumps to the following yarn vendors/pushers:

• Old Maiden Aunt
• Rowan Yarns
• Ripples Crafts
• Yarn Pony
• The Island Wool Company

Phew! I think that was it. What a crazy, marvellous year.