in retrospect

as you may have noticed, 2008 was the year of the sweater. i'd set myself the challenge of knitting one sweater each month, and for the most part, i managed to stick to the challenge (apart from taking some time off over the summer). so what did i manage to achieve?
there were a few roaring successes - the sweaters from january & february are definitely my favourites of the whole year, & by now they've been worn so much they're (sadly) starting to pill a little.

january - my own variation of a free drops pattern

february - the tangled yoke cardigan from interweave knits

other successes...

april - waves in the square shawl by sivia harding

the summer sweater, a.k.a. the mithril coat - pattern made up by me

september - cable pattern from juno (rowan magazine #40), with the rest made up by me

for the RSA (also successes)...

march - pattern made up by me, with help from elizabeth zimmermann

december - pattern made up by me

one not-so-successful sweater (i'm largely indifferent to this cardi, and am more than likely going to rip it & make something else with the yarn, as i haven't worn it once since the photoshoot!)...

october - the sunrise circle jacket by kate gilbert

and, a couple of abject failures. may's sweater grew hugely after it was washed, and although i've worn it a couple of times (in the house over pjs - never in public!) the yarn has started to shed enormously to the extent that wearing it for an hour or two results in piles of blue fuzz throughout the house. & although this might be knitting sacrilege, i'm actually going to bin it (sorry!).

may - everyday tweed by marie grace (this is not an accurate representation of how the pattern should turn out!)

and november, which looked quite nice until i put it on - the armholes are oddly sized, and the overall fit isn't at all flattering. the yarn is salvageable, though, so i'm going to rip it out & make something else instead.

november - eyelet front vest from vogue holiday knits

& the final tally? ten sweaters - eight for me, and two for the RSA (hm - maybe the RSA deserves more knits than that next year?). & of those sweaters, six were fabulous, one was indifferent, and two were... well... utter rubbish.
i expected to learn something over the course of the challenge. & as it turned out, i've learned something quite unexpected. the sweaters that i didn't like & never wore were the ones that i knitted by sticking to a pattern written by someone else. and most of the sweaters that ended up being the best ones of the year - and by that i mean the most flattering, the most comfortable, and the most frequently worn - were actually the ones where i had invented the "pattern" myself, or where i had worked from a pattern that i had made huge adaptations to. & it turns out that despite my own knitting insecurities, i actually do know (mostly) what i'm doing - what looks good, what fits in with my life, and most importantly, what works knit-wise.
so with that in mind, here's to 2009 - the year of knitting experiments, where my challenge will be to listen to myself, ignore my insecurities, be creative, and "knit on, with confidence and hope". happy new year!!