Make Nine Challenge 2020

Are you familiar with the Make Nine Challenge?  The idea is to identify nine things you'd like to make during a calendar year.  Simple, yet brilliant.  Nine is not so many as to be overwhelming, nor too few as to be uninspiring.  Like the littlest bear's porridge, it is Just Right.

The challenge is the brain child of Rochelle of Home Row Fiber Co.  You can read more if you're interested at her blog here.

I put together a Make Nine grid in 2018, but I gave it a miss last year.  When I did it before, I finished 5 of the projects I'd earmarked (plus a whole raft of other things).  The four that didn't make it were a series of socks named for the Pevensies.  I have yarns and patterns, so I may yet make them, but for some reason even though I thought I wanted to knit them, when the time came I chose something else. 

shrug 

Arbitrary goal setting tools and games are only fun and useful so long as they are fun and useful.  (Tautologist speaks in tautologies).

All that said, I decided to play along again this year.  I have chosen a healthy mix of specific patterns and skeins of yarn for socks (pattern to be determined, but likely vanilla with a fish lips kiss heel).  One of my criteria for selecting projects for this list was that it had to be things I already have the yarn in stash for, so everything is ready to go.

Starting at the top, and proceeding left to right, my Make Nine projects are:

1. Exploration Station, by Stephen West, knit from  Dream in Color Jilly and Suburban Stitcher Single Sock
2. "Tinuviel" Valkyrie Fibers Matte Sock
3. Pierre, by Stephen West, knit from Miss Babs Yowza Minis
4. "McGonagall" Nomadic Yarns Twisty Sock
5. Litmus Cowl, by Amy Florence, knit from Canon Hand Dyes Charles Merino Fingering "Autumn Rainbow" minis
6. "Freedom to Be" See Jayne Knit Superwash Merino Nylon Sock (Ravelry tribute colorway)
7. Odyssey Shawl, by Joji Locatelli, knit from Deep Dyed Yarns Still DK
8. "Summer Camp" Knit Picks Stroll Gradient Duo - these will be some kind of Hanukkah socks, pattern TBD
9. Renewal Shawl, by Judy Marples, knit in Emma's Yarn Super Silky

I have numbers 1, 2, and 7 already cast on, so I'm off to a strong start. 

I feel good about this list, but I'm also not too bothered if they don't all get knit this year.  I'm using this as a reminder and a point of inspiration as I'm choosing what patterns to knit next, rather than as a hard-and-fast "rule" about my knitting.   I've been doing this long enough that I have a fair sense of what's going to work in the self-motivation department, and I can tell you with some sense of surety that deciding I "have" to knit something six months from now is an excellent way to ensure that I don't.