It’s that time of the year when bloggers from around the world write about their goals from the past year, and what they’ve accomplished, and I’m no different.

A year ago I wrote up quite the challenge/goal list for myself, and posted it to this blog. This is something I do annually, but have only started posting said goals on the blog recently. In fact, reviewing my posts from January 2011, I don’t see any challenge post at all.

To recap:

6 afghan designs
1 afghan for the Alzheimer’s Raffle, like we did this past year
30 hats & / or scarves for the charity through Mom’s work
6 lapghans for charity (may or may not be my own designs)
finish the sock yarn afghan — this is my biggest goal this year…

So, what did I complete?

(OK, I spent an hour trying to create a mosaic of my 4 afghan designs, & for whatever reason, only 2 would show up. I redid tags, checked that the photo was available to view to all, etc etc, and I still have no idea why the mosaic wouldn’t load all 4 designs. So I should have just made a mosaic with the 2 photos that would load, but that would have made sense)

I designed, stitched, and published 4 afghan designs this year – the Wells Ripple, the Ogunquit Granny, the Scrap Ripple (which I still need to post to this blog, right now it’s only available as a free Ravelry download), and the Valley Bridge afghan. Technically only 4 – but I also wrote up 2 6″ square designs, 2 12″ square designs, and several Warm Up America blocks, so I’d say I completed the first challenge successfully.

Next is the Alzheimer’s Afghan, this is what I made this year…

Though we didn’t raise as much money as last year, we still raised over $300 for Alzheimer’s research.

Next is kind of a mixed bag – no one through the charity group ever bothered to pick up the hats & scarves I had made, so at the last minute, all the winter stuff I had made was donated to a lady my parents know at church who does missionary work. According to Ravelry, I stitched up about 27 scarves, mainly crochet & quite a few of them Tunisian. I have no record of any hats being made, but I do remember making a few so I must not have ever photographed them. So I think I made my goal.

Next… the lapghans… well, I completely blew that out of the water. I made a TON of afghans this year & have enough squares made to put together probably 8 more this year, and have about half of 2 more afghans done. I have 15 finished afghans finished & photographed on Ravelry, and have one more finished that still need the ends woven in & to be photographed. So I think I made my goal, too.

the sock yarn blanket – well, sadly, other than being yanked on my bed every night, it hasn’t been touched. at all. Ever since I found the hole in it, I just haven’t been able to face touching the thing. It’s officially the massive UFO.

- PS – Kathryn of one of the best crochet blogs out there, Crochet Concupiscence, is giving away her CROCHET book, “How Crochet Saved my Life” this weekend only, for kindle. Don’t have a kindle? There’s lots of free apps that can help you read this book on any device. And if you download, please help Kathryn out by either writing a review of the book, pinning on pinterest, or tweeting about the book.

This is the time of year when everyone & especially bloggers, seem to talk about what they accomplished & what their goals are for the next year.

I’ll at some point write up a recap of last year & how I did with my challenges, but not today .

I did want to share my goals for next year. I tried to be more realistic then I’ve been in years past, but still challenge myself a little.

First, design goals:
* continue to submit. This is really tough for me, but last year I started to submit & I’ll write more about that later, but it’s important to me that I continue to try.
* at least LEARN about advertising outside of Ravelry. I may not actually do so, but I want to start figuring out what my options are & where to advertise. Anyone have any experience with this? Care to share?
* self-publish at least 12 crochet patterns & 3 knit patterns. Yes, I said knit! It’s good for me, as a designer, to get outside of my comfort zone.
* complete my crochet master’s through the guild, finish my knit & crochet certification, & at least explore other avenues of teaching (locations)
* get back into blogging. Yes, I know I’ve been really lazy this year with blogging, between my site being down for a couple of months, & starting to teach, the blogging’s gone by the wayside, but I think it’s very important as a designer that I maintain an online presence besides on Ravelry
* continue to donate patterns as prizes when opportunity arises – I’ve felt from the very beginning that this is very important to me, both for me personally & as a design business
* Run another cal on my Ravelry group. Something “big” ??

Craft goals:
* learn to weave. yes, I really want to do it this year! Even if just on little loooms!
* hairpin lace. I have quite a collection of hairpin lace (vintage) looms & I’d really like to explore this craft more
* continue to concentrate on charity projects as much as possible. My “main” charity goal this year is a dozen patriotic afghans to donate to local veterans by Veteran’s Day. I’ll continue to make afghans for the local nursing homes & to whoever else needs them, and like I have the last several years, leave myself open to whatever other charity projects may come my way

Other goals:
sad to say, none really, other than to try to read more this year – I managed 32 books/audiobooks for 2012, which is not at all bad considering I work full time, teach when I can, & run a design business. This ties with 2009, is a little worse than 2010 (40, my best year since I started keeping track) and is much, much better than the FOUR I read in 2008. I’m not going to set a goal other than to read more, so, let’s see 36 books for 2013!