3rd Annual Knitting and Crochet Blog Week - Day 6

The prompt for today is:
Improving Your Skill set How far down the road to learning your craft do you believe yourself to be? Are you comfortable with what you know or are you always striving to learn new skills and add to your knowledge base? Take a look at a few knitting or crochet books and have a look at some of the skills mentioned in the patterns. Can you start your amigurumi pieces with a magic circle, have you ever tried double knitting, how's your intarsia? If you are feeling brave, make a list of some of the skills which you have not yet tried but would like to have a go at, and perhaps even set yourself a deadline of when you'd like to have tried them by.

Over the past year or so my skills have increased significantly.  In 2011 I knit nearly 26 pair of socks.  I chose various patterns and learned various techniques.  I have done toe up and top down, I have done lace, cables and other stitches, I have tried various types of heels, and enjoyed it all!  I am always interested in learning more!  There are several things I want to learn over the next year or so.  One of my New Year's resolutions for this year is to learn how to design my own sock patterns.  I have not done this yet and the year is nearly 1/3 over!  My goal is to create a few of my own patterns, have them tested, and then make them available on Ravelry.  There are other knit techniques that I would like to work on this upcoming year as well.  Some of my goals for the rest of 2012 are:

1) design a sock pattern (or two or more)
2) try more colorwork knitting.  I really want to try Norwegian mittens!!  I have this pattern and want to make it for my sister for Christmas. 

Photo from Leigh on Ravelry

3) I need to conquer knitting with laceweight yarn - I have done all sorts of lace but in fingering weight.  I have tried a few patterns in laceweight but struggled with them and gave up.  I can crochet with lace weight but knitting must be conquered as well!!

To see more great blog week entries check this thread on Ravelry or enter 3KCBWDAY6 into any search engine.