Challenge

There seems to be a fair bit of talk around the online and offline knitting worlds about "12 in 12". That is, knitting twelve of something during the 2012 calendar year. As I understand it, you're supposed to set your own challenge for yourself, based on what would be challenging for you personally. For example, some might knit twelve pairs of socks in 2012. Some might knit twelve hats. Some might complete twelve WIPs. Knitters who are very fast or have a tremendous amount of time on their hands might choose the challenge of twelve adult-size sweaters. Etc.

I happen to be a fast knitter, so I could certainly set myself the challenge of doing twelve adult-size sweaters in a year, but the sticking point of that is that I don't actually want to knit twelve sweaters this year. I certainly plan to knit a few, but I have no need to accomplish as many as twelve. But I am intrigued by the challenge, and would like to participate if I can.

Now, a few months back, I happened to have two submissions in consideration at the same time by two different publications, and I really liked the feeling of having multiple balls in the air. So I realised that what I really would love to accomplish is twelve design proposals being sent off to various publishers in 2012. I may not be able to actually pull it off, but I'm certainly going to see how much I can do. So far, so good: I have one design in progress that I'm super-happy about, and may be able to manage a second proposal for the same publication before the submission deadline. After that, I've already had a design proposal that I've been planning for a while which will be sent out in March. So that would take care of my first three. After that...we'll have to see. But it's exciting to think about!

In the meantime, I've also been working on finishing up the two pairs of socks I'm making for DD1 and DD2:

The challenge, you see, involves submitting those twelve designs on top of all the other stuff I would usually knit!