A Year of Knitting - Knit Something of the Month Club

Earlier this year I mentioned that in 2011 I was going to do my own Knit Something of the Month Club using stash yarn. The idea came directly from the Yarn Harlot's Self Imposed Sock Club of 2010, which I thought was pure genius. Since 2011 is fast approaching, it was time to get organized for my own club. I decided I didn't want to do socks all year, so I decided to do a combination of socks and shawls. Now before everyone chokes on their tea, I'm not talking giant, laceweight shawls with crazy, intricate lacework. I'm talking about smaller, fingering weight shawls that use about one pair of sock's worth of yarn. There are lots of shawl/shawlette patterns that fit this category and most of the shawls for sock yarn are fairly simple and you can wear them like a scarf or like a shawl, so they're great for everyday wear. Since I'm designing my own club, I know I'll like the yarn and the patterns. (When you join someone else's club you're working with their yarn and pattern choices and no matter how great their taste and what amazing people they are, I've never heard of anyone being 100% in love with every yarn and pattern for the full year.)

My initial thought was to do 6 socks and 6 shawls and I'd alternate them throughout the year. I might take one of the socks out of the club and add a 7th shawl, which would mean I'd start and end with shawls. I have until the end of the year to decide and then the club is locked in (my club, my rules). I'll share what I have so far though. I sat down with a bunch of yarn choices, realized I have an amazing amount of green yarn, and started matching yarn to patterns. Each yarn is in a ziplock bag with a note naming the pattern for that yarn. I have to pull some beads for two of the shawls, which will go into those particular bags. Then I'll either put the bags somewhere that I can't see them so I can randomly draw one each month, or I'll give them to Caleb with a Sharpie and let him put them in order and number them for me. I haven't decided yet how to work that. Here are all of shawl yarns:

And here are all of the sock yarns:

I'm not going to go through each skein and tell you all the details right now, but I promise I'll share each month when I start working on it. I will continue working on other things throughout the year as well as this club and I plan to get back to writing more patterns next year, but I thought it would be fun to show all of the yarns in one place. If I do take out one of the sock yarns and add another shawl, I'll let you know before next year.