Happy 2014!

It's going to be a good year.

I started something new a couple months ago. I had several things that I wanted to do, and it haunted me to have them undone. I don't mean chores, I mean ongoing projects.

In November, as a sideline while a friend of mine did NaNoWriMo, I worked on editing one of the fiction books I wrote in the past as part of NaNoWriMo. My goal was a half hour a day (on average--I banked a few half hours for the Thanksgiving holiday), to keep it very achievable, and I made it.

In December I resolved to knit at least one ball of yarn a day, because my stash had gotten larger than I was comfortable with, given our small apartment. I like to have a palette of colors and textures available, but when I was getting to two large plastic storage bags of some colors, it got to be too much.

As you can imagine, I concentrated on thicker yarn and large needles, but since I needed to knit a slew of Christmas scarves for people I work with, it was all good. I only counted balls that either were completely gone, or reduced enough to go into my scrap bag (for making magic balls). I didn't count any yarn I used that I didn't finish, so I knit far more than I counted.

I made it to 40 balls! And as a bonus, I gave away all the scarves and a few hats I had accumulated. It makes me feel free, and they were all well received.

The odd thing is that knowing I was making progress on even one project freed up a lot of energy. I no longer beat myself up about wasting time, and enjoy myself more in the evenings. I feel more peaceful.

January will be about catching up on blogging and Ravelry. I didn't take pictures of all the scarves I made, but I have a bit of a backlog on other things, especially shawls. So this month I take or find the pictures and edit them, and then post. It also includes fixing the blog format, and maybe organizing my Ravelry favorites, things like that.

(That's my friend Jen at Halloween, in front of the Raven Shawl.)

But no matter what the month concentrates on, I don't stop all the others if I feel like doing them. In other words, I always knit!