Happy New Year

Happy New Year everyone and thank you for the wonderful holiday wishes. I hope you all had a great time and were able to celebrate (or not) as you wanted to do. We had a wonderful Christmas season, both of my daughters were home and we played and worked and had a great time together. DD1 and her man left on New Year’s Eve, but it was wonderful to see them again. I have so much to say, since I have not been blogging, that this will be a long post so get comfy (but don’t worry, I will save some for tomorrow).

This year for the first time ever, I was not concerned with having enough presents for everyone, it was very weird. In years past I would actually go deep into debt to buy more and more presents so everyone would be happy, but for some reason I did not have that need this year and it was wonderful! I set my limit and actually came in under that. It is great to know that the holidays are over and I do not have to rob Peter to pay Paul. Another new learning experience for 2008.

I have been reading everyone’s blogs and seeing how everyone has kept track of their knitting and such for the year. Trek even lists what books she has read for 2008. I have never done that, but I purchased a journal yesterday at B&N with a gift card and plan to start tracking my knitting. It is amazing to me that people keep track of their projects and know exactly how much yarn went where. I don’t know if I am organized enough to do that, but I am going to try it and see if it helps me de-stash some of the miles of yarn I have sitting around here.


I did get the big ass wrap finished, here is a picture of it. I used a garter stitch on the ends to avoid the curling issue I was having and it looks okay, imho. I gave my daughter two different shawl pins, one was the little owl poorly pictured here, and the other one was a wooden stick pin that you can see in the picture of the wrap. I told her the story of the stick pin; I purchased it as a set of two at the Renaissance Festival in Atlanta a couple of years ago and used them to hold my hair in a French twist. One of the set was lost in the move and I loved the way the other one looked on the dark green of the wrap, so when she was trying it on I offered it to her also. She likes it like I did on the green so she took it and used it instead of the owl; I am now going to make her another scarf that she can use the with the owl.

Yeah, I did it, I made the deadline for getting rid of 50 things.
34. Face wash that I was allergic to but was too stupid to throw away.
35. A brown sweater that my daughter likes and I did not.
36. A mattress that was moved for no apparent reason.
37. 5 wreaths that I used to use outdoors (there is no place to put them here).
38. More yarn that was disgusting.
39. A set of King size sheets that I didn’t like
40. A dead orchid that I thought I could revive, but gave up on after a year and a half :-)
41. A new mixer that died after the second batch of cookies (it was a cheapo I bought because I have not yet unpacked the good one).
42. A group of coat hangers, we have way too many as we bought more while we were in the hotel and then received a box of them when our household goods arrived.
43. A bunch of cables that I found when unpacking.
44. A shower curtain.
45. Curtain rings.
46. 2 stuffed animals
47. A book, Mayflower: A Story of Courage, Community, and War (yes I have resorted to listing them separately, but I figure this is fair since I have already gotten rid of over hundreds of books because I was too lazy to list them separately, or maybe because I didn’t want anybody to see the kind of crap I will sometimes read).
48. A set of queen size sheets.
49. A wooden hair pin.
50. And finally- A few books on tape.

I am so glad I got rid of all that stuff that I think I am going to keep on with this little adventure. I have a hard time getting rid of stuff, I love stuff, but I discovered that I feel lighter when I get rid of some of it. Why keep stuff if I do not need it? I think I am going to try and get rid of 5 things ever month for the next year and see how it goes.

I hope everyone has a wonderful New Year’s Day.