Happy New Year

Well here we are, safely into 2011; a whole new year stretches before us crisp and unsullied by daily life and with a world of possibilities. It's that feeling of smooth fresh paper at the beginning of a new exercise book that has you furriting in a drawer for a nice ink pen and using your very best handwriting and possibly even some underlining for at least the first couple of pages until it all degenerates into a biro scrawl.


Most of my new year's knitting time has been spent with a lapful of blue squiggly stitches; frequently accompanied by a little girl who thinks that she might be able to help with the blocking; I mean, who doesn't block their lace with regurgitated milk?

But as it is true that if you knit and knit and knit, you will escape any knitting black hole, even the edging on a Flowing River shawl, and I have intermittently knit and knit and knit, and refused all temptation including some Christmas present sock yarn, I had the very great pleasure of casting off this evening.  I still have to weave in some ends and do some non-milk enhanced blocking to turn the love child of a pair of indigo jeans and a packet of super noodles into a beautiful shawl but I am quietly confident that this magic will happen.  Sometime.  Given that I started the shawl in September 2009 and finished in January 2010, don't expect to see me wearing it any time soon.

To start the New Year with a flourish we've had visits from Zee ...

her new camera and her husband (she was trying to take a photo of me at the same time but I had my macro lens and she had a long lens so guess who got the photo - hee hee).  Given that all of our planned pre-Christmas present exchanges were thwarted by snow, we allowed it to be a replay of her birthday for half an hour and then moved on to Christmas and a roast gammon feast; a lovely way to spend a lazy Sunday afternoon.

And on Monday we had Christmas all over again, only this time with spaghetti bolognaise and chocolate reindeer when Kitty's godfather came to play blerum with her and kick back with us.


All in all a lovely way to end a treasured holiday.  I'm working my way around to some New Year resolutions/goals but as I never seem to remember to start thinking about them until 1 January I figure I have at least until Epiphany to decide on them properly!  Happy New Year one and all!