Happy New Year!

Did you think I died? Crawled under a rock somewhere and committed harikiri with some aluminum straights? Was kidnapped by yarn-hoarding aliens who smelled the sheepiness of my stash from twenty light years away?

Yeah. It was beginning to feel like that for me, too. The combination of work and the holidays really did me in.

There has been a little more knitting in the past few days. I'm grateful for that because it does help me stay on an even keel, and my stress level has been pretty high. I can't show pictures of my minimal knitting progress because my photo software and my new computer don't play nice together and I haven't had time to sort that out, but I have managed to knit most of the rest of a clapotis and part of a sock. So this past week saw more knitting than the three or so weeks before that combined.

I'm setting some January goals -- these aren't new year's goals so much as new month's goals, something I do routinely when I have my act together. Here is the knitting list for January.

1. Get life back in balance so knitting is a part of the routine again. Working out, too, which leads to --

2. Get back on the skinny-4-stash plan. Holidays + stress + change in meds = weight gain. This is not the result I want.

3. Finish the clapotis. I'm probably two repeats from the decreases, so the end is near.

4. Finish one pair of socks. I have three pairs currently OTN. Two is plenty -- one pair to sit on my desk, and one to carry along.

5. Frog the Butterfly. And how many times in life can we say that sentence? I've done everything I can to wiggle and stretch so that the yarn will be enough to complete the garment. But I'm officially admitting defeat here. I have maybe 50 yards more than the pattern calls for. I've altered the pattern and spent hours with a sketch pad and a calculator, but at some point I just became aware that no math in the world is going to make the yarn stretch far enough for this pattern. So I'm frogging it. It will be knit into a vest or something some day.

6. Make some progress on Fulmar. I think I've knit about four rows since Thanksgiving. I'd like to finish the front, but may not make it that far. But any regular progress would be an improvement -- even just one pattern repeat per week would be enough to satisfy me.

7. Dye Lady Eleanor and her matching hat so that they actually do match. Then weave in the ninety million ends and reblock the hat. It would have been nice to be able to wear this lovely heavy wool shawl over my coat today. (Current temperature: 7 degrees, with winds gusting and more snow falling. ...sigh...)

And I think that's enough for one month. Especially one month where my real goal is to get my life back in line.