As the New Year approaches, it’s once again time to revisit New Year’s Resolutions. I’m a big believer in them. Not that I always manage to keep them, but the new year does give you a chance to set some goals. I’m trying to keep them attainable.
First off – waste and conspicuous consumption. Over the holidays hubby and I have been appalled at the amount of food that we end up throwing away. For some reason we’ve gotten in the habit of cooking for a crowd, even though there’s only two of us. We kid ourselves that we’ll eat up the leftovers or freeze a few meals, but not everything can be frozen and we get tired of the leftovers after a couple of repeats. So I’m digging out my Cooking for Two cookbooks and have ordered several more from the library. I will keep you posted on the successes and failures and will showcase some of my favorites recipes.
And in the area of conspicuous consumption, instead of beginning new projects, I need to seriously look at the projects I already have started. I’m not too bad in the knitting department (although I do have a stack of shawls that just need blocking), but I have a boatload of quilt tops that need to be quilted and a brand new quilting machine that has been seriously underused. Gonna work on that. One of the first up will be the latest quilt that my Round Robin group worked on. We all used the same patterns, but our own fabrics.
I’m going to continue to work on improving my knitting. I received my Level 1 notebook back from the reviewers, and as expected, I did have some resubmits. Five of the 18 swatches needed to be redone, and one remeasured. There were also a handful of questions to be redone. Most of the mistakes were due to carelessness or not reading the instructions correctly and were easily remedied. Thankfully, my report and the mitten project passed! The resubmits have been sent in and now we wait. In the meantime, I’m continuing to work on my cardigan. Since the photo was taken, I’ve finished one sleeve and am working on the second.
A couple of quick photos of our visit to my parent’s in Missouri.
They are both doing well and are continuing to recover amazingly from the flood that almost destroyed their house about a year and a half ago. Although they lost almost everything, they have rebounded and are living in a very comfortable and cozy two bedroom senior apartment in the next town over. We were able to go visit the old house. They ended up giving the property and the shell of the house to the neighbor who alerted them to the flood and saved their lives. He has been working hard and we were so pleased to see that the house is once again a home!
Contrast this to the last time we visited when the interior was down to bare studs and you could still see the mud line about 7 feet up the wall.
I’ll leave you with some Christmas photos. It was a little low key this year. About three weeks before Christmas I ended up in the emergency room with a gall bladder attack. All that stuff they say about how painful it is? Yup – all true. Anyway, I got great care and they admitted me and did surgery even though it was after hours. Even better, I was ready to be discharged at 1:00 am and they didn’t make me wait until the morning, so I got to sleep in my own bed. I’m recovering just fine, but this is the second time I’ve had surgery right before Christmas and I hope not to make a tradition out of it!
missouristar 