Well, I had intentions of writing my New Year's post long before the last week of January, but life happened. Some bloggers write through the challenges of life. But I find that when life gets stressful it feels better to take a short break from blogging. My little family of 6 came down with the flu. It seemed like for about 10 days straight someone in the family was truly sick and everyone else was either coming down with or getting over it. It was pretty all consuming but everyone is healthy again.
Sadly in the middle of this my dear friend passed away. We have known each other since high school and he married another good friend I've known since grade school. They have an adorable red headed one year old son (I'm partial to ginger babies). He has been battling colon cancer for a year and when I visited them in October before my cruise he thought the cancer was beaten. But it sadly came back and took his life 2 weeks ago.
His death has really rocked me. It is hard to understand why a 36 year old father of a one year old needed to be called Home. I am trying to trust in God's plan for this little family. But I am grieving the lose of a friend for myself and also the lose of a husband and father for my dear friend. I have shed so many tears for her! The one positive is that I will be returning to California next week for his memorial service along with ten friends from high school. Along with his wife, we've all played soccer together since junior high. It has been a very long time since we've been together so the weekend will be full of joy and sadness.
On a happier note, I finished this cute handspun hat pictured at the top over Christmas break. I cast it on on Christmas Eve, since all my Christmas knits were finished! It is my navajo plied mystery handspun from Alaska this summer. It is very thick and knit incredibly fast, like 2 days. I love how it turned out. I wish I had made it a tad longer, but not enough to rip it back. It fits great with my hair down but a little less so with my hair up. The brown is a Plymouth Encore chunky tweed yarn.
As far as New Years goes I have chose a new word of the year. Compassion. My scripture this year is:
"And of some have compassion, making a difference." -Jude 1:22
I feel like compassion, love, and unselfishness are all things that I am struggling with concerning my walk with Christ. In last year's post, I shared that I was focusing on mindfulness -- trying to enjoy the moment, being still and knowing God is in control and I need not fear or worry. I feel like I spent a lot of time reading my scriptures, praying, and worshiping in our temples. And now I see that I need to put that spirituality into practice by loving others. As I prayed about what my word should be I debated between those three, compassion, love, and unselfishness, and felt that learning to show better compassion to others will encompass the other two. So I am going to focus on seeing the needs and suffering around me (especially my own children!) AND making an effort to alleviate the suffering.
with a Filipino coin whorl the husband made me for Christmas!)
Aside from that personal focus, I have a few knitting related goals. I am thrilled with the patterns I was able to publish this past year. Especially that I followed through with my previous goal of submitting pattern ideas to magazines and companies, which provided me with yarn support for my Contrary Cabled Cowl (Thank you Dyeabolical yarns!) But this year, with my new job as business manager at The White Coat Investor I am not planning on publishing much. That job requires that I spend a lot of time at the computer so I don't want to spend even more time writing patterns. I feel like my children already think I neglect them for the computer. Which also means I will be posting on the blog, hopefully, just once a week on Tuesdays or Wednesday. I am cutting back on social media but instagram is my favorite so I post pretty regularly there, let me know your instagram user name so I can follow you.
My fiber goals for 2015 are:
Spin 15 minutes per day. I am participating in #spin15in15 on Instagram and the #spin365 group in Ravelry. To check out my daily progress
follow me on Instagram. I want to spin fingerweight yarn this year that I can knit into socks. So far all my handspun is pretty chunky.
I am going to finish or frog my 9 current works in progress. These mitts are one of them (Malabrigo worsted yarn). They are for the fox hat owner, I just need to duplicate stitch
little foxes on the back of the hands. I am also going to finish or frog a work in progress before casting on a new project, EVERY TIME. This has been REALLY hard so far this month. I have wanted to cast on three different projects but I am dutifully knitting away on current ones.
And lastly I am going to knit ONE sock a month. January was a little of a gimmy because my
Kai Mei WIP socks were already on to the foot part. The yarn is
Candy Skeins, bombpop. Probably not the best yarn and pattern match up but I cast them on long ago....and I am now almost done with February's sock too....
So that is it. That's what I am hoping to accomplish in 2015. Rump is a fantastic book I read with my daughters for the county library mom/daughter book club this month. I mean it has spinning and knitting in it. How could it not be amazing!?! :)
Have a great week! Sharing with Ginny, Nicole, and Andrea.
Labels: drop spindle, Finished Objects, handspun, hats, Mittens, socks, spinning
