Happy New Year!

I can tell by the fact that my 2015 wall calendar is all used up that a New Year is upon us. For the first time in a very long time, as I set goals for the new year, they did not include a specific list of knitting plans. I'll be honest--this freaked me out a bit.  Then I had a nice long chat with a very wise man (my hubby, who has now officially survived two natural disasters: Hurricane Hugo and the Thousand Year Flood). He told me that it's normal to go through what we did and find yourself taking stock of your life in unexpected ways. That, combined with the unsure life of a family rebuilding their home, can make it almost impossible to see very far ahead. Take this week for example: I made out a schedule that would enable my homeschooler to get back to his studies and my other teen to get back to her work and dance classes, fitting in things like cleaning and grocery runs around sharing a vehicle and getting people where they needed to be and still making it to Monday Morning Knitters. Sounds good of course until you throw in a work crew measuring to replace flood-damaged doors and (hopefully) painting all the new baseboards (which means moving all the stuff we have been so diligently organizing to make our home, well, organized). I can't even begin to describe how hard it is to concentrate with the possibility of a work crew, much less the actuality of one.

So here I sit, first week of January, trying to be "normal" when, 3 months now since the flood, "normal" is still not something we can readily lay our hands on (like the yarn bowl and the ironing board, which were missing for 10 weeks).  I can't really give you a bullet point list of What I Plan to Accomplish This Year for KnitOasis. Y'all, I'm not even sure I'll be able to finish cooking dinner today! What I can give you is this: a rough idea, my hopes, what might happen if they can finish installing the kitchen cabinets by the end of the month...

Classes--I promised some folks a Beginning Knit and an Intarsia, and the rough plan for this will be February, after I have taught at the SC Knitting Guild's Knit Inn, of course!

Charity blanket sew-up party--Hoping for February, and might have to have more than one. We have a lot of squares to sew together! Yay!

Indigo--Between the wacky weather and the half-finished home, this workshop has been put off for months, so it won't mind being put off again for a bit. After all, one of the lessons of indigo is patience....

Knitting Patterns--I have a new blanket pattern I'm working on, plus a few things I want to send to yarn companies, and a seemingly endless supply of ideas. I really enjoyed coming up with new afghan blocks last year, so I might see what I can do along that line again. And of course, I want to design a new Red Scarf Project scarf.

As you can see, it's not a tidy list, it doesn't ooze confidence and it won't make a Buzzfeed Knitting Resolutions Top 10. But, you know what? If knitting has taught me anything it's that we all get there at our own pace. Sometimes we have to go easy on people and let go of expectations we might have had to see things turn out a certain way, and very often those "people" are us.

So Happy New Year, knitting friends! Thanks for being along for the journey. You make the world a better place, and that is no small accomplishment!