Tuesday, December 30, 2008

Merry Christmas and Happy New Year!!

I hope you all had good Christmases (or whatever holiday you choose to celebrate this time of year). Mine was pretty good...it's a bit sad watching my Grandfather decline so quickly, but it was good to be home and spending time with family. I managed to get a pretty good knitting haul. I was actually quite pleasantly surprised that my parents got me some yarn (my mom seemingly abhors the concept of a stash). I also got a fair few books and some needles. As far as the yarn, my parents got me some Risata that I have been pining for as well as some Swish DK. More yarn came my way thanks to the lovely Alicia. She saw these and thought of me...I daresay she was right...it's like a colorway made especially for me...and it's even lot 1, I feel special :P She also got me a super cool needle gauge from 7 Yaks Designs. (Sorry for the blurry pic...it didn't look that bad on the camera I swear.)

In other news: I'm so excited words cannot describe. I feel like I'm a real knitter now! Now I'm trying to decide when I want to wear it...out to dinner and the movies with a couple friends on Thursday...or out with more of them on Friday...silly I know. What am I working on now? Well, I struck a bargain with my aunt; she makes quilts (she made the one on my bed here) and the one I have is about 15 years old and is really beginning to show it. She will make me a new quilt if I make her a hat, flip top mittens, and a scarf. So I poked around on Ravelry for a million years and chose this hat, which I have now cast on for. I plan to knit coordinating mittens based on this pattern. And a scarf/neckwarmer using this pattern. All of this using the same yarn I used to make my sweater (I can hardly believe how much I have of this stuff).

Now...New Years. I made some knitting resolutions last year. Let's see how I did.

  • Finish my Warm Up America Afghan (including sewing it all together)
  • Check. Got this one done some time around the end of September. Only took me a little over two years! :P
  • Knit my Doctor's Bag
  • Check. Finished up in April I think. I know I've used it a lot already this year...although I do want to reinforce part of it with fabric before I start using it regularly again.
  • Knit for charity
  • Not so much. I thought I would knit a lot of things for the Sharewood auction. But the auction came and I had nothing to give them.
  • Knit primarily from my stash
  • I look at the things I've knit this year and I've knit more than half of them from stash...but I bought so much yarn this year I accumulated more that I used...so I feel like I didn't really do this.
What are my resolutions for this year? I plan to include some more personal ones as well...accountability and all that :P
  • Knit from stash as much as possible
  • Avoid buying more yarn unless absolutely necessary (this yarn diet will also prohibit sock yarn...because I have plenty of that for the time being)
  • Knit another sweater (I'd like to do NaKniSweMo again...perhaps with Francis Revisited. This will necessitate buying yarn...because I don't have a sweater's worth of anything anymore)
  • Get in better shape/lose weight (I'd like to look at least halfway decent in pants again. I'm thinking a good goal for the year would be to get back to what I weighed at the end of Freshman year of college [about 40lbs less than what I weigh now] but I've love to make it to what I weighed at the end of high school [closer to 60lbs]. I think my high school weight is too ambitious a goal for me short term given how difficult it is for me to find time to eat well and exercise regularly...but it's definitely the goal long term.
  • Knit some baby clothes for expecting friends (I've got a couple due around March that I really need to get cracking on)
  • Be the best medical student I can be, read as much as I can, take a more active role in caring for my patients, do more procedures (when reasonable of course), and generally get as much as I can out of the experiences given to me.
Alright. I'm off to knit a little bit and relax. Happy knitting to all and to all a good night!

4 comments:

Bea said...

I think your goals are really good. If you knit with your stash all the way to November when you participate in sweater making craziness won't that still be accomplishing that first goal? Think of all the knitting that could/would be!

Bea said...

And of course I meant to compliment the sweater because it looks awesome and totally forgot to add that in my comment.

Unknown said...

YAY! Sweaters done! Beautiful! (I've been obsessed with my shawl, I need to get back to my sweater.)
Good luck with your goals this coming year. I remember how hard it was to get two rows of knitting in during grad school.

Dorothy said...

The sweater looks great! I finished mine on New Years (although, I still have to weave in the ends).

Good luck with your resolutions!

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