Eloquent Pedestrian

The new year has lost its luster. I'm doing alright with my goals (except maybe the blogging every day in the month thing, oops). But everything seems to have slowed down. A big part of that is the weather. Our perfectly respectable winter, though there was very little snow, turned into the coldest weather in four years. I found it harder to get to the gym, but I did. But in general we all stayed inside unless we couldn't avoid going out. One walk out in that cold, even with my wool winter accessories, convinced me I was missing something. Last year's beautiful archangel cowl is now stretched out. It still does a wonderful job of keeping my neck warm and the wool of my coat from itching, but when it is ten below with with a windchill even lower, and I'm walking into the wind to work, my neck is not my only concern. So I picked up two of my favorite skeins of yarn and grabbed a free cowl pattern on ravelry, and tried to get it done as fast as I could. It is amazing...

I've heard a lot of internet famous knitters talk about their knitting mojo. The only time of year I ever seem to have any is the month of January. All of my knitting talents are tested in the month of January. I make my presents, and my friends request things that test my skills, or ask me to acquire new ones. Then once Christmas is over, I celebrate being able to knit for myself again by taking on way too much and devoting more than usual of my time to knitting. Well, now I'm starting to run out of steam, partially because I'm picking up an old project. It is an extremely large shawl made out of a yarn which is discontinued. So no going back for more if I don't have enough. There are many ways in which this will test my skills, but I can't shake the feeling that I will still be working on this next year at this time. The only way I know to get past that feeling is to push through it, keep going for a little while past when I would normally give up.

I thought I didn't have anything to blog about today. Then I got a call from my credit card company. Someone bought something from a travel agent in Spain with my credit card number. The company caught it, but I don't really trust myself to say anything anyone would want to read tonight.

So far I fail at daily blogging in February.  Today I went outside and got some pictures of my recent and not so recent warm knitwear in the snow. These are things I made by hand and use every day, and I am particularly proud of them. Remember these? My favorite gloves and I just celebrated our one year anniversary. They're getting an upgrade soon.  These are my selbuvotter mittens. I expect I will write a full blog post on them soon.   In the sub arctic cold of the last two weeks, I realized my current knitwear did not do enough to keep my face warm. (Read: I hadn't felt my face in two weeks) So I decided to take some of my horded Malabrigo Worsted yarn and make a beautiful deep purple cowl. It keeps the bite of wind off my face, and makes me look like a bank robber. Win-win. This yarn is based on the painting "The Night Cafe" by Vincent Van Gogh. These are the first part of that malabrigo yarn, designed to keep my hands warm in the coldes...

I have a problem. You see, when I accomplish something I seem to think I'm a master of it. I'll give you an example. Last year, in about March, Goodreads, my new website, had a little widget to set a goal for books read in a year. Some of my friends had set their goals, and they were all higher than I would have set mine. But I put in a number, and found I was already ahead of schedule. But after gardening season I was behind so I started to cheat. I got picture books and comic books from the library. I read my knitting books in a few hours and I counted those. December 31 I had four books to read, and barely managed to read enough knitting books that night. Much to my competitive dismay, none of my friends had finished their more ambitious goals. But there it was, the goal for books read in 2013 widget. My goal in 2012 was 75 books, and I barely accomplished it. So what did I do? I set my 2013 goals for 100 books. What? I have a full year to finish it.

I don't usually support the idea of New Years Resolutions. In fact, I've never done them before. My only experience has been to watch others make and break resolutions over the course of a few weeks to months. So I was surprised as anyone when I came up with resolutions for the New Year. They're really goals, but I'm not one to make excuses, these are things I'm resolving to do in the New Year, so there's no point in bullshitting them to be anything but New Year's resolutions. I am sharing them here so I am actually accountable to them at the end of the year. 1. Exercise. I am now a member of the YMCA again. I am trying to get to the Y 3 times a week (when it is not sub-arctic outside). I will be attempting some part of the 30 day shred. 2. Related to goal 1, I would like to weigh less at the end of the year than I did at the beginning. I weighed myself my first week of Y activity, and I weighed 268 pounds. I would like to weigh 267 or less on Decembe...