Ah, the new year.
Typically, this is when we begin to swear off junk food, promise to eat thirty servings of vegetables every day, commit ourselves to nine days of exercise each week, and promptly forget that we have all-consuming jobs and responsibilities that make slicing out a part of our day and reserving it for resolutions feel impossible by the second week in January. And while I, too, will be making good-health commitments to my body along with most of the rest of the world, my resolutions have a lot more to do with making the most of those tiny slices of time.
See, I started a new job in November that’s tacked on an extra two hours-ish of commute time to each of my days, and pairing that with taking one class a month to finish my bachelor’s degree has made the initial transition trying. I decided to take a month off of school for December, considering the new-job-exhaustion I was feeling and the likelihood of transforming into a full-fledged Scrooge over not being able to bake as many Christmas treats as I wanted or to make sure each and every gift was as perfect as possible. And, while that time off did help, I now know that in order to experience a holiday season as magical as I expect for myself and my loved ones, I’m going to have to prepare sooner. A lot sooner.
That said, I am resolving to begin now. I know plenty of crafty people who create the entire year and stash their future presents for gift-giving situations and it’s time for me to become one of them.
The second important note is: to create with variety. Here I am speaking only about knitting, but that could translate into any of the other homemade things in which I dabble. Christmas rewarded me with four volumes of knitting stitches that will help me — finally! — create my very own knitting pattern. More than homemade, I love the possibility of being original, so I expect to get a lot of use from those books. (Thanks, Mom!)
And the third, and final, craft-related resolution is to use that spinning wheel! I’ve been so intimidated since my first attempts of making a giant mess of my roving, but over the last year I’ve seen such an improvement in my knitting, I expect that, too, just needs time and practice. I can hear my friend Kathy right now: “Just fifteen minutes a day, Katie.” It’s enough to practice but not enough to get angry about the errors. I think that I should be able to spare that much!
Hopefully you’ve all recovered from any party-induced weariness by now and have written your own (small!) list of resolutions. By announcing them to the world, I give my friends and family free license to nag me, all year, on the status of my resolutions. I suggest you do the same!
Good-bye, 2012. We learned a lot this year, whether it be about life and love or cumin and cables. Looking forward to all the new information 2013 will bring!
