If you've been reading the blog for a while, you can probably tell that I love a good new year. (With Judaism, you get several extra!) I'm not into the whole Going Out And Drinking thing, especially when it's dark and the roads are icy, but give me a fresh start any time you feel like it. When I get to decide on the parameters of my own fresh start, that's even better.
First, though, let's review the blog stats for 2022. In the course of the year I published 51 posts that got about 800 views, 360 Likes, and 4 comments. About 765 visitors came from 31 countries, and 278 people (since 2006) have signed up to get RSS notification whenever I publish a new post. And it turns out that I wrote about 45,000 words!
I don't plan to change much on the blog in the new year, but if I can find where WordPress has hidden the word-count feature I will try to bump my annual word count to 50K. I'll still sit down at my computer (or iPad) each Sunday evening and try to publish something worth reading by 9 pm Central time. I'll still divide the content between musings on my life (or whatever strikes my fancy) and the knitting I'm working on or I am planning to do.
Last night, though, I started a new blog. It will be a one-year project to document my reading through, and cooking through, a fascinating cookbook published in 2018 by chef Alon Shaya. The book contains food from Israel and the Middle East, Italy, the American South, and New Orleans. As I found out when I Googled Chef Shaya earlier today, his life has been a long, strange trip that took a difficult turn just when the cookbook was published. I'm going to concentrate on his writing, his story, and his food as I make my way through the book. I plan to write those posts on Saturday evenings, but that may change as I go along. If you're interested in viewing that blog, let me know in the comments and I'll add a link. There's nothing to see right now....
I did, of course, make some resolutions to change some of the things I will do in the new year. There are the usual health-related resolutions that turn me into my own drill sergeant. Do your situps every day. Take care of your feet. Eat more salads. Go for more walks. Et cetera, et cetera, et cetera.
The better resolutions are the ones that let me have more fun and encourage me to be more creative. I have finally started writing in the lovely turquoise Rhodia date planner, with my fine-nibbed fountain pen. (As it happened, I could have done this a few weeks ago as they had included some December pages. OH WELL.)
I also had some fun setting up a reading journal/log for myself this afternoon, starting with creating pages for books that I started last year and am still working on. (Six, why do you ask?) After that I will start a section for the books that I'll start this year, and include some lists of other books I would like to read. I think it will be a nice artifact by the end of 2023. And if I don't quite fill up the book I can just drop in a 2024 cover page and keep going. It's not as if I will decide to stop reading or as if I will run out of books to read. It also allows me another space for being creative, since I can use whatever colors I want, make sketches, or even do some watercoloring. Speaking of which....
This would be the broad side.
Another journal I plan to set up is a sketch journal. I want to do a quick sketch every day and eventually be able to sketch out images that I will render in watercolor. For now I plan to study the watercoloring and the sketching separately. (Yes, I ordered a book....) I didn't get to sketch outside today (it feels much warmer because the wind died out, but it's still in the mid-30°F range), but I did look at the scenery with a different eye today as I walked the dog. This morning we were behind the barn (see above) when we heard a squirrel scramble through the end of the gutter. That got Monty's attention; what I noticed was the confluence of roof angles at different sections of the barn. The wooden section just holds hay and straw, but the cinder-block section, now storage, used to be a milking parlor. I went out later to take some reference photos.
What will happen if I don't keep up with all of my New Year's resolutions? I'll just keep trying. I don't make changes to my life in order to beat myself up — I do so to give myself a chance to become more relaxed, more skilled, or just happier.
Knitwise, I haven't gotten anywhere with the slouch hat and I'm not sure if I did any work on the scarf. But this weekend I knitted on the Blue Blanket as I played back some F1 sessions from last year (free practice 2 and 3 from the French Grand Prix at Paul Ricard) from the DVR before deleting them. (The new season starts in just 60 days, so I need to free up space.) I used up almost every inch of the partial skein before knotting it to the full skein and continuing on. The work is now 34 inches from the cast-on point to the live stitches.
Over my lunch hours at work last week, I did the knitting portion of a small potato. I still need to add eyes (thank you, Deborah) and do the seaming and stuffing before I will have anything worth photographing, but it looks as if it will be a cute little spud.
The knitting itself, though, on worsted yarn with US 2 needles, is awfully tight and hard on the hands. There's not much I can do about that, as I don't want the potato stuffing to fall out and it doesn't make sense to knit enormous potatoes. I will just have to do this kind of knitting when I'm able to and let the other knitting be the relaxing kind.
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