Starting Out the New Year on a Relaxing Note

New Year's Day was a relaxing one at our house. We slept a bit late, lounged our way through the morning, and then went to see the Voyage of the Dawn Treader Narnia movie in the early afternoon. Once home, I finally made English fruitcake -- the ingredients have been sitting on the sideboard for weeks. Our neighbor is from England and his wife used to make it every year, but since being diagnosed with celiac disease and diabetes, she's stopped. It is something we can do for them, plus we like it ourselves. There are lots of fruitcakes I wouldn't touch with a ten-foot-pole, but this tastes like the fruitcake I had when I lived in Scotland and I love it.

Some knitting got done too.

Zeben's hat is progressing:
The green dot is a cute little marker that was in a gift from a knitting friend. The stripes are from alternating two different "colors" of the Eco Duo yarn. They are distinctly different, but blend nicely. Here are two skeins that I wound into balls -- same "color" and dye lot, but they look quite different:
I finished the red and white "candy" sweater, but haven't woven in the ends:
I mentioned that I have three sock projects on the needles and got photos of two of them this morning:
These are the Monkey Socks by Cookie A that have been a huge hit in Knitty. Their popularity spurred Cookie to publish two sock knitting books -- I have one of them and love it.
And these crazy things are the Skew Socks, also from Knitty. It is a bit hard to tell from this photo, but these rows are all at funny angles, especially around the heel. They've been an interesting challenge to work on -- I was happy to have been doing my usual knitting both at the same time (instead of sequentially) as they are mirror images of each other.

I was thinking about my knitting yesterday and realized that there are two other types of projects that I need to tackle. I have a bag of items to be felted down in my basement -- felting intimidates me, for some reason. I just need to tackle it one of these days. The other thing I need to do is blocking. I have a basket full of things that need to be blocked, including two beautiful circular lace shawls, my large Maplewing shawl (finished just before Christmas), and a sweater! Blocking needs space, so it will have to wait until Zeben goes back to college so I can set up my blocking board on his bed. It always seems to hurt my back, too, which makes me want to avoid it. But, being able to use my finished products should make it worth it, so I'll get to it soon (Zeben leaves next weekend).

Today is the last day of vacation -- I can tell I'm ready to go back to work as things have been creeping back into my consciousness about upcoming projects and events and I'm feeling the energy related to moving forward with those things. But, at the same time, I long for just a few more days of the relaxed pace at home. I LOVE being home with my cats (and husband), working on my various projects, listening to good music (yesterday I pulled out a Greg Brown CD that I haven't listened to for a while) or podcasts, and having time to cook. I really need to move forward on my New Year's goal of engaging a financial planner to see how we can move toward my retirement -- in the meantime I guess I just need to keep building my stash of knitting and spinning and basket weaving and quilting projects and materials so that I'll have plenty to occupy my time once I do retire!