Happy New Year

Greetings and Dear Cynthia,

The pictures of your sil's "girls" (are they her grandchildren?) are adorable!

My burning question, however, is whether or not your mom was able to try on her finished Chic Knits Cassidy sweater on Christmas Day.... I hope you all had a nice Christmas season!

Any knitting resolutions for the new year?

I have the next *two weeks off* before I start my *last* complete semester, possibly for the rest of my life... (I have no intentions of ever going back to school again, really...)

During these two weeks, my goals are:

1.) Finish Basic Chic Hoodie (only "finishing" remains)

2.) Finish 2nd sock of bamboo socks (pictures soon)

3.) Rip and restart the ugly socks.

4.) Post to the blog at least four times - that will give me incentive to jump start my knitting, as well as share with you all of the progress I'm making on getting my dumpy house in order. A year and a half of neglect since I started school is really starting to catch up with it...though I confess a certain desensitization to disorder which has taken place in my psyche.

Some discussion about the ugly socks... From those of you who commented, and also two knitters I regularly see on the bus, the colors are bold, and for the right person, they would be perfect. The first comments from the ladies on the bus were, "I like the pattern," which I think is a nice way to say, "Whoa, those are bright and not my thing," though they encouraged me to continue on with the Jaywalkers pattern, saying that it was not the fault of the pattern that the colors are so bold. However, I'm with Marit, that if I'm already afraid I'm going to run out of yarn and I've just gotten past the heel, probably best to rip. Also, I keep coming back to the queasy feeling I have when I look at the sock in progress and think to myself how much better I think they would look in more of a basic stripe (non-chevron). So, I'm keeping the socks, and dumping the pattern, though it is a lovely pattern, I honestly don't think it's for me, even in a different yarn. Crazy, but I just really like a nice, vanilla sock!

My sister and I were playing around with the "Photo Booth" on the Mac using the special effects. Here is our self portrait in "x-ray":

Here is "comic book":

So, I'm watching Brett Favre right now (I mean the Vikings), waiting for Green Bay to begin at 3:15. It's a frozen tundra outside of our house, and I'm thankful that I'll have a pot of soup simmering on the stove in a short while and I can hunker down for the rest of the day. Nice to *finally* have a day in which I actually have a chance to take a nap...

Have the best 2010 ever!

Warm regards,

Laura (YarnThrower)