As 2013 Begins...

I'm not going to post a laundry list of resolutions. There's nothing wrong with that, the ending of one year and the starting of another is a great time for reflection and review. You can't keep moving ahead without knowing well the road you traveled to get to where you are at any given point. And to just blindly forge ahead without taking a realistic stock of what worked, and what failed in part or in full, is just plain silly.

However, there isn't anything magical about turning a calendar page from December 2012 over to a new set of 2013 pages. It's just another day here on our homestead. Another rainy, mud-flow kind of day like many others during a southern winter season here. I suspect my 2013 calendar days will be fairly similar to those I saw in 2012...with the typical farm chaos, the schooling challenges, the away-from-home working husband. I'm hopeful for some better outlooks, of course, but still, our days are what they are and our 'outlook' of them is more decided on how we VIEW them than in the dates on a calendar page hanging on a wall.

So, that aside now,gather around and let's move along to some blogging.  Coming up in another week, we'll have Dewey home long enough for an orthopedic surgeon appointment on his right shoulder. Three years ago he had surgery on his left shoulder, and the same things are coming up with his right shoulder now, so I suspect we'll have a bit of down-time coming up. Could be something simple, maybe bone spurs alone, could be a repeat of his left shoulder, with those spurs tearing apart 90% of the tendons. Either way, I may get a husband at home for a while, which certainly perks up the year in my mind.

If I was to say "I plan to..." for this new year, it would be learning to knit. Technically I know how to knit, and I've actually just about made an infant sweater before. Back when Jennifer was a mere slip of a baby, I learned to knit and purl, and I stitched up a back, a front, and 2 sleeves, each with their ribbing and neckline work. I say just about made because I never actually pieced those components together into a usable sweater. Jennifer was too large for the size I made by the time I got it to the seaming stage, and well, Johanna was just a much larger baby starting off period.  I sort of know how to knit, I just really need practice. I'm not as skilled as I was 20 years ago...and I sure wasn't very skilled back then anyway. This year, I want to learn again, and hone those lost skills so I can translate them into projects and goodies for my Grandmother's Hope Chest.
I have been working some afghans on my hook here. Dewey was given one for christmas so he could take a bit of cozy warmth from home on the road with him.

 I really liked the pattern, a diagonal box stitch, so I started another already to add to the hope chest. It would actually make a very nice and cozy shawl if I didn't want to keep going for another afghan.

The pattern is really easy and works up quick with little effort. It's a great 'mindless' project to occupy your hands with busy work. You can find the pattern tutorial here at CrochetSpot. Note there are differing instructions for making decrease rows depending on if your goal is a square of more of a rectangle.

The baking and heating elements decided (again this year) to fizzle out of my electric stove, so we've been a wood cookstove homestead exclusively since early September. We bought the Kitchen Queen back in February last year, but it didn't see much use until it was needed in September. It was a bit of a learning curve to start, coming from the very small, very old, very inefficient cookstove we were using, but it's been great. It has no trouble heating the house, though the bedrooms do stay chilly at the other end of the house. 

Still, Thanksgiving dinner was totally produced via the cookstove this year, and it turned out way better than I expected. Cookies, pies, casserole vegetable dishes, a beautiful turkey...delicious.

We will be getting back to the school routine here shortly, back to our mammals and our Middle Ages study.