Looking Forward; Looking Back

I think I’m officially the last person in the entire blogging world to do this, but it’s been percolating so long that I can’t quite bring myself to not do it. Besides, I feel like I need to, if only for myself, so here goes – my New Year’s Day post!

I never was real keen on making New Year’s resolutions, as it just seems like the perfect way to start off the year with a resounding dose of failure. Sometime around the end of January you eat that piece of turtle cheesecake, miss 3 consecutive days of exercising, or realize you are already a week behind in your read the Bible in a year program, and you promptly brand yourself a loser, throw hopeless hands up into the air, and say, “Maybe next year…” I just don’t need that sort of thing in my life. I’ve fought hard to get where I am emotionally, so I have no intent to shoot myself in the foot by setting myself up to 334 days of each year thinking uncharitably about myself. However, like most of the people I know, I do feel that fresh start excitement that comes with the scent of a January calendar page, and a couple years back, I came up with an idea that is working much better for me – New Year’s Goals.

New Year’s Goals have very few rules, though last year they did need a few more than they had. They have to actually be possible. I’m not allowed to beat myself up if I don’t accomplish them. They have to be well defined. Two of those three rules were added this year. Having goals instead of resolutions gives me an entire year to succeed, and they help focus my ecclectic brain on a little bit narrower range of possibilities. Another benefit is that it sets some things before me that I have heard myself say, “I always wanted to” so many times I’m sick of hearing it, but without a steady reminder, I find drifting out of my mind when I have the time.

Last year’s goals were not too many:

• Knit a Pair of Socks – This one was accomplished with my Coriolis Socks, which I absolutely adore!
• Master Lace Knitting – This goal would show you just how little I knew about lace knitting December a year ago. It’s also totally undefinable in reality. Just how does one know they’ve “mastered” lace knitting? Should have been “Become Very Comfortable Knitting Lace.” That I definitely accomplished.
• Go Somewhere New – I didn’t think I was going to get this, but when I ended up with a nearly last minute trip to Honduras, which included a side trip through Guatemala into Belize, I found I’d accomplished it well beyond my original dream.
• Read 100 Books – Somewhere around June, I added this, which has now been classed as an illegal move on New Year’s Goals. I didn’t succeed, but I might well have made it had I not read th e entire Outlander series. Books with 48 CD’s take a good bit longer to read than your run of the mill 6-10 CD offering.
• Make a Gail Wilson Kit – Considering the collection I have of the kits, I thought it was time to put my money where my mouth is – or my hands where my money is, or some such thing. Thinking is as far as I got with this one. Oops!
• Finish the Laundry Room Remodeling – Well… Perhaps this would have happened if my dear daughter hadn’t offered to help get the sewing room started, then hubby hadn’t suddenly revived his nook project and added allowing me a studio door. I was spread too thin with those four projects to complete even one of them, though I don’t regret the progress that was made on all.
• Be out of Debt by the End of the Year – Total flop. ‘Nough said?

My list for 2009 is much longer and definitely more ambitious, but I’m doing some things differently, and I’m feeling quite positive about a lot of them. The biggest change is that this year, I’m not settling back in January and thinking that I have a whole year to do this stuff after all, so why rush? There have been a fair number of serendipitous occurrences to help me move in the right direction, too, so I’m off to a great start! I don’t really think I’ll be able to get them all done, but I’d sure like to surprise myself, and I’m not going to aim low!

• Be Debt Free by the End of the Year – I hate having to have this goal. This also includes non-financial IOU’s. I’m going to have to have a miracle to pull this one off. I need to sell an awful lot of books if this is going to happen – and my knitting pattern needs to be a smashing success! I also have several projects, including a quilt to finish for this.
• Get My Email Under Control – This is another one in the miracle category, but who knows?
• Make a Gail Wilson Kit – Sound familiar? Serendipity is that Gail is currently running a Hitty class, I have the kit, and the fee wasn’t very high. I’m far behind the front runners, but I HAVE actually started my girl.
• Finish Reba – The most attainable of the miracle class of goals. There is little to do for her to be complete, but it involves a kiln, learning to fire bisque, renewing my acquaintance with bisque painting, and getting up the nerve to put my beautiful, nearly done head in for a last firing.
• Complete Sewing Room – Mid-range in terms of difficulty. I’ve done an awful lot in there, but I still have oodles of sorting and organizing, along with quite a bit of trim painting to do – like the bookcase and two casement windows. This isn’t a gimme!
• Complete Laundry Room – Another mid-range sort of project. As much as is done in there, the floor tile is a bothersome, time consuming project, and I have some trim painting to do. Really challenging would be that I have to stop knitting long enough to crochet the curtains!
• Lose 25 Pounds – This is going to be easier than I thought. I’m already half the way there!
• Learn to Do Entrelac and Knit Backwards – I’m really looking forward to this one. I have the pattern and yarn to do Autumn, and a week or so back, I finally found a tutorial that made knitting backwards suddenly easy. I’m still slightly awkward at it, but a little bit of practice and it’s going to be second nature. Biggest challenge here is just to actually break away from the temptation of so many interesting KAL’s and do this piece.
• Go Somewhere New – Looking very challenging at this point in time. I had two cruises planned for this year, both to new places,  both depending on other people, and both fell through already. So much for this goal being a gimme. All the states within decent driving distance I already have, and I don’t currently have any good set up for a low cost visit in a new state or country – and there ’s that “out of debt” business… Stay tuned!
• Become Comfortable Spinning – Easy? Well… First I have to finish building my wheel. Then all that remains is finding time!
• Read 100 Books – I’m really cooking on this one already! I think I just listed book 15 – or was it 16?
• Knit Another Pair of Socks - This is more desperation than goal. I adore my socks and I hate it when I have to take them off to wash them! I need more hand knit socks!!! This is a “just do it!” sort of project, and I’m sort of hoping that the SHP KAL is enough to jumpstart the process.
• Stash All My Downstairs Yarn on Ravelry – This would be much easier if the stash would quit multiplying! That said, I’ve already been working hard on this. I’m currently at 244 in my regular stash, so ignoring minor fluctuations due to usage, it will be interesting to see where I am on Dec. 31.
• Do a “Difficult” Lace Pattern – Challenge here is just focusing on doing it – ignoring some of the other rabbits dashing across my path constantly. It’s tough to do that with something like 7 shawls on my  needles and two KAL’s imminent…
• Do Something/Anything with my CSM – I’m not even aiming so high as a pair of socks at this point. I just want to sit down with someone and find out for sure my machine actually works! Socks would be a nice side benefit to the process, though. ;o) A circular sock machine is too valuable to just hold down the floor, in my opinion, and that’s all my lazy contraption has done for about 3 years now.

Now that I type this all out, I’m thinking it’s a very good thing I have a solid start on so much of it. This is quite a list!!! I think I’m going to make a separate page listing the goals in the sidebar here on the blog, then update as things happen…

On Being Eclectic

For many years now, “eclectic” has been the first adjective to come out of my mouth when I’m describing myself. Never more than yesterday have I seen such a compact proof of it being the single most perfect word there is for my personality, though. It was one of those frustrating days when the majority of things I’ve been waiting to receive in the mail all arrive at once. I had a huge stack of packages to open – a real Christmas type moment. Personally, I like it better when things dribble in an item at a time, but the postal service never asked me…

Anyway, when I took an accounting of what had arrived, I laughed out loud. It was me to a “T” – and if properly employed, enough stuff to keep me busy for an entire year! No wonder I always have more to do that time to do it – but I digress…

I like being me, and I love being eclectic. I’d never be able to function in a world where everything was always the same – where I didn’t have oodles of options dancing about me at every moment teasing me to go this way or that. I’ve fantasized at times about only having one thing with which to deal at a given moment, but it takes me about 10 seconds in that line of thought to know I’d go nuts by the end of day one. Besides, I’d never be able to choose the one single interest that I’d want to keep as an only child.

Now, if you are curious, here’s my ever so eclectic packages from the day’s mail.

First off, this is a fantastic new cloth doll book by Antonette Cely. Actually, I’m not sure just how new it is for the rest of the world, but I just discovered it recently. Titled Cloth Dollmaking, it’s jammed with enough information, details, and tips to keep me busy for months – and I’d still not have mastered everything she has to offer in this book, which clearly demonstrates her expertise. Even just to study, it would keep me engrossed for hours, but beyond that, I know I will have dozens of dolls flitting around in my mind, begging for life long before I’ll come to the last page

Next I opened a package containing two back issues of the ever so incredible Gildebrief. If I could only keep one doll magazine in my house, this would undoubtedly be the one. Eye-candy, porcelain doll painting, and incredible, detailed costuming… this is the Cadillac of magazines for the doll artists – particularly those with a strong leaning toward bisque dolls and historic costuming. I’ve seldom seen anything in Gildebrief that I didn’t want to make – now!

Already feeling rich, I opened package three – another flat package, though in appearances only. Due to the cost and timing of the Circular Sock Machine convention this year, even with it being just a short drive away, I had to skip it. Since I don’t have my machine working yet, I had truly longed for the opportunity to go – the perfect chance to put this little beauty to work. As a consolation prize for those of us who had to stay home, extra copies of the convention book were printed and sold, and I’m thrilled! It’s got more info between the covers than I’d have ever dreamed, and even if my CSM were my only toy, I don’t think I’d be lacking for things to try for a very long time. I’m so glad I bought this!

By this point, I was almost of a mind to leave the rest of the packages for another day! However, they were blocking access to the kitchen, so I opened the fourth one – and smiled as my love of reading was blessed with a new treasure, a volume of new old children’s book series for me. One of the many reasons my handle is “Face From the Past” is because of books – and especially these old ones with pictorial covers. I have but few, but I’m terribly partial to them. I just recently discovered Honey Bunch, and I’m quite enamored with her at the moment, and eager to see how much of the series I can find in this edition – without breaking the bank.

Now I had but three packages remaining – though really just two items – or a hundred or so, depending upon how one counts these things. The fifth was two boxes holding enough of my beloved Elsebeth Lavold Silky Wool to keep me knitting for months! I got a total of 53 skeins in five different colors and at bargain prices. I also refuse to confess to anyone who isn’t snooping around on Ravelry just how many skeins of Silky Wool I now own. I do so love this stuff…

Having fed my knitting, dollmaking, costuming, reading, and CSM inner people, it was time to come back to reality – though not as painful as some versions of same. I last opened a box jammed full of work – pretty work, I’ll admit, but definitely work. I now have somewhere over 100 antique fireplace tiles, which will eventually be doing duty in my Chocolate and Roses sewing room with something else that arrived recently… I’m going to save that for another post, though. For now, I will just say that I’m going to have something wonderful, but I’m going to have a lot of hours cleaning up and setting tiles before I can enjoy the end result. Stay tuned!

Neglected Toys

The past two years have been extremely busy, leaving me with little time to play. For that matter, there is plenty of work that hasn’t happened either… but that’s not what I’m thinking about at the moment.

Somewhere in the midst of the hectic days, I was having my car maintenance done in my home town. To bide my time, I wandered to the local thrift shop, where I found something that was a curious treasure – a sock knitting machine.

(Click pix to enlarge)

Although I was quick to recognize the contraption, I knew absolutely nothing about it. However, it was too tempting not to adopt, so I paid the price and wedged its cast iron body, firmly attached to the splayed legs of its tripod, into my borrowed car and drove off smiling. And that’s as far as the romance went. Once it arrived home, I stuck it in a somewhat out of the way corner, complete with the makeshift cover, and I didn’t touch it again for what must be close to two years.

I knew a bit of its pedigree and had high hopes for it. Although there was no manual, it belonged to a lady I’d known. She sold knitting machines and the necessary yarn, I’d frequented her in-home shop, which was just around the corner from our newlywed home over a quarter of a century earlier. The CSM (circular sock machine) looked well tended, but it was also jammed, most likely by curious shoppers who couldn’t resist the turn of a crank. Let’s face it – who could walk past this without wanting to see what happens?

Recently, a post in one of my Yahoo groups, combined with my awakened passion for knitting, brought my neglected toy to mind, and I started doing a little bit of exploration, aided by two very nice ladies who don’t know me from Adam, but were brought to me by the ever wondrous magic of the internet. Instead of knowing nothing, I can safely say I only know next to nothing now – great step upward! What I have is a Harmony Auto-Knitter, a well regarded 1982 green model. It has a ribber, and is equipped with a 60 needle cylinder. And it came with a fascinating, but somewhat baffling assortment of tools.

I have delicately worked to remove the yarn jam, and the crank turns quite nicely. I still believe the machine has been well cared for, but I was quite shocked to see the amount of dust revealed by the larger than life photos. (Does this mean I need new glasses?) I must confess, I really enjoyed taking pictures of it tonight. I don’t often find myself with a mechanical subject, and it was a great change of pace. Now, for my next trick, I’m going to see if I can make a slide show of the photos…

Okay, now that was definitely too much fun! On a more serious note, I’m putting these photos into my Flickr album, too. Keeping in mind that I know very little about what I have, I would truly appreciate it if people in the know would leave me some helpful comments and advice either here or there. The photos are all numbered, and quite frankly, I have no idea what most of the things are at this point! One thing that doesn’t show well is the metal piece that is shaped rather like a jet plane and stuck on the vertical pole. I understand it has something to do with carrying the yarn, but right now I’m more interested in getting it under control. As soon as I start to turn the crank, it shimmies down, much like the cage on a Mousetrap game, and impedes any further movement. Sometimes the carriage tries to snatch up a bit of the little wire protruding from this device. I’m wondering why the counter isn’t registering passes, curious about the lucite horse’s head in the one photo, and puzzled as to why there is a swivel bar that can be moved into a position that prevents cranking entirely. What might I be missing in regard to parts and tools? And what do I do with the ones I own? I know some of these questions will most likely be answered when I sit and study the online copy of the antique Auto-Knitter manual, but there is also a lot to be said for personal advice – and I’m surely open to hearing some!