New Year's Hopes

Pirate inspired me yesterday. You can read her comments below on yesterday's posting. Anyway, I really like her approach. She has New Year's hopes instead of resolutions... definitely a more realistic way to go about the whole start-anew-in-the-New-Year ritual.

Let's see... If I had to create a list of hopes for the New Year, I'd need to break out the large-scale hopes from the small, personal ones.

Large-Scale Hopes for 2005:

• A swift end to this useless war in Iraq.
  
• Even just the tiniest increase in the world's peace quotient.
  
• That somehow this country manages not to backslide completely into the New Dark Ages.
  
• That everybody we know and love is okay and stays that way.
  

Small-Scale Hopes for 2005:

• I already have an exercise regimen. I hope it pays off.
  
• Prepare and eat more green vegetables.
  
• More sunshine and walks with Charlie. Less housework. Less freaking out over my job.
  
• Restore the house to some semblance of order, even just a little bit.
  
• Spend some more time doing art, including more classes at MECA.
  

Knitstuff

I'm so chuffed about my first felted piece that I need to make another one right away. I mean to make one with one of Val's Beardie buttons and send it to her as a thank-you. The ones she sent me all clashed badly with the fuchsia wool (not her fault -- I asked for designs with red bits), but I have skeins of red and dark gray Lamb's Pride here that are both crying out to be knit and felted. (Note the absence of any mention of my UFO (unfinished objects) pile in my list of hopes for the New Year.)

Just for fun, I've started another cheap-and-cheerful scarf for my friend who loves pale pink. This one's in Patons Divine, and it's going well enough in stockinette stitch with a few garter ridges every few rows. The Divine was the exact shade of pink I've been looking for, but the more I knit with acrylic, the more it makes me long for wool.

Back in the frog pond: the red Berroco Glitz. The stuff is a bear to knit on its own because it doesn't have a lot of substance, and the "fuzz" tangles easily. If and when this emerges from the pond, I think I'll combine it with something that has a little more body to it. It should make a lovely something-or-other.