I’ve done something I’m not exactly proud of… because I was otherwise good. And because it was time. After finishing the doily book, which will be picked up from the publisher tomorrow – and in the process, learning a huge amount about the differences between tatting cotton of various brands and ages… (Shameless plug here – I’m really pleased with the way the doily book came out. If anyone wants a copy of the doily book, please email me at threads@empacc.net – cost is $10 plus $1 shipping… and yes, I do take paypal.) This below was the raw material for the cover.

And finishing projects I’m teaching next weekend for the Lost Art Lacers – please note, the background color is really black, not brown, and the thread is a beautiful vivid variegated green/blue that got totally washed out by the flash, but these are five original hearts, a few of them as-yet unpublished…

and realizing, partly thanks to concentrating on all those tatted hearts that Valentine’s Day is coming, I started yet another pair of socks. Those are the ones in brown that have a couple of wooden needles in them. They’re actually brown and blue. This is the fourth pair in progress. My only excuses are that they’re not for me – and it’s kind of an experiment, making socks for Bill that aren’t red. I’m trying to broaden his horizons a bit. The one that’s just a footling was begun about a year ago; the sparkly ones were begun about 9 months ago, and the one that’s just a blob of blue was begun last month because I was trying to show someone Dani Rotach’s hybrid innovation of beginning socks at the ankle with a provisional cast-on, knitting the foot and finishing with the leg. All the socks in the photo are done that way. I should be soooo ashamed. I’m not.

You’re never prepared for snow. Cold, blowing, piling-up, coming-down-in-sheets old-fashioned blizzard-style – well, that’s what winter is supposed to be about, right? That was the woodpile a few days ago, already significantly reduced from September, but before I took a broom and snow-shovel to the question of how I'd get more wood indoors. And winter is at least partly why we gardened like crazy all summer, laid in supplies of everything we could run out of (of course, forgetting tea and oatmeal) made pots of soup and made sure there were plenty of wound shuttles, projects-in-progress… oh, excuse me, that’s me. All Bill really needed was his Kindle with the wireless connection so he could get his online edition of the New York Times, which he seems to read in entirety.

Diligent tatting, interspersed with some knitting brought the doily count up to five finished ones before 2012 ended…. A sixth was finished today. And two dishcloths, which I really like and are quick and fun to knit (the pattern can be found here) http://littlehouseinthesuburbs.com/2012/12/knitted-honeycomb-dishcloth-1.html

Six more to go – that’s doilies, not dishcloths – until I’ve got enough for the booklet… though I’m not sure how many will actually fit. I’ve got three more in progress, including a small one I began today. Ginny’s got one and Kathy’s got one. And there’s a good supply of books on tape for the repetitive parts. For the third year in a row, Bill was sick on New Year’s Eve. This year he shared a touch of flu with me too. We were probably the only people under nine who were asleep last night before 9:30. Despite missing a much-looked-forward-to party, a lot of sleep seems to have helped. As for New Year’s resolutions, I’m happy to report that I made only one last year – that of putting my house on a diet – and kept it. Not so you’d notice, but I do. I’m not saying what my resolutions are for this year – this year there are three – but this time next year we’ll know if I kept them too.