Stress Reaction

It has not been an auspicious beginning to the New Year. First three days I was sick. Like in bed sleeping straight through with strep throat sick. Since then it has been just the sinusy, allergy kind of sick that doesn't keep you home from work but leaves you with little energy for much else (witness the lack of blogging activity. Being a newbie blogger, I should be a slave to the blogging bug. Sorry to say, the only bug I am a slave to at this moment is the dust mite)!

Despite these apparent setbacks, I remain curiously motivated by my New Years Resolutions. Probably because I have given myself the whole year to accomplish these tasks. How liberating! Since these are lifelong goals, I do not expect to accomplish them in the first week of January.

So without further delay, I give you the Years Resolutions of 2005.

1) This is the year I will become a writer. Fiction or nonfiction I don't know yet, but I do know that it will be directed towards the empowerment women. I meet so many women day after day who feel trapped by their circumstances in bad jobs, or bad marriages, or bad relationships, and I want to help these women discover the strengh that abides within themselves to make their lives anything they want it to be.

2) This is the year I will become a runner. I know that some of my inner strengh is tied up in this desire to be a runner. I have always dabbled at, but never completely been an athlete. Now it is time to take the plunge, and realize the dream. This will also accomplish the second part of goal number two, which is to make 2005 the last year I have to resolve to get in shape. How exciting to think that I will never have to make that resolution again!!

3) My only knitting related resolution: I will trust my own judgement in yarn substitutions. Too often I am hesitant to start a new project because I don't have the exact yarn the project calls for and I don't trust my own judgement in yarn substitutions. Honestly, what's the worst that can happen? I go to the frog pond? So this is the year I allow myself to experiment and, {gasp} make mistakes.

And, on the fiber related front, the beeeeeautiful Manos you see before you!! Soft and the colors are to die for!! There are two skeins of Persimmon, three of Hollywood Pink, and three of Wildflowers. All except two of the Wildflowers are going into a Felted Yoga Mat Bag from Last-Minute Knitted Gifts. The other two skeins are going into a scarf for moi!

How fun was this? Very!! If you get a chance to see it, take it. I took my daughter to see it as part of her fourteenth birthday celebration, and we both really had a great time! The music, the dancing, just breathtaking!

And continuing in the dancing theme:

Now, on to Clappy and FBS Redux!

It's hard to believe it's 8:30 in the morning in this photo, isn't it. Gloomy, dreary, cold, and wet. Normally I like a good crisp snow fall, but this is not what this was. Yuck!!

All the more reason to finish my Flower Basket Shawl, both for warmth, and as a reminder of the sunny days of spring to come.

I am so loving this knit, and the colors, and the fiber. I'm just not sure I am crazy about the yarn for this project . It's Filatura Di Crosa's College in Herbal Garden. Hopefully with some vigorous blocking, I will come to love this project as much as I long to do.

Any input would be invaluable at this point, since I don't want to spend any more time on something about which people are going to say "Isn't that nice?, but really mean, "what the heck are you giving me"? You know what I'm talking about?