So, Anyway, On to 2010

Okay, that's over for another year --- now on to the new one.

I stopped making New Year's Resolutions a long time go but I have decided on some goals for 2010. For me that is the most sensible approach to a new year, let alone a new decade. But I do want to accomplish a few things, most notably revising the family cookbook and getting some more knitting patterns written up and published.

Over the holidays I finished my Wildflower Gloves knit from Yarntopia Treasures' wool/silk and I like them a lot. I want to knit one more pair before I write the pattern down because I don't like the way I have been finishing the tips of the fingertips. I downloaded and read several glove patterns from Ravelry and am going to try a new approach for the next pair. I have two more balls of that pretty wool/silk, one in blues and one in violets, from Yarntopia. I've also been thinking about a pair of fingerless gloves in the raspberry angora I made to go with my raspberry beret. So that's one project.

I started a smoke-ring over the weekend in a beautiful nubby silk yarn in shades of pale rose. I'm working on a fairly unique pattern and will post pictures as soon as I know if it is going to work or not. This is the first thing I've knit on KnitPicks' circular Harmony needles and I really like working with them. The points are very, very sharp.

I spent a lot of time on the phone over the holidays which was good. I need to make more time for calling people just to gab --- especially people I love and don't get to see. Yesterday I talked to my nephew Mark Valentine for awhile and it was so nice. Mark is my brother Jack's son and the new father of Jack Mark Valentine. Because I have been working on the family cookbook, I have been looking at family faces and, on a whim, made a collage of six generations of Valentine men starting with my Great-Grandfather Thomas Valentine and ending with baby Jack. It's pretty interesting. I showed it to a friend and she said, “They all have the same nose and jaw.” I hadn't realized that but when I covered the top half of their faces I could see it too. Amazing how that genetics stuff works.

My sister Anne called me yesterday to say she is three chapters in to Each Angel Burns and is loving it. She said the opening scene, which takes place in a bar and introduces the six guys who are the center of the story, had her laughing at the familiarity of it. Well, it should be familiar! That made me happy. She said she was talking to our 80-something aunt who is also reading the book. Frankly, I am slightly nervous about when she gets to the “spicy” parts but I expect she'll handle it. Both Anne and Aunt Rosy are in love with Gabe but also pretty dazzled by Father Peter --- just as they should be. Good.

Over the past three days I spent hours and hours and hours at the computer working on the cookbook. It was nasty outside so a good time to make headway on that. I was sorting through four and a half years of posts on this blog to see what will work in the book. This is really quite useful and will, I think, contribute to the overall quality of the book. My perspective has changed a little and I've forgotten a lot so it is good to have the blog to enhance variety. I was talking to my sister Lisa last night about the posts about catching fireflies and making 'Smores. She said, “Oh, I hope you put that in the book. And write something about when Dad and Woodley got stuck in the woods. And about you and Beth and the bears...” So much history in such a big family!

So 2010 is off to a good start here. May yours be, too. And thanks for reading --- without the people who take the time to read all my writing would be just so many black marks on a screen or page. I learned a long time ago that writing is a type of romance, an interaction between writer and reader. So, for 2010, we can all do with a bit more romance.

Happy and Prosperous New Year and, again, thanks for reading.