What A Year!

This has been a roller coaster year dealing with my 50th birthday, a new job (thank God) for my husband, a huge move in our lives, hurricane Sandy devastation at my husband's family summer home in New Jersey and of course, lots of knitting.

This year's knitmeter total:

It's down from last year where I hit over 20,000 yards - however, I think I'll chalk that up to the huge move.

My favorite knits of the year???  Let's see...I think these 3 are my favorites:

Interesting that they all are things I knit for someone else.

Also, I put my toe in the designing pond - while I won't be retiring on the sales of my Just One More Hat and Just One More Mitten patterns, they have done better than I expected.  Now I need to get my designing mojo back and get knitting again.

As I do every year around this time, I question whether or not to continue this blog.  There are so many other ways to stay in the knitting world with Ravelry, Facebook, Pinterest.  However, I do find this a therapeutic place for me at times.  I do pour my heart out here and find comfort in kind words and encouragement from you all.

I wish you a Happy New Year - 2012 is one that I don't care to repeat and I do hope the 2013 will be much kinder.  Happy New Year!

Now this is really MY Blanket

On Monday a package arrived from my friend Jennifer.  I emailed her to say I put it under the tree and told her I was very curious.  She then told me it was a gift from our knitting group in Connecticut.  So they arranged to Google+ hangout me into the weekly knitting group so I could open the gift with them.

Lo and behold, it was the most gorgeous blanket in my favorite blue.

We had made this same friendship blanket for another member of our group, Lisa, when she moved away.  It was so fun to receive a gift that I knew what it means to knit.  When you knit for someone you think about them and when I helped knit Lisa's blanket, I thought of her.  I now have a blanket that our group made while thinking of me.  It is beyond special and it is MY blanket.  I have already informed the whole family that only I get to use it.

Just this morning I was snuggling under it sipping my coffee.  I had to giggle as only Jennifer knows how cold our house is in the winter (we keep it at 56 during the day) so this blanket will be used a lot!
Here's her post on my opening the gift - had I known my gym clothes would have been on the blogosphere, I probably would have showered and looked a little nicer.

Today I'm off to my new knitting group - I miss my CT group every time I'm with this group.  Maybe one day they will grow to be as special as our CT group is...I kind of think the CT group is irreplaceable.