Christmas & Focus in the New Year

I hope everyone had a wonderful Christmas?

Even though I was lacking in the cheer department earlier, I couldn’t have asked for a better Christmas this year

At the beginning of December, my sister Tina flew up from Las Vegas to stay for a whole month. Both Gary and I were really happy to see her, as she’s just the person you need around to add some Christmas glee and sunshine during the really short days of Winter.

Anyone that knows Tina, knows that she talks about her hair constantly! Eventually, you just kind of filter all that out and say “Ummmhmm, yes Tina, your hair looks great!”. So, Gary gave her the best pre-Christmas present ever by taking her to the salon for a cut & color. Of course Tina wanted to share her new look with everyone on-line, so I snapped up a couple of photos for her:

Needless to say, she had a wonderful time with us and we loved every minute of her stay here. We spent Christmas at Gary’s parents house near Redondo Beach (just a few minutes south of us). Gary’s mom Lupe made the best chicken enchiladas for us on Christmas Eve and Prime Rib on Christmas day.

I shouldn’t brag, but this year I got really spoiled by Santa! I think it was probably because I was so well behaved and good this year?

There’s no way to share everything with you right now, so I’m planning to photograph a little bit now and a little bit later on. Plus, the light here is so sparse that even if you spent all day at home waiting for the sky to brighten, you might get lucky with an hour or two of sunshine. It definitely makes it harder to take photos indoors, especially if you don’t like the way flash photos look. I’m also not a big fan of porting around a large tripod to take photos.

Kiwi James sent me an amazing gift pack with all sorts of goodies and hand made treasure for Christmas! I was so blown away by his generosity, kindness and Christmas cheer that I didn’t know how to contain myself

Thank you so much James!

Ohhhh, I can’t forget to talk about this amazing laptop I’m blogging on right now. Yes, it’s true! I got a brand new laptop from Santa this year! I’m still trying to take it all in. It’s so sleek and light and beautiful and bright and shiny and fast and everything I could have wanted in a computer:

My old laptop was good for email and the Internet, but it was 10 years old. The display was slowly fading into oblivion and it couldn’t load Itunes, run software like Photoshop, word processors or do much of anything.

I don’t think I will set it on fire or dig a grave for it in the backyard just yet?  We’ll probably keep it around the house ’just in case’ or as a good standby when Tina visits next time.

Ohhh, and a couple of small but wonderful Christmas things!

This is the best green tea ever (you can’t believe how delicious and fragrant it is, as it’s brewing on a cold Winter’s day):

And the other wonderful thing that I can’t stop listening to:

Did everyone have a good new years?

Mine was nice and quiet, spent with Gary and Tina. I’m not a wild and crazy person, so it was perfect for me.

I see so many people are posting about new year’s resolutions, intentions or goals?

I’m not so good at those, so I was thinking I would probably just try and be more ‘focused’ in a few areas instead:

• Get organized (need to get the garage cleaned, shelving installed, get ready for a garage sale, eliminate clutter in the kitchen and put things back where they belong, especially the camera equipment)
• Eat better (cut back on tasty chocolate treats and carbs)
• Take more photos
• Blog more
• Try to not over-complicate knitting (changing the pattern, obsessing about minutia and perfectionism)

While I’m on the subject of over-complicating things, I did happen to change the sleeve that I started a couple weeks ago.  I promise it’s the last time! I thought about how the old sleeve pattern was going to attach to the body and I didn’t like the end result (in my head). So, I decided to change the placement of the cables on the underside of the sleeve.  Basically, I revised the charts so that the cables on the underarm (where it’s grafted) are going to match up with what’s on the body of the sweater.

Here’s a sweater progress shot (I placed the pieces on top of one of my favorite sweaters for scale, with just one more sleeve to knit before it’s all joined together):

I don’t think I mentioned this in my list above, but this year I really want to get better at visualizing in my head before I knit things up. I think this talent takes a long time to master, after you’ve knitted a million projects and with years of experience?

To save hours and days of wasted effort, I really need to step back and visualize things before throwing caution to the wind and just jumping right into a project.