Happy New Year & Jessica's Poncho!

Happy New Year to you! I hope you had a pleasant New Year's Eve, whatever you chose to do. Our evening was quiet as I'm not a huge fan of going out and partying it up. We were all in bed and asleep well before the new year arrived. I actually had a sort of tough mommy moment yesterday when I had to tell Amy that she wouldn't be participating in the Brownie sleepover that was scheduled to take place last night. I quite honestly had a negative gut reaction to this activity when I first heard of it. It's not that I don't think Amy could have handled it, but I really felt she was too young for this type of activity, especially amongst girls she doesn't know too well. I remember sleepovers with close friends growing up, but I'm sure I was older than 7 when I participated. Thankfully, she seemed to take the news in stride and didn't throw a fit. I made her her favorite dinner as sort of a treat. She didn't even bring it up after we talked about it and I am/was relieved about that.

2008 ended with me working on more yarn projects. Big surprise, given my recent obsession with yarn, huh? I think looking at all the different yarns available is akin to being drawn to different pattern paper! I showed you the other day the beginnings of Jessica's poncho. I was able to finish it yesterday and she's quite happy with it. I really appreciated her patience in waiting for Mommy to make it and wanted to get it done as quickly as I could. I love the color combo.

I'm now working on another hooded poncho for Amy. I must be a glutton for punishment! No, not really. I just was so NOT happy with that project (even though you all were so encouraging of my efforts) that I knew I'd try to make it again. Amy mentioning quite a few times that it was falling apart (*blush*) added fuel to my desire to try again. I'm making very good progress on it and have already discovered a couple of things I did wrong the first time. Namely, I got larger needles to get closer to the gauge required for the project (sometimes the gauge is so important to a project, while other times not so much. It's a pain sometimes to stitch up a piece for the sake of checking the gauge-correct #of stitches per inch-in this case, it was important!). The needles I used the last time were too small. And I'm actually doing the stripes, which is helping to keep me on track. There was one part of the pattern that stumped me a little the first time and while I thought I figured it out, I now realize I was wrong, wrong, wrong! I've definitely figured it out now and am happily working toward the completion of the body. You can be sure I'll share when I'm finished.

I've decided not to make any hard-core resolutions for the new year. I never follow through and then feel bad about it. My goal will be to continue to strive toward bettering myself be it through knowledge, fitness, creativity or what have you as cliche as that might sound. As much as I love blogging (both sharing on my blog and reading others' blogs) I have found that it is quite enabling. I'm such a sucker for cute projects. Given the state of the economy (and my wallet) I am going to have to strive NOT to buy up supplies, just because I think a project is cute or whatever. I am going to make a conscious effort to use more of what I already have on hand rather than buy new stuff. (oh my gosh...that might mean I have to be creative all on my own-YIKES) Of course, there will be times when I may use up a coupon for a good deal, but my decisions will be much more thoughtful and will consider more the versatility of the product I'm looking at before buying. That being said...I just got a new flyer from Archiver's with two 30% off coupons...sigh...I have seen a stamp set for Valentine's that I like there...it's SO hard to resist. I'll look at it again and think long and hard, I promise.

I'm not sure if I'll make it into my corner today. Although, it is nice and neat and needs a good messing up. We'll see how the day plays out, I guess.

Thanks ever so much for stopping by. Happy New Year and let's look forward to another year of Creative Bliss!

Hugs,

Jeanne