Happy New Year 2008

Happy New Year to everyone. May all your hopes and wishes come true in 2008. Wishing you Health, Happiness and Prosperity for the coming year. The photos are from New year festivities in the distant past. The first is me being Carmen Miranda with my ex husband wearing a matching frilly shirt. The 2nd is me pretending to be Nell Gwynne although I appear to have lost my basket of oranges by the time the photo was taken! The guy in the background didn't go down very well as the Village squash club had a mostly Jewish clientele and he was dressed as a Nazi! The little guy in the middle was pretending to lift both us ladies up. I think he was trying to suggest that we needed a New Year diet!

I have made my usual New Year resolutions plus a few added ones with craft in mind.

1. As always lose weight (top of a lot of people's list I presume)

2. Be more assertive with the NHS powers that be with regard to my back. Find out for sure whether there is to be an operation or not, and if not be firm about pain relief so I don't scream like a banshee and bite people on bad back days.

3. Do more exercise besides walking the dog and water aerobics (On the cards is seated exercise class using some kind of large rubber band - arranged by BEATS for the New Year sometime)

4. USE YARN FROM STASH and don't buy any more yarn (First one to be broken?)

5. Organise my craft (messy) corner in the front room so the first thing that guests see is not a pile of W.I.P heaped by the side of the chair plus jugs full of knitting needles and hooks.

6. Set up E Bay account so see if I can market any of my finished articles ( a bit of pin money would be so welcome to eke out the pennies in this pensioner's purse)

7. Get this dratted PC sorted out before I throw it through the window ! Why does my new set up hate Internet Browser so much? I would like to be able to search the net once again instead of getting the message "not responding " most times I want to read an e mail or web page.

8. Try to have no more than 2 W.I.P at any one time ( I have to knit and crochet alternately due to my carpal tunnel operation last year) and not the usual 10 things half made stuffed in bags all around the house which I finish up frogging cos I have either lost the pattern, no longer like it, or used part of the wool for something else.

9. Keep my PC desk tidy (Ha Ha fat chance where else do I dump mail and appointment cards?)

10. Organise my patterns into my new filing cabinet (Yeah for Freecycle) and label them all for easy searching ( enlist the help of my organisational whizz friend Caroline with this one)

11. Learn how to take digital camera photos ( enlist the help of my friend Vicky for this one) and find out where the ones I tried to put on my PC went to !!

12. Make some socks for me as my present wearable socks are mostly more holey than a sieve and my other bought socks stop the circulation in my fat ankles with the elastic tops.

I could list more and more but that only means more for me to break! As per usual I vow to be a good friend to friends and future friends and be a better person in general. Spread my craft knowledge, such as it is, around and convert more people into crocheters and knitters. There are a lot of people out there who are showing interest in crafting again and we should be encouraging and helping others to try. There is such a great satisfaction in making something to your own design and your own colour choice and not looking like everyone else who shops at Primark and M & S. I have always been an individual in the way I dress and would like to encourage it more in the young to not slavishly follow fashion like sheep thereby lose their individuality.

If I want to wear something weird and wonderful well hell this year I am going to do that! Be a hippy once again and wear flowers (crocheted of course) in my hair, a granny squared poncho in purple and red and weird and wonderful openwork crochet garments like the ones I see on Flikr and What not to Crochet sites.! I want to go into my old age kicking and screaming and saying "Boy that was one hell of a ride". My body may be a bit dodgy but my mind is still a rebel so there is hope for me yet.

Happy New Year everyone, let's make this the best year ever!