All of a sudden -- I guess because I actually thought about it -- I'm looking forward to the new year.  There's a lot to look forward to!  DH and I will celebrate our 20th anniversary on the 20th, Mdd will enter high school, Ai will start college, Kt will not change colleges, I'll become a new auntie in late spring/early summer (I don't know exactly how to say it, but the placenta praevia is correcting itself and becoming a non-issue -- yay, baby knitting!), there's a new knit-blogger reading group, lots of knitting plans -- it's just all beginning to look good.

Happy New Year!

My family (and my our camera) will be home this morning!  They called from Memphis last night and they're ahead of schedule.  I'm so excited for Mdd to go get Mickey -- I don't think Mickey's going to be able to contain her excitement, if you know what I mean.  Is it just my dog, or does every dog kind of lose it right on the floor when they're super-excited?

I'd hoped to wind all that Debbie Bliss Merino Aran into balls last night, but it wasn't quite dry enough.  I think I'm going to make that my first FO of the new year -- get started with a bang.  That poor thing's been marinating in the frog pile for over a year.  It's kind of an "out with the old, in with the new" thing.  Then, in likely order, immediate plans are to finish 1) the mitten, 2) St. Brigid, 3) Cromarty.  There might have to be another pair of mittens, or maybe some socks, between 2 & 3.

So I worked on the mitten cuff last night.  The mitten cuff has stripes and one of the things I wanted to try was Meg's Jogless Jog.  The first cuff has a white spiral through the aubergine (just the nature of stripes in circular knitting) and I think the MJJ is working so it looks more like stripes, but more on that in the new year!

Totally wacky weather.  It's been raining and warm-ish here and most of our snow has melted.  While I was talking to my sister last night, she wondered aloud if she'd just seen lightning; thunder a few seconds later confirmed it.  A thunderstorm -- in Wisconsin -- in December.

I'm awaiting confirmation of the transfer of funds into my PayPal account so that I can purchase patterns for lovely socks and beautiful wristlets, as the creators of these patterns have pledged all proceeds to tsunami relief.  It made my heart full to see the news story last night about what a difference the internet has made (increased number of donations, as well as increased dollar amounts -- and all done instantly) to relief organizations and, especially, that they've been overwhelmed in recent days.