Hello Blog Readers! And January's quick knits

I've been playing with the idea of writing a blog for a year or two now, more seriously in the last few weeks. Mostly because I've been posting to a teaching blog through my school (ucdtaconsultants.blogspot.com) about my work as a Teaching Assistant Consultant (TAC) and really liking it. When I was younger I use to keep a daily diary with the intention of one day giving it to my child so they would know what kind of person their mother was. Not completely sure that's a great idea anymore, but I do miss writing.

The first question for creating the blog was what should it be on. I do love teaching and I hope after finishing my PhD I'll get a job as a teacher or as someone who helps others teach. But that's covered already in the UCD TAC blog. That leaves what I currently do as a student - ecology - or my favorite hobby, knitting. Personally, I think a blog should be enjoyable to the writer so hobby it is.

I don't make New Year's resolutions anymore. After almost 30 years on this planet I've realized that resolutions come at all times of the year and are more likely to be followed by me if they are made at random times. But at the beginning of this year I realized that the yarn in my stash that I didn't think was useful was not getting smaller. Actually, it was probably growing. Some of these were left over from larger projects (hence the growing), but the vast majority of them were from when I was a new knitter and didn't know what I actually liked about yarn...pretty much before graduate school sent me into the spiraling pit of doom that I only pulled out of by distracting myself with fiber. The skeins are abused enough that I wouldn't feel okay giving them away, but nice enough that they could make a decent small project. So the fact that I could still make something and that I'm finally motivated enough to do my graduate work (thereby having less time in my life for my hobby) had me resolute (is that even grammatically correct?!?) to use those "scraps" of yarn to knit little projects that I could throw in a gift box to be given as last-minute gifts later.

Oh, and I also decided to start making small Christmas ornaments for next year when I think I will actually have a tree.

Here are the things I made in January. Note that most of the items are the same color...that's cuz I'm working through a couple skeins of Cascade Yarns' Cherub collection. And I know the last one isn't knitted. It's felted soap. But I was also trying to get rid of some roving that didn't spin well.