Thanks for your responses to the last post, everyone. Seanna Lea offered a useful nudge to remember to give the good parts their full measure rather than letting the bad color the general memory, and that’s advice I’d do well to take to heart right now. So here’s a good thing from 2009: my friendship with Katrin and our cozy almost-weekly knitting sessions. This (last, I guess) year they culminated in a New Year’s Day exchange of Ivy League Vests:

Hello! We are the same, but different!

Don’t you just love how a few color shifts can totally change the effect of a Fair Isle-type pattern? Two of our lights and two of our darks are quite similar, but the two other colors — chartreuse vs. mauve, chocolate vs. burgundy — and the brightness of Katrin’s white and blues give the two vests very different feels.

I’ve already worn mine about four times. Long live the Annual Christmas Knitting Exchange!

I’ve enjoyed reading the annual crop of New Year blog posts — some triumphant reviews of projects accomplished and milestones passed, others contemplative reflections or statements of resolution for the new year and the new decade. And yet I’ve been reluctant to poise my fingers above the keyboard and begin my own. The last weeks have been all hunkering down and wintering in, reconnecting with loved ones, warming ourselves around the little fire of our hopes for 2010.

At my house, we gladly bade 2009 good riddance. While it didn’t contain major tragedy for our little family, it was a year riddled with disappointments, frustrations, and road blocks. It brought us good things, notably the birth of our nephew, but many parts we just had to grind through and endure. We had to revise our expectations, defer some dreams, jury-rig and improvise here and there. Toil didn’t always pay off. Lights appeared on the horizon, then winked out. Spirits were sometimes low, and communication was sometimes poor.

Prising ourselves out of the teeth of such a year to blink in the light of a new one, resolutions seem laughable. We see promise and peril, currents that could sweep us to joy or to grief, tests of courage and faith. We don’t expect a smooth voyage, but if fair weather comes it will be very fair indeed. If it doesn’t, we’ll make everything fast and sail on. Maybe just a few points on which to be resolute, then: To trust my partner and to offer him kindness and support, every day. To take pleasure in the work of my hands and brain. To stay open. Kick me if you catch me breaking any of those, but leave me to the pursuit of wool and cream and chocolate and the avoidance of strenuous exercise, should I choose them.

Onward.