So, happy birthday, blog, and here’s to many more years… but first let’s see if I can re-establish the blogging habit during 2012!

“I pledge to help end mental health prejudice.  I will talk about my own experiences with bipolar disorder and anxiety to help break down stigma.”

The project is not only for people with a mental health condition – it’s for friends, family, professionals, and anyone interested in the issues, really.  So check it out!

webuyanycat.com has valued my cat at £14.33.

I think I’ll keep him a while and see if he appreciates – I spent more than 200 times that on him last year, and I need to make some of that back somewhere. ;-)

That’s the two of us together when I was small.  He died a few years ago now, and for another few years before that wasn’t really ‘himself’ due to Alzheimer’s, but other than that he was busy and active his whole life.  He was a fireman in London during the Blitz.

He then stayed on in the fire service for the rest of his working life.  He’s on the far right in the above cartoon – I think the date on it is 1949, but it could be ’48 or even ’40.  I won’t go into some of the stories he had to tell now, but there were some dramatic ones!  He travelled a lot, too, I think mostly after he’d retired.

So that’s it, really – happy birthday to you, Poppa, and Happy Centenary!

I’m going to the gym with the bro and also sometimes with my upstairs neighbour.  It’s definitely a good plan to have gym buddies.  We’re planning to go to pilates, too.  Should be fun!

In knitting news, I’ve finished my first project for 2011: the Snapdragon Tam for my sister-in-law:

Pattern: Snapdragon Tam by Ysolda Teague [Ravlink]
Yarn: Elle Family Favourites DK in Gold.
Needles: 4mm metal circulars.

I am pleased with it, and it was fun to knit, too :-)

As Long As It’s Black
Pattern: That Chocolate’s Gone Straight To Your Ribs Hat by Leonie Connellan [Ravlink]
Yarn: Stylecraft Special DK in Black, and James C Brett Autumn Bliss in Dark Blue
Needles: 4mm metal – 40cm circulars and DPNs
A slightly belated Christmas present for the brother.  A nice straightforward ribbed hat that he wears even though it’s got a stripe of blue in it! ;-)

Mum’s Christmas (’09) Mitts
Pattern: Basic Mitten Pattern by Ann Budd [Ravlink]
Yarn: Stylecraft Special DK in Claret
Needles: 3.75mm metal circulars
Another belated Christmas present, this time for Mum – she asked me for some mittens in the same pattern that I’d made for her charity shoebox, but I didn’t have time to get them done in time for Christmas itself.  I did get them done in time for the snow, though!

Rocky Butte Socks
Pattern: Rocky Butte Socks by Elli Metz [Ravlink]
Yarn: The Yarn Yard Hug in Scrum
Needles: 3mm Addi bamboo circulars
I’d been wanting to make some thicker, squishier socks for a while – this pattern was a lovely quick knit and I like how it worked with the yarn.

Clapotis à la Toscana
Pattern: Clapotis by Kate Gilbert, from Knitty: Fall 04 [Ravlink]
Yarn: Posh Yarn Eva 4ply in Tuscany
Needles: 4.5mm Boye interchangeable circulars
I started this back in October ’07.  I only knit as far as the first “straight” repeat before putting it down again.  I finally picked it up this year and knit through it really quite quickly to the finish.

Fireworks Socks
Pattern: Slight modification on Timberline Toes by Lucy Neatby [Ravlink]
Yarn: The Yarn Yard Bonny in Oct 07 Club: Fireworks (& contrast red)
Needles: 2.5mm Brittany birch DPNs.
This is another project I started back in Oct ’07.  I worked slowly on them a few rows at a time, as they were my “waiting rooms” project.  When I hit the foot of the second sock this year, I sat down and knit through them to finish them off.

That’ll do for now – I’ll show of the rest of the finished projects for the year soon.

So, last year I did the 144-books-in-a-year challenge instead.  And… I failed!!  I only read around 110 books.  Some of them were pretty doorstep-y, but still.  I spose that’s what happens when you only have one pair of hands – I can’t read and knit or spin at the same time, unless I’m listening to an audiobook.  Which I don’t do very often.

This year, the challenge group (this is also on Goodreads, by the way) has changed its parameters so that you can set your own goals to some extent.  I thought I’d be realistic and go for 100 books this time around.  That averages out to 8 ¹/₃ books per month, and I’ve already read nine so far this year.  So that’s a good start.  If I find I’m reading more every month, there are points during the year where you can move your challenge goalposts, so I can increase to 150 if I want.  But I’m not going to particularly try for that, I’ll just see how I do.

The scarf for Mum was the Branching Out pattern [Ravlink], and I knitted it in a lovely Merino / Tencel blend that I spun on the wheel – the first time I’ve knit with my own handspun.  I just left it as a single, and it worked really well (imo, anyway!) and I like the way the colour repeats came out.  Mum says she really likes it too, which is the main thing!

I also joined two Christmas swaps, one through the Limegreenjelly group, and one through Plurk.  The post was / is still being less kind where those are concerned.  It seems to have eaten the parcel from the latter altogether, but I have now had my LGJ parcel from Cal, and a fabulous one it is too:

Two braids of LGJ fibre (one Merino/Silk, one Merino, yum!), a beautiful skein of Posh Yarn Elinor, an Orange Blossom perfume stick which I think is from Lush, mini Green & Black’s choccy bars (om nom nom!), a set of Knit Pro interchangeable needle tips and a cable for them (which spookily I’ve been wanting for ages), and an adorable Lego keyring. :-D  I just hope she likes her gifts from me as much as I do mine.

It doesn’t feel like ten years, but then there have been some years where I’ve barely blogged at all, or at least times when I’ve been mostly using Livejournal or similar platforms instead.  As I think I’ve said in previous anniversary posts, this blog has gone through a few changes in terms of its back-end platform – Blogger, Movable Type, and now WordPress – over the last decade.  I feel pretty settled now, though.  And at least I’m managing to post more, if not regularly.

Perhaps with this new blogging year, I should make that a mini-resolution: to pick a day and blog regularly once a week.  After all, if I can blog every day for a month, I can do once a week at the least.  In fact, since it’s Friday today, why not have Friday as my must-post day.  If I can’t think of anything else to say, at least I could do a weekly round up.  Preferably it’ll kick start me (again) into posting more frequently than that.  Right then, I’m going to go off and stop talking about posting, and actually make a start on posting something with Real Content.  Good night.