Beginning

Happy New Year! As often happens this time of year, I've been gorging on Internet tidbits and factoids, such as the trend in English toward more use of progressive (-ing) tenses. Formal grammar is one of several school subjects but dimly recalled; happily, English Grammar for Dummies is available online to help burnish away the rust. In a similar vein, I've optimistically joined yet another knit-along, 14 in 2014. Last year was not so productive (there were reasons, of course) and I'm hoping the new year will be better, not least on the fiber front.

The goal of the knit-along is to end the year with 14 FOs. At first I thought about socks, then UFOs, then sock UFOs, then I thought perhaps a wider scope could be helpful. Although there's no lack of sock UFOs. Considering only the Singleton Socks of Shame, in 2013 no socks came down from the clothesline of shame, three went up for a total of 10 Socks of Shame for 2013 – not the most ever, but backwards progress.

Singleton Socks of Shame 2013, left to right: Meadowlands, Scar, Fawkes, Julesokker, Love Me Knot, Clouds, Chain Link, Bricks and Tiles, Sockdolager, Hanauma Bay.

The newest Socks of Shame, both Adrienne Fong designs, are particularly distressing as the designer has been suffering serious health issues since Thanksgiving. There are plans afoot (yes!) to send her get well cards and wee socks.

Thinking about Adrienne got me thinking about knitting. Learning a couple years ago that she rarely knits pairs of socks and rarely stresses about it made me considerably less anxious about my own great cloud of UFOs. I'd still like to finish them eventually, but thanks to her it feels less like the deadweight of expectation and more like a matter of volition on my part. It's a great gift to transform attitudes, and I'll always be grateful to her for that. I have the KAL to help me translate new attitudes into new actions.

So here's to a sparkling 2014 for everyone – happy, healthy, and full of fibery goodness and positive attitudes and actions!