A Year of Treading Water

At the close of the year, it's indicative what sort of year it's been that my sole blogpost for December is the year-end retrospective. Sigh.

One of the lingering puzzles from 2018 is the number of strident objections, all from non-knitters, to the annual display of the Singleton Socks of Shame. There's the Tone Police and the Nonbinary Sock Police, and yet I'm the judge-y one, if you please. Huh. Well, never let it be said that I can't learn new things. So, behold, my Singular Sensation Socks, now with fairy lights!

Singular Sensation Socks 2019, left to right, oldest to newest: Meadowlands, Fawkes, Julesokker, Love Me Knot, Chain Link, Hanauma Bay, handspun Queen of Diamonds, Twisted Madness, Dropping Madness, Fée Dragée with a counting thread. Not pictured, Inky Madness.

That's zero socks down from the fairy line, one up, for a total of 11 Singular Sensation Socks. That's one less than the most ever, and more importantly negative progress. The strenuous effort of running as fast as one can merely to stay in one place could be a metaphor of my year. It would seem the experience of Waterlicht may have been more apt than I realized at the time.



The crafty year started so promisingly: with a Food in Jars can-along and Sock Madness. The can-along limped along, although I canned a bit more than is recorded on the blog. Last year I discovered that having a goodly supply of tomato jam is a necessity during the long dearth of winter, so a goodly supply was canned. That's no small consolation now that winter is upon us. As for Sock Madness, I advanced to Round 2 – about as far as usual, for the usual reason (too much busyness). But I have a pair of the qualifier (Smock Madness), Round 1 (Demogorgon's Lair), and Round 2 (Echoes) socks, and a singleton Round 3 (Inky Madness). It's no coincidence that I became truly, nuttily busy about the same time I neglected to take a picture of the singleton – so much so, I forgot about it until I started this year-end retrospective. I even forgot to include it in the Singular Sensation class photo. Yipes.




The rest of the year galloped by in an unseemly way. There was a failed attempt to participate in Camp Loopy, which at least added to my stash. I trialed a new tomato variety, Rutgers 250, side-by-side with the exemplar of Jersey tomatoes, Rutgers. As promised, in a Jersey garden Rutgers 250 matures a bit more slowly than Rutgers, resists more diseases, and the developing fruits are paler green and flatter than Rutgers, which tend to be pointy, perhaps their only weakness. When it comes to taste, though, I prefer the classic rich, sweet-acid flavor of the older variety.



Ah, summer.

In the coming year I anticipate a need to tie up some loose ends from this year, then maybe at last I can ease into a less hectic pace. Maybe there will still be travel, but voluntary and for pleasure rather than reactive and out of necessity. Blogging suffered this year, and I hope to post more regularly, or not – in any case without the freight of frustrated expectation. Less stress would be good. I don't really have goals in the usual sense, a list of boxes to check off. Instead I'm talking about being free, with the clarity of vision and purpose that 20/20 might imply. May it be so, gentle readers, and may your New Year be happy, healthy, and prosperous!