A new year of challenges

A new year. The year of my book. I can’t believe I just wrote that. Writing is what I do when I feel inspired, or flustered and need a to-do list to just to make it through the day. After decades of religion writing and three of retirement, I wrote a manuscript that will be published this fall and, I hope, will be read by people of good will who are open to the idea that strangers have a lot to teach the rest  of us. More on that later.

Today, my resolution was smaller. I promised myself that this would be a year of knitting challenges. I have been knitting since grade-school, but always shied away from any stitch or method that seemed too difficult. I’d spent New Year’s Eve trying to master a special cast-on required to knit a mobius scarf -- a continuous, half-twisted loop. I vaguely remember the concept of a mobius circle from school and the photos on Ravelry looked cool. I watched and rewatched a YouTube video on the technique, but I couldn’t get the progression of stitches right. When I did, my circular needle was too short to knit the first row. I gave up amidst a self-scolding about how I never follow through on my New Year’s resolutions.

But I woke up this morning, googled my neighborhood yarn shop to find it open and recruited a neighbor to walk with me. I needed the outing -- too much sitting since Christmas. The air was fresh, parts of the sky were bright blue and others dark gray. Meg and I caught up on each others’ lives. When I got home, I sat down with my YouTube tutorial and tried it again with my new, longer needles. With my head cleared out after that walk, I figured out a rhythm to the stitches, remembered the right direction for the yarn over. Before I knew it, I had enough stitches to knit the scarf I had in mind. I think it’s going to work out well. A new knitting stitch to start the year.

​Which is a roundabout way to say that I aim to tackle my other New Year’s resolutions with similar determination. One of them is this blog. My effort to pave the way for a book that lived in my head for twenty years, on paper for two and now rests with a publisher. I resolve to do everything I can to get those ideas into as many readers' hands as I can. I believe in this book.

---