[Intro music, upbeat song without words, music credit, Ketsa “Day Trips”]
Holly 00:32
Hi! How are you? Happy New Year's Eve! Gosh, it's kind of exciting that we made it to New Year's Eve 2020. I am so grateful to be spending a little bit of time with you.
Holly 00:49
I'm about to have a not-so exciting evening. Actually I shouldn't say that. I'm going to hang out with my kids. My oldest kid has discovered sushi, so we've ordered sushi. We're going to hang out and eat some sushi and watch Home Alone 3. We've watched the first two movies over the past week while my kids are off from school and so now we're going to watch the final movie in this series and, you know, I don't think my kids know enough yet to know that this is going to be a terrible movie but they'll get to discover it tonight (laughter).
Holly 01:30
I hope you're well. I hope that you are also about to celebrate in a really safe and quiet and serene way but if you're bracing yourself, like I did, for so many new year’s eves then I hope you just see your way through it. There's always a fresh start tomorrow and that's something to really be thankful for, so just take it 15 minutes at a time.
Holly 02:08
I managed to go to an Al-Anon meeting today and it was really helpful. I didn't share; I just listened but there was such a good message in the reading (which I think was from Hope for Today) but it was about how there's no right way through the program and you know the steps work in a certain way but each of us finds our own way to work the program and there's no right way. The program I'm talking about is Al-Anon but really it's any 12-step recovery program or any kind of tools for recovery or whatever that means for you. For me that means recovering from codependency and Al-Anonic behavior, controlling behavior. It's really hard when you love somebody who struggles with addiction and you'll do almost anything to lessen the blows of the disease, which only makes things worse. I certainly did that for a really long time, and it means I stopped paying attention to myself and to my kids and to our health and so this past year we've really been working towards recovery. That's what that means for me but it might mean something else for you, so as always my reminder is that, you know, I'm not speaking in any kind of official capacity. I'm only sharing my own personal experience of strength and hope and recovery. I hope that you find something useful here and if not: take what you like and always leave the rest behind.
Holly 03:39
Last week I was talking about how I was doing all kinds of searching on ravelry for Christmas socks and Christmas sweaters and not surprisingly (laughter) those projects are not, what’s the word (laughter) shelf-stable? They are ephemeral pleasure. I am... I would say I'm done the challenging parts I started of course... I cast on... I'm going with it… this is my new 2020 lesson: find what makes me happy and do it and when it stops, stop. So for now and for a while there it was making me happy to cast on a Christmas sweater.
Holly 04:22
I cast on the Betty and Judy Lodge sweater, which has this really great intarsia holly leaf design just like at the start of White Christmas. White Christmas is a really weird movie but the beginning of it’s really pretty. The intarsia is based on the title sequence, with the words framed by Holly Leaf branches, kind of bracketing the title. And that is what this sweater is from so I am kind of just connecting it from its movie origins, and just kind of celebrating the 50s retrovibe of the sweater. So I was cast on the sweater, and I even knitted it while watching the movie (which is why it's fresh in my mind) but I got a good bit through it. And so I'm past the tricky parts of the intarsia and I would say I kind of just now need to do the boring stockinette part of the sweater so I'm going to continue and I told myself I would continue knitting on it tonight but January 1st I'm going to put it aside and I'll save it for next year. I can pick it up after Thanksgiving when the mood strikes me again for a Christmas sweater.
Holly 05:33
And of course now I'm turning towards Valentine's Day and bright pink is on my mind. I pulled out this really great skein of yarn-- worsted weight I think by the Plucky Knitter that I got through that destashing of a neighbor who just gifted me all this yarn. I gave some of it away and I kept them and one of the things I kept was this bright neon pink single skein of yarn and I knew that I would figure out what it should be. And it has hit me now that if it’s January, all I want to do is knit like acid bright colors.
Holly 06:10
I think I'm going to make Elizabeth Zimmerman's mittens out of it. I remember seeing years ago on Purl Soho’s website that they made a pair of her mittens. I can't even remember the pattern name right now by they made them in a really bright yellow yarn and in my mind I've always wanted to make those mittens in bright, bright yellow but right now I'm thinking that bright pink is going to be perfect and so I think that's what I'm going to cast on tomorrow.
Holly 06:38
I'm looking forward to that and I will put away the Christmas sweater until next year. We'll see. I mean, you never know there might be time when you want miles of stockinette and so I can continue on it with that but for now I'm not going to pressure myself to finish it and I'm going to really let myself just knit for joy.
Holly 07:01
That's the other thing that I wanted to say. I know right now there's a lot of lists out there not just in terms of making but you know, how many books people read or how many items people sewed or their top nine most liked posts or what their top nine goals are for the new year and honestly it all kind of makes me feel (pause) less than. I'm trying to ignore it all. I'm really resisting any attempt to quantify anything productive from this year because I feel like one of the things that I'm really proud of is that I made time for recovery. I made time for knitting as a part of that and I just spent a lot of time hanging out with my kids and trying to stay well and that took almost everything I had this year, especially as my marriage ended and the pandemic took over and I was trying to provide for my family and keep us all safe in every single sense of that word.
Holly 08:15
I did it. We're here. We're safe. We made it. And I'm not really sure how I got here (laughter) and I don't really want to look too, too closely or I certainly don't want to look too, too closely in a sense of accounting. I do want to be grateful and practice gratitude and have that sense of abundance that comes with recovery so that I'm able to continue to participate and feel like I'm a part of all the communities that I want to be a part of, both in my neighborhood and in terms of knitting and making and then also in terms of recovery and certainly in terms of my family both my kids and then also my ex-husband or soon-to-be ex-husband who struggles with addiction who I love very much and hope he finds his way to safe shores.
Holly 09:10
So if you're out there and you're struggling, I want to congratulate you on getting through what I think almost everyone agrees with an incredibly horrifically challenging year and however you made it. It doesn't matter. You made it. And tomorrow's a new day and we get the chance to practice new skills and learn some new things and find new ways to make ourselves happy and I think that's enough.
Holly 09:40
So to end: I just want to say thank you again. It is so humbling and awesome to have this community to be part of and so I hope that wherever you are, you're safe and you're well and that you have beautiful materials to work with and that you're going to knit your way into the new year, whether that's on last year's WIPS or on next year's hopeful projects... the brighter the better!
Holly 10:06
Take care! Bye!
[music outro, same upbeat sound as the intro but with a trail off of bells.]