I haven’t finished any of my scarves since I posted last week, but the striped one in this photo is close. I gave two scarves as Christmas presents (to recipients who really liked them, I think), and I also played around with knitting some dishcloths, since I love the idea of giving fancy soap side by side with handmade dishcloths. The two I finished are okay – definitely serviceable – but not extremely attractive. I still have some kinks to work out in the way the pattern works, I think. But how great will it to be to have a little stockpile stashed away for when I need gifts for housewarmings and other such occasions?
I’m going to post a few thoughts later on about some reading goals for 2014, but the short version of the story is that I’m not going to set any reading goals – per se – this year. More important to me are some writing goals and some personal goals, and reading is just going to have to fit itself in when and where it can. But… one of my personal goals is to make some new local friends, not to replace the ones I have (the ones I have do NOT need replacing!) but to branch out a little since I do think I want to stay in the west long term. In the past, book clubs have been a great way for me to meet people, and I joined a few shortly after I arrived here last year but have never gone to any of the meetings. I’m hoping that will change, and one of my groups is reading Wuthering Heights this month, so I’ve giving that book a quick reread. I read it for the first time in 2008 and was surprised at how much I liked it.
(Just to clarify: there are lots of books that I want to read in 2014, and I will tell you all about these in an upcoming post. But a list of books that I want to read is not the same as a list of goals.)
Yarn Along is – as always – hosted by Ginny at her blog, Small Things. She may or may not be posting today because of the holiday.
Happy New Year and Happy Reading, everyone!
Postcards From Purgatory 
I was going to say that I can’t believe you made it to 2008 without reading Wuthering Heights, but then I thought about it for a few minutes and remembered that I was the one with the childhood obsession with them, not you. I think I read Wuthering Heights for the first time in like 1988 or 1989, and again for college in 1997. Not since, though. Has always been one of my favorite Bronte books.
I didn’t read any 19th century books voluntarily until college. I couldn’t imagine how I could possibly enjoy them, and marriage-related plots didn’t interest me at all. I’m finding that this time through it’s as good as I remember but also startlingly easy. Sometimes I think the Bronte sisters were time travelers – born and raised sometime in the 20th century,exposed to Freud and Hemingway and postmodernism, and then somehow whisked back in time to the turn of the 19th century to be weird and write books. It explains why so little is known about their childhood, no?