When I was a kid I was totally focused on Christmas. Even as a young mother I loved decorating and buying or making gifts for my children. But slowly I have grown older. I feel my attention shifting to New Year’s. I am now middle age. I no longer wonder what I will be when I am an adult or wonder what my life will look like. While I am continually striving to grow, learn and teach my children along the way sometimes a reset is in order. New Year’s is such a great symbolic reset.

I don’t remember a year that I have looked forward to a reset more. 2017 was tough–life alerting, shattering tough. I have high hopes for 2018 but honestly the bar is pretty low to be better then 2017. For this coming year we plan on the typical health and wellness. We also want to capture more time with our children.

This New Year’s weekend was bitter cold in our neck of the woods. The HIGHS were somewhere in the -10 range. So we stayed home. We watched movies, cuddled, cooked and ate good food, talked about our hopes and plans for 2018 and got the reset I was hoping for.

I even had a chance to knit a bit. With such a dizzy, disruptive year behind me I didn’t have much energy for my typical hand made Christmas. When I did have time or energy much of it went to a new book I am working on. But as plans formed for the perfect New Year’s I decided a quick knitting project would be the perfect addition.

It is the Lyalya hoodie. The pattern is more expensive then I would normally buy but this is the 3rd hat I have made with the pattern and my oldest daughter even made one for herself, so it is a great pattern that I have used often. I knit it up over New Year’s Eve and New Year’s Day using some yarn from our own Lincoln Longwool sheep. You can purchase the yarn here. I am so pleased with how it turned out and even more pleased that I took the time to create something special for the best part of 2017–Unnah, our new addition for the year. She will be a year soon, already goodness in the new year. Here’s to a blessed 2018.