Happy New Year!!!!

Hanging around Pagan Place, you found out about all sorts of calendars. It seemed like the group couldn't even agre on what DAY it was, never mind anything of import. Come to think of it, that was the way the whole family disfunctioned. We got there eventually.

There were a few die hards who led their lives according to the Gregorian calendar, falling further and further behind. At least one fella followed the Aztec calendar--I wonder how he's coping now that the end of days has passed? I always liked the celtic tradition, where the year ends at the first full moon in Scorpio. Samhain.

So the new year is coming, and it's time to clear away and finish that which is hanging on from the old year. Time to lie fallow through the winter, wrapping up and getting ready for the spring and the bursting of life to follow.

So I'm trying to get some new habits going in preparation for a blossoming sroing and a fruitful summer to follow. For some time I've limited the number of projects going so as to avoid overload, and now I've started listing them on a database (with a note as to the size of the thing, having stuck myself with five huge AND complex projects at the same time this summer!!! A FO, a FO, my kingdom for a FO!)

And of course the muse has come out of summer's too hot estivation and is babbling in my ear about all the fun ideas she has . . . during a time whan all I want is to wind down. The holidays are manic enough without trying to begin a bazillion lace projects (and that's all that would satisfy her, too. I have a sportweight lacy blanket for Linus that I started around Christmas last year, a laceweight lace shawl for me me me {another lesson learned--I have to have something going for me, even if I don't work on it obsessively}and a moose lace blanket for Linus using multiple strands held as one.) Dicomultivocuus wants me to start working on the Arizona shawl I have promised Terpsichore (a laceweight soysilk confection) and to start working on a Russian lace shawl (also laceweight, preferably cashmere, oh, and while you're at it, it would be nice to whip up some knitted ATC's using the froghair cotton in stash.

Yes. Yes it would. No, it isn't going to happen.

Not yet, at any rate. Not until I get some of this off my plate.

Because I had promised myself a spanking new story for the winterfest this year, and I had meant to be a better blogger. I'm no Joe Ito, by any means, blogging what I had for lunch as I'm eating it (can you imagine dating someone like that? Wondering if he's really typing a message back to the office, or bragging about your imaginative skills with peanut butter? Ewwwww.) The paradox of creating is that the more you create, the more you create. The more you learn that everyone has 100 bad paintings inside them, and the sooner you crank the bad ones out, you can start getting to the good stuff. If you quit in the middle, well, there you'll be, in the middle of crappy work (or at least, work that dissatisfies you), whatever you had learned draining away so that slowly you trickle right back to your first bad work. ("Nice cat, honey. That really looks like Poofy." "It's a GIRAFFE, Daddy!")

So in order to keep the words moving and the ideas flowing, I started musing out loud. (At least this way I don't get stopped for walking down the street, mumbling and gesticulating to the voices in my head.) And then life crept up and got in the way of updating three times a week (and then once a week, and then once every two weeks . . .)

So I stole an idea from the gamer I used to be, and figured that if I rolled a six-sided die (a d6, in other words) and added 1 to the result, I'd be posting at least once a week, without feeling like I ought to wait for someting momentous to happen. (As Danny Gregory says, everydaymatters. Place the spaces where you will.)

So, new habit for the new year. Roll dem bones and keep on rolling. See you next Tuesday.