yarn along:: january 2024, a fresh start

It seems just a moment ago I was writing a similarly titled post.  The turning of every year is a fresh start, but a new year in a new home and surrounded by new people...well, that's in its own category.  I am using every bit of myself to carve out a peaceful, beautiful environment, despite our calendar telling us go, go, go.  G, Little M, Z, and I are savoring the last few lazy, empty days before we open our books again.  Or at least books that mean lessons; pleasure reading has known no bounds these past few weeks.

The littles and I visited a new-to-us used bookstore and came home with quite a haul!  Some books were given as gifts or sent far away.  I kept very few, but The Wonder Clock is one of them.  We've been reading a chapter aloud here and there.  G seems too old for read-alouds, but he asked me to "pause" my reading tonight so he could go get something and then told me to "play" once he returned to the room.  I like it almost more than the Andrew Lang volumes, or Grimm's.  Pyle's tales definitely have more humor!

I am working through Minimalista like a boot-camp workshop for purging and redecorating our house.  A part of my household notebook (the one I started when I was reading this book last winter) has been relegated to an exhaustive, room-by-room checklist.  This time of year brings with it an urge to reset, and I am leaning in.  You'd think that our summer move would have scratched that itch, but, no.  Now is phase two of the move: I fit our possessions into a new space, like puzzle pieces.

At night I read a little of Death Comes for the Archbishop, another gorgeous used book from our new spot.  I've not read much Cather.  I don't know why, as I am enjoying this one immensely.  

Knitting?  There's just a little of that happening.  Little M's sweater spent a week in button band purgatory, and I tried several iterations before going with version that worked best.  More details on that when I post the FO.

My Paul Klee has a yoke, of which I am very proud.  It took quite a bit of playing, I can assure you.  And several pages of my knitting notebook are evidence of color pairing fails.  But! it all came together organically, and I swapped and switched colors as the yoke grew.  I blocked the whole thing before I started knitting the raglan increases, and it is so, so soft.  I have enough left of all of the colors to knit a fair isle vest or sweater.  Stay tuned!