A lot of what I posted during this time was just filler in a way, but I did post some good stuff. As a matter of fact, for the second year in a row, one of my posts (She Still Believes) received the coveted “Best of Holidailies” award label. I enjoy participating in Holidailies and unless some major catastrophe prevents it I am sure I will participate again next year.

Beyond Holidailies, I have finally decided it is time to mention something that some of you may have already noticed… And that is that I am two weeks away from celebrating my 5 year blogoversary. I know a lot of my other blogging buddies have recently celebrated a 5 year blogoverary too so I guess I am not that special, but I just want to congratulate those of us who have hung around the blogosphere this long.

It’s crazy. When I started this humble little blog in 2004 I never would have guessed that I would still be scribbling away five years later.

I am not planning on having some big giveaway or anything like that to celebrate, but for the remainder of this month I hope to highlight, and perhaps comment on, some of the things I have written about over the past five years.

It should be interesting.

Don’t get me wrong: I was very excited about knitting at first and even made two or three dishcloths, but then I stopped because knitting frustrated me.

I was (obviously) a novice and I knew that as a novice I would never get better unless I worked at it, but for some reason I couldn’t summon the patience that is needed to actually practice. I couldn’t help it: Whenever I sat down to knit the only thing I could think of was how much good cross stitching time I was wasting.

During my short stint with the knitting needles I actually got pretty good at knitting and purling, but honestly I got bored; it just felt so repetitive. I was OK with knitting a dishcloth because it was small, but when I thought I was ready to move on to a scarf I got impatient and ended up finishing it as a dishcloth too. It was my dream to one day knit an afghan, but when I realized I couldn’t even finish a scarf, that idea was put on indefinite hold.

Fast forward to this past June.

I was going through a little stitching slump, so I decided to try knitting again. I had some skeins of yarn and some needles that I bought on clearance a couple of years ago, so even though I knew I wouldn’t be making anything spectacular, I figured I could at least try again to knit a scarf. For about four days I knitted. Everything was looking nice and I thought I had a good length of scarf started. I was proud of myself. But then I got busy and all my knitting things got put away. I practically forgot about the scarf.

However, last night I began thinking about it again and tonight I dug it out from the bottom of the closet. Unfortunately, upon examining the “scarf” I realized that I wasn’t nearly as far along as I thought I was and my knitting wasn’t nearly as neat as I had remembered. I was so disappointed by the whole mess that instead of putting more stitches into it or finishing it into a dishcloth, I just ripped it apart, wound the yarn into a ball, and gave it to the cats.

After all, you can’t call it an UnFinished Object if there is no object to start with, now can you?

I was wondering what to work on when I received a call from Dawn asking me if I wanted to SAL today on “Summer’s Magic.” Sounded good to me!

Here is “Summer’s Magic” after an approximate five hour stitching session. I made some great progress today! All the sand is now finished. Next time I work on it I will backstitch what I did today and then move on to the big dragon. I predict that I can probably finish it in two (or maybe three) more sessions like I had today. I wouldn’t be surprised if Dawn finished today though because when I saw her “Summer’s Magic” at Thanksgiving she was about two stitching sessions ahead of me.

Unfortunately I have to go back to work tomorrow but all the stitching, sleeping, and reading that I did over the last week and a half was good for the soul. I feel refreshed and ready to start thinking about the spring semester.