Yes, I know it’s not New Year’s yet, but as it’s getting close, I’m doing my New Year’s retrospective a day early.
Looking back on last year’s New Year’s post, a lot of my New Year’s goals got sidetracked by the wedding:
Here are the accomplishments I want for myself in 2009:
- Deepen my relationship with Mike. (We got engaged!)
- Practice compassion: either ride AIDS Lifecycle 8 in June, or else get into some kind of volunteer work, exact form TBD. (OK, didn’t get around to this one.)
- Lose 20 pounds. (Or this one, either.)
- Learn more about weave structures. I can’t say what exactly because I don’t know what I will want to explore, but tied weaves and four-color doubleweave top the list right now. I want to put in some serious study of weave structure, more than I did last year. (Very little on this front, though I did learn a lot about setts and weaving technique instead. And I figured out how to handle profile drafts last week, which is a pretty big thing.)
- Get Weavolution up and running, preferably no later than June. (YES!!! We launched in June.)
- Learn more about fashion design. I would like to be able to go from a photo to a passable imitation of the outfit. (Well, I’ve learned something about fashion design, but not that much.)
But life changes, and sometimes in good ways: I got engaged! And that changed the focus of my year completely, as I started work on the wedding dress. And a lot did get done:
- Got engaged!!!
- Launched Weavolution!!
- Dyed and wove 16 yards of fabric for the cashmere coat
- Learned a lot about fitting while adjusting muslins for the cashmere coat and for the wedding-dress
- Experimented with knitted blanks for interesting effects while weaving
- Moved from San Francisco to Sunnyvale
- Got most of the way through sewing a couture coat (the mohair coat)
- Designed and wove 26 yards of very fine dress fabric – 10 yards at 96 epi, 16 yards at 72 epi
- Designed the double happiness ribbon and the eternity knot pattern for the coat
- Spent five days studying weaving ergonomics and collapse weave with Laura Fry
- Learned to make bobbin lace
- Completely redesigned my website
- Wrote my first two weaving publications, an article on plain weave for WeaveZine and an article on the wedding-dress drafts for Complex Weavers Journal
- Played with woven iridescence
- Made 70 lbs of chocolates, in 38 different kinds
- Made fruitcake with home-candied sour cherries, sweet cherries, and home-candied Seville orange, bergamot, citron, and Meyer lemon peels
Whew! That makes me tired just thinking about it. I been BUSY!
Now, my goals for the next year:
- Get married!!
- Finish weaving and sewing my wedding dress, using couture techniques
- Exhibit the wedding dress at CNCH and Complex Weavers
- More studies of weave structures
- Play with color
- Write a few more weaving articles
- Finish the cashmere coat, hopefully with more assistance from Sharon Bell
- Lose that 20 lbs I wanted to lose last year
I think that covers it. The wedding itself is a lofty and ambitious goal (in more ways than one!) so I’m limiting my other goals for this year.
Not a small list of goals, but very happy ones.