This was a pretty big year for me.  Despite lots of non-knitting things going on to keep me occupied, I managed to finish nine projects this year:

The first, my Soumak shawl, is probaby my favorite.  I then knit five sweaters – all of them for me!  You can find blog posts about them here (and here, here, here, and here).  On the bottom row are three Christmas gifts – the golden mitts I knit for Leah, and two more which I haven’t yet posted about (but will do next week, so you’ll have to pop back to find out the details).

The big news for me this year was on the career front.  I went back to academics this year, accepting a job as a lecturer at the business school where I did my MBA.  Some of you may know that I worked as a lecturer 25 years ago after completing my PhD.  Now, two and a half decades wiser, with loads of work experience and an exec MBA to boot, I am a Lecturer again.  Apparently many people earn an MBA in order to advance their career!   Who knew?  (It’s too early to say definitively, but so far, I am loving it.)

This career move was a really big change, not only for obvious reasons, but also because for the past eight years my husband and I have worked together to run a research neuroscience centre – Doug as Director and me as Manager.  Doug and I always knew we worked together really well, but we had not realised the extent to which we functioned so seamlessly as a unit until I left to pursue another role.  I will miss that (and will also miss being able to knit on the way to work while Doug did the driving).

This was also the year in which I survived my older daughter, Emma, taking a backpacking trip around Eastern Europe by herself.  Fouteen cities in nine countries in five weeks and three near-coronaries for her mom!  It is also the year in which my younger daughter, Leah, turned 21 – how can that have happened?  My children are adults!

And finally, this is the year in which many fabulous readers of this blog kept on reading despite my posting less and knitting less.  Thank you to everyone who commented on the blog or sent me messages on Ravelry, and also to those who quietly follow along.  Happy New Year to everyone!  I wish you all health and happiness and lots of knitting!

The good news is that I am knitting again!  I had a two-month hiatus from knitting brought on by pain and swelling in my wrist and thumb – a flare-up of DeQuervaine’s tenosynovitis after many years.  I finally decided to start knitting again even though these issues aren’t entirely resolved.  I am being extra careful – not knitting for more than 30-40 minutes a day, skipping days, using ice, paying attention to how I hold my needles, etc.  (Reader, please beware of deceptive photos – it is unseasonably warm in the UK at the moment; this photo of me knitting in the snow is several years old.  However, it looks rather seasonal and jolly, so I’m going with it.)

The bad news is that I can’t tell you about anything I am knitting.  I had some rather glorious (and far-fetched) plans to knit some lovely Christmas gifts this year.  I had in fact started one when the wrist intervened.  I am now hopefully on track to finish it in time; we shall see.  It is a completely beautiful project and one that I have wanted to knit for many years.   Unfortunately, it must remain a secret (as it is a gift intended for someone who most definitely reads these posts), which gives me very little to report to you here.  This is a fairly common dilemma for knit bloggers – December is frequently a high-intensity-knitting month, but it also entails some degree of cloak-and-dagger.

Despite the fact that I have needles in hand once again, I can see that I will need to make some adjustments over the next few months.  I am primarily a sweater knitter; I tend to make big projects that take a long time.  (This is due not only to the types of projects I choose, but also to being a fairly slow knitter.)   I don’t make many smaller projects, not because I don’t like them but rather because I am so enamoured of sweaters that they tend to take over my queue.  I have decided, however, that until my hands get better, I will switch to smaller projects.  Otherwise I will never finish anything.  So prepare to see mitts, hats, and cowls.  (But probably not socks!  I think it will take more than a little hand pain to get me knitting socks!)