Happy new year and a review of 2006

Happy new year everyone. I've been taking it easy and generally relaxing over the past few days. I was going to to say I had been chilling out but that phrase grates with me a bit now as someone at work uses it every five minutes and I can't bear to hear it anymore.
2007 came in with a bang in Scotland. Pretty much every outdoor event was cancelled because of 70-80 miles per hour winds and driving rain so my plan to stay at home was the right decision. I was a little worried at several points during the evening when the power flicked off and then on again as my heating is electric powered but thankfully it was okay. In quite a few areas nearby, they weren't so lucky and engineers are still trying to get the power back on.

Scotland pretty much still grinds to a halt at New Year. The only shops that are open tend to be garages. Many shops are still shut on the 2nd of January as it is also a Scottish bank holiday as well as the 1st of January. There was an outcry in 2005 when one of the department stores in Edinburgh suggested that they might open on the 1st. New year has always historically been a bigger thing around here than Christmas - my dad tells me he can remember working part of Christmas day when he started working in a wire factory in the early 1960's whereas they always had New years day off.

And so another year is over. This year promises some excitement - my sister's wedding and now my cousin has announced her wedding too. I'm not sure where my cousin's wedding will be - she lives in Leeds just now but her parents are near Southport and her fiance's father can't travel too far so the wedding might be near them in Kent. Its apparently going to be in June also so June is looking busy with the big GTG that I'm attending with a load of UK based stitchers.

At the start of 2006, I said that my main aim for 2006 was reduce my WIPs. I started 2006 with 29 WIPs plus 1 round robin. During 2006, I started 68 projects and finished 61. I also gave up on 2 projects which were never going to get done. I'm no maths genius but I don't think thats gone in the right direction as I ended up with 34 WIPs lol. I did get the count down to 27 in April but from July onwards, the only way was up. Part of the problem is that I didn't stitch as much in 2006 as I did in 2005, which is due to the knitting bug biting hard. I need to balance it out a bit better this year.

My aims for 2007 are
1. To take part in the Bloggers Christmas ornament SAL each month. In the past, I haven't been that good at keeping up with SALs but this year I hope will be different
2. To take part in the pair of Socks a month KAL on a knitting forum I visit. I need to be careful with this one as I've been having an occasional bit of wrist pain after knitting and I really don't want to make them worse and end up not being able to knit at all.
3. Start Noah's sub and make some progress on it (another SAL)
4. Get at least one Chatelaine WIP finished.
5. Reduce my stash - I have lots of lovely things in my stash waiting to be stitched and its a waste for them to sit there gathering dust. I'm not going completely on the wagon as each time I say that I'm going to do that, I end up buying even more.
6. Most all, I want to enjoy all the crafts that I do, especially cross stitch, which is still my favourite.

I will be interested to see how I get along with these.