I Did It! 2023 Edition

It's time again for the annual pat-myself-on-the-back post. Past years can be viewed here: 2022, 2021 (Apocalypse Year 2) 2020 (Apocalypse Year 1), 2019 (including decade-in-review), 2018, 2017, 2016, 2015, 2014, 2013. Let's jump right into 2022's I Did Its! Shall we?

Andy Goldsworthy landscape installation at Alnoba in New Hampshire, here for no reason
other than it's a place I visited this year and never got around to writing about it. Also it's cool!

Writing I Did Its!

• Drafted a novel in my own version of National Novel Writing Month (NANOWRIMO), which I called JANOWRIMO. (And I love it!)
• Finished revising and illustrating and writing a book proposal for my second nonfiction book, and submitted it to my publisher for consideration.
• Did some work on my idea for a third nonfiction book.
• Attended five book promotion events for Uphill Both Ways.
• Recorded two podcasts promoting Uphill Both Ways (one of which can be heard here, and one of which will come out soon!)
• Did a big freelance project.
• Freelance articles: 2
• Stories in the Snow
• Maine's Native Butterflies
• Essay Submissions: 5
• Essay Acceptances: 3
• Essay Publications: 
• "Faith in a Seed" Rooted 2: The Best New Arboreal Nonfiction, Summer 2023 (reprint)
• "Inflection Point: The Birth of a Mother Writer" Literary Mama, March/April 2023
• Other publications: 
• "Growing an Essay" Rooted 2 Substack, December 2023
• "The Ever-Evolving Journey: An Interview with Majka Burhardt" Literary Mama, September/October 2023
• "Where Are They Now? An Interview with Anne Liu Kellor" Literary Mama blog, March 2023
• Residencies applied for: 3
• Residencies accepted into and attended: 1 (a little about it here).
• Newsletters: 10
• Blog posts: 27
• Workshops taught: 2
• Workshops taken: 2
• Got through >75% of my book coach training program.

Travel & Adventure I Did Its!

• We went to Europe!!! Can't really top that.

• Went on some local adventures to museums and other sites of interest around Maine, and one in New Hampshire, with family, friends, and on my own.
• Did *some* kayaking, but much less than in recent years.

Arts & Crafts I Did Its!

• Knit *one* pair of mittens!
• Took up mosaic-making (mosaicing?), and made three projects, including these two:

Other I Did Its!

• Got my older kid graduated from college and the younger two from high school. (Is this really my accomplishment? I don't care--I'm taking credit for it!)
• Got the younger two kids off to college.
• Hosted my parents for a couple of weeks in the spring (around those grads) and my sister for a few days in the fall.
• Created a true space of my own in the vacated bedroom.
• Maintained pretty regular yoga and walking routines (not-quite-daily).
• Kept a daily journal and a fairly regular morning pages routine.

I have some ideas about what I want to accomplish in 2024, writing-wise, and otherwise. But for now I'll just bask in the glow of self-congratulation for having written a novel and traveled to Europe and learned a new craft.

Finish It Friday ~ Mosaic Shelf

It is very strange that I have never blogged about my obsession with Fiesta ware dishes before, although they have made some appearances in the blog (notably in these posts: Kitchen Refresh, Getting the Plastic Out, and La Cocina en mi Casa). In any case, suffice it to say I have a pretty big obsession with Fiesta and a pretty big collection thereof. And, since I live with a clumsy man and three kids, I also have a pretty big collection of broken dishes, every one of which I've saved over the last 20 years for "someday" making a mosaic.

So when my friend Barbara set up a mosaic-making workshop with an artist friend of hers, I got out all my sad, broken dishes, sorted them by color, and gave them a bath.

Then I turned to Kaffe Fasset's book Mosaics for inspiration. The book includes a wall shelf project, and I just happened to have this sweet little wall shelf that used to hang in the kids' room, where it used to hold the antique toys C inherited from his grandfather. It was long ago evicted from the room and had been languishing in the basement.

To prepare it for mosaic, I first vandalized it by scoring the surfaces I was going to stick the tesserae (that's the fancy word for little tiles for mosaic; another fancy phrase I learned is pique asiette, which means mosaics made from items like broken dishes) to and then I painted it a nice, bright tangerine color with several coats of chalk paint. Then the fun began.

At my friend's mosaic gathering, I stuck shards (most of which I'd previously broken up) into mortar on the back panel of the shelf, with a butter dish finial and teacup handles for hooks. This mortaring part is what had held me back from trying mosaic on my own all these years, but it turned out to be incredibly easy. A lesson there.

At home later that week, I mortared pieces onto the outside panels of the shelf and then, later, grouted it all and touched up and waxed the painted surfaces. 

And now I just need to figure out where to hang it up--and what to mosaic next!

Finish It Friday ~ Another Runner Hat

After I finished Z's cross-country runner hat last fall, my cousin asked me to make one for her, so I picked up a skein of the same soft, squishy yarn in a sunny color called saffron, and got to work. 

I wanted to make this second hat smaller than Z's, which is pretty large and loose, so I went down a needle size, from 7/8 (ribbing/pattern) to 6/7, shortened the ribbing so it wouldn't be foldable, and focused on keeping my tension consistent throughout.

Unfortunately, I also accidentally cast on 80 stitches rather than the 88 (or 90) I should have, and the hat turned out VERY snug. So I started again, with the correct number of stitches, and came out with two hats, one a form-fitting adult size and one just right for a kid.

I gave the small one to a friend who still has little ones in her home and sent the other one off to my cousin, with hopes for some cold weather remaining in the winter so she could wear it.

Ravelry notes (including an explanation of the cast-on conundrum) here. Ravelry notes on the original hat with the pattern here (including notes on how to lop off the Ancient-Egyptian-looking hands and an improved decrease over the first one I did).

I Did It! 2022 Edition

For the past nine years, I've tracked my annual accomplishments via an annual I Did It! list, originally inspired by writer Lisa Romeo. Previous posts can be found here: 2021 (Apocalypse Year 2) 2020 (Apocalypse Year 1), 2019 (including decade-in-review), 2018, 2017, 2016, 2015, 2014, 2013. Let's jump right into 2022's I Did Its! Shall we?

Writing I Did Its!

My first book--Uphill Both Ways: Hiking toward Happiness on the Colorado Trail--was published, hurrah hurrah!

To all those people who say that publishing a book doesn't change your life, I say pppppbbbbttttsssttt! Almost nothing could be better, except maybe holding your newborn baby in your arms--I don't know, it's been a while since I did that ;-). Anyway, Oh, happy publication day and month and year!

Book Publicity Activities in 2022:

• 17 public book readings, signings, or author talks (some live, some virtual)
• 1 book club appearance
• 1 video interview
• 1 podcast interview
• 4 print interviews

(See all past and future events here and read/watch/listen to interviews and recorded events here.)

I also did some more revision on Book Two, which I mention having completed drafting in last year's I Did It! post, and I decided to illustrate it (I was wavering for a bit) and began work on those illustrations, basically, teaching myself how to draw in pen. I'm still a bit wishy-washy on how I feel about the results so far, but I'm making progress. I also drafted a book proposal for Book Two, which I haven't sent out, due to working on getting enough illustrations done to my satisfaction first.

I began Book Three, meaning I outlined it and began the research, which is really just a LOT of reading. I've also drafted a very sketchy intro and part of Chapter 1. It's a book I've been dreaming of putting together for nearly two decades, so I'm excited to finally be making progress. 

I started the year with a plan to focus on writing short pieces (essays, stories, etc.), since I couldn't wrap my brain around the idea of a big book project while working on promotion of Uphill Both Ways, but obviously I overcame that block and ended up working on two book projects after all. My plan was to write one short piece a week, in addition to a flash piece on this blog ("Flash Friday"). That did not exactly come to pass, but in a file labeled "2022 Short Works," there are 15 documents, 11 of them complete pieces. In addition, I wrote 5 "Flash Friday" posts, for a total of 20 partial or complete short works, or just shy of two per month (and one of those "short" works is nearly 10,000 words).

This practice probably led to an improved submission and publication rate over last year:

• Submissions: 16 (double last year's rate)
• Acceptances: 3
• Rejections: 8
• Publications: 9 (so much better!). They are:

• "100 Words of Writing Advice" Literary Mama blog, January 2022

• "From the Editor" Literary Mama, May/June 2022
• "Stay Together, Learn the Flowers, Go Light" The Art of Everyone, May 2022
• "Alligator Pear" Stonecrop Review, June 2022
• "River Revival: Clean Water Act 50th Anniversary" Green and Healthy Maine Summer Guide, Summer 2022
• "10 of Maine's Best Lakes to Visit" Green and Healthy Maine Summer Guide, Summer 2022
• "Citizen Scientists Key to Maine's Clean Lakes" Green and Healthy Maine Summer Guide, Summer 2022
• "Five Hundred Miles" Deep Wild, July 2022 (reprint)
• "'Mother Brain' delves into the science of how our brains are rewired by parenthood" Maine Sunday Telegram, October 2022

(As always, the submission/acceptance/rejection/publication numbers don't add up due to carry over from year to year, not everything published having gone through a normal submission process, etc.)

Other Writing I Did Its!

• 11 Newsletters (so far)
• 44 Blog Posts (including this one)
• I continued working as Literary Reflections editor and senior editor at Literary Mama
• The writing group I started in 2021 (Maine Writers and Knitters) got together in person about three times and once over zoom, including one fantastic field trip to a local historic author's residence/museum
• I applied for two grants (and was rejected for both)
• I completed just over half of a (self-paced) book coach training program
• I gave a presentation and taught a workshop at my grad school alma mater
• I taught a nature writing workshop to two different groups 

Travel and Adventure I Did Its!

• I spent 10 days in Mexico (and didn't write about it much here on the blog; but I have an extraordinarily long essay about the trip that's in my rejections pile).
• We went on our annual family camping trip 
• C and I went on a 2-day backpacking trip, kid-free
• C and I spent a weekend in Bar Harbor for alumni weekend, also kid-free
• I took some small trips on kayak and on foot here and there

It took me a minute to remember that I went on a BIG trip at the beginning of the year, which tells me I'm either ungrateful or I need to go on big trips more frequently. I definitely need to work harder to make adventure a priority. And keep a list!

Arts and Crafts I Did Its!

My focus was on writing more than making, and my sewing machine spent most of the year tucked away on a side table under a dust cover. But I got some things done:

• Finished knitting the gigantic poncho I started early in the pandemic
• Made some tiny shoes and knitted a tiny sweater (and deciphered an Elizabeth Zimmerman pattern!) for my niece, who was born in September
• Knitted a runner hat for Z (and then the weather was warm through cross-country season, so he never had an occasion to wear it, officially, but he has worn it some since the weather has gotten cold)
• Made a new duvet for C's and my bed
• Made a fleece skirt, plus two more for gifts
• Made a silly little (and totally impractical) bird feeder, just for fun

Household I Did Its!

• Deep-cleaned the kitchen in anticipation of Thanksgiving and houseguests
• Cleaned and organized drawers and cabinets in the bathrooms--long overdue
• Moved several boxes of books and bags of clothes to the used bookstore and consignment shop, respectively
• Finally made inroads on cleaning the basement (the perennial to-do list item, which I claimed to have done last year--the inroads part--but this year I really made some progress)
• Tried to be more systematic about menu planning and shopping so that figuring out what to have for dinner every night isn't such a chore; this doesn't make me excited about cooking dinner any more than I was before, but it makes it slightly less stressful
• Worked on maintaining my houseplants in a healthier, less neglected state than usual (battling some pests like scale and spider mites), even moving a few from the sunroom to the living room to enjoy them more (and because they seemed to want warmer weather conditions)
• Expanded my pollinator garden, fed it a few rounds of duck mulch, and largely stayed on top of the weeds

Nature I Did Its!

• Bird-Watching: 132 checklists and 114 species for the year (in eBird) as well as several new species sightings in Mexico (around 25)
• Did a little butterfly and dragonfly wildflower watching
• Taught a nature writing workshop to 3 different groups
• Made 25 nature journal entries
• Continued to serve on board of Maine Master Naturalist Program and helped organize their conference

All-in-all a pretty good year (can't really complain when you've published a book)! It's occurred to me, for the first time after ten years of these posts, unbelievably, that in planning my goals from this year, I can think about what I want this post to look like next December and reverse engineer it so that I aim for what I'll have wanted to accomplish. For instance, I want to see more travel and adventure in my life, so I can set a goal of X number of hikes/kayaks per week or month and X of overnight trips and X real big expeditions. And then make it happen!

Finish It Friday ~ Cookie Monster Skirt

Although as an adult I identify most strongly with Oscar the Grouch, due to my penchant for a certain fuzzy lime green fleece vest, a period in college when I spent time digging through the trash (as part of a study of solid waste, mind you), and my general personality, when I was very small, I went through a Cookie Monster phase, wherein I had a stuffed Cookie Monster that rattled when you shook it and a pair of Cookie Monster footie pajamas that I loved because not only was there an image of the monster embroidered on the chest, but they were made of fabric with extra long, nappy blue fuzz. Also, of course, me like cookies.

So when I was tidying up in the basement last week in an effort to access our holiday decorations and ran across a length of midnight blue fabric with a thick, fuzzy pile on one side and a soft fleece on the other, I knew I needed to revisit my Cookie Monster days, but with a cozy skirt instead of pajamas. I followed the same general method I used for these and these fleece skirts that I made a couple of years ago; that is, I started with a pattern and then went off on my own tangent.

For this one, I made a yoga-style waistband, because the blue wasn't long enough for a skirt in and of itself, and because then I didn't have to mess with elastic. I was paranoid about making the waistband too tight and ended up leaving it too loose, which I think is the exact same mistake I made last time. I did not give it pockets, either, but I can add one later if I decide it needs one. I also flat-felled the side seems, which, together with the waistband, which appears the same on both sides, makes the skirt basically reversible, if I ever want the soft fleece on the outside and the pile on the inside, except that the hem will be rather obvious inside-out (but who cares?).

I forgot what a fast, satisfying project these skirts are, so I think, in the interest of clearing out some more basement clutter, I'll zip out a few more.

Finish It Friday ~ New Duvet

Since about mid-July, C has been begging me to put the down comforter back on the bed. At any temperature below 70 degrees, a quilt and two blankets just isn't enough for him. But, in addition to not wanting to be roasted alive, I enjoy having the summer quilt on the bed--it even inspires me to make my bed (almost) every morning. Besides, our old duvet had become threadbare, with the fabric eroding to tickly fringe all along the top edge. And no wonder--I made that one thirteen years ago!

I'd been meaning to replace the old duvet, which I'd made by piecing together fat quarters, for a while, but one of the fabric stores near me never reopened to in-person shopping after the pandemic, and the other one moved to a location farther away and changed focus to long-arm quilting, cutting way back on fabric inventory, so I hadn't been able to amass the requisite fat quarters. I finally gave in and ordered a couple of bundles online, supplementing with a couple of additional prints I picked up on a shopping trip with my mother-in-law (to a fabric store that's both open and still selling fabric!), and last week put them together in a big rectangle.

Last time I went with a lot of pastel hues (although, looking back at that old post, it was not as pastel-ey at the beginning as it was after 13 years of sun-bleaching). This time I went with bright, bold prints. My favorites are the feathers, the turkey-tail fungus, the snail shells, and the agates. So fun!

The procedure is pretty simple: for a queen-sized duvet, piece together 20 fat quarters in four rows, five quarters high. Sew this to a full-sized sheet*, wrong-sides together, leaving an opening of about 18-24 inches along the bottom edge. Fold the raw edge of the duvet top, at this opening, over on itself and hem, reinforcing the points where the opening meets the sewed-together bits, if that makes sense.

*It took me way too long that you only need a full-, not queen-sized sheet to back a queen-sized duvet.

My goal with this project was keep it simple as possible, with minimum labor, and so I used the fat quarters as they came. Unfortunately, there ended up being a difference size between quarters of up to two inches, and I don't think there was a square corner among them, so I had to stretch and fold and fudge to get it to all fit together. To save yourself that headache, consider cutting your quarters to be all the same, exact size.

The photo above is just staged--two blankets and a quilt still lie beneath the duvet, because it's still a smidge too warm to really need a down comforter, at least until November.

Finish it Friday ~ Cross-Country Hat

This is my seventh--and last--season with a kit on the high school cross-country running team, so in classic last-minute-Andrea fashion, I decided to take this opportunity to knit a running hat for Z. 

I actually got the idea at the last meet of last year's season, when I noticed the kids from the more well-resourced/well-organized schools wore mass-produced acrylic beanies with little runners sprinting around their crowns. I'll take any excuse to do a little two-color knitting, and there happened to be a fabulous yarn store in the very town where the meet was held. I just didn't get around to starting on it until after this year's season got started. This wasn't a huge problem, since the first meets of the year are usually swelteringly hot, and it's not till the last few that the cold breath or winter breathes down the runners' backs.

I couldn't find the exact pattern I wanted, so I made this one up, using a couple of other patterns as the basis and a sheet of graph paper and markers to work out the little running guys. You can see my pattern on Ravelry. They ended up with Ancient Egyptian-style hands, which is a detail I might leave out if I were to do it again. You can also see that every once in a while, where I carried my blue thread, it shows through the white. I'm sure there's a technique for avoiding that, and I'm sure I'll figure that out before I do more color work. 

Now the only question: Will Z actually wear the hat? There are only two or three meets left. But there's plenty of cold winter weather ahead, so the hat might get some use even if it never puts in an appearance at a meet.

Finish It Friday ~ Tiny Shoes

My brother and his wife expecting a baby girl gave me an opportunity to try my hand at making tiny embroidered booties of the type I've always admired made by Melissa Wastney at Tiny Happy. (I have made these and these little baby shoes out of other fabric , but something about that vintage embroidery that makes me squeal.)

I started with this shirt, which, despite my not being a fan of pink, was my favorite summer top for several years, until I wore holes in the arm seams. I hung onto it, though, thinking I could repurpose the soft linen in some way. It's not exactly vintage but it is embroidered.

I cut strategically around the embroidery, found a fabric that complemented both the pink and the peachy stitching in my stash, and put a pair of reversible baby shoes together (using a tutorial that I had printed out many years ago but which, alas, is no longer online).

They came out so freaking cute, I must say (I don't have anything to show scale in the photo, but let me tell you they're tiny!)

They don't exactly match the sweater I made for the same baby, but I think that's okay, because the shoes will fit a newborn and the sweater looks like it's more for a 3-month-old or bigger baby.

Finish it Friday ~ Tiny Sweater

My knitting activity has been erratic of late. The last thing I made was an extremely long (in inches and months) poncho--a project that was supposed to last the whole pandemic, but which took much longer than I expected and still was done long before there was (or is) and end in sight to the pandemic. I've bought some yarn in the time since finishing the poncho, but I haven't felt the project mojo to get started on another project. But when my brother and his wife announced they were expecting a baby girl this fall, I knew it was my chance to do something I never had time or energy for when I was expecting babies of my own--knit a baby sweater. 

And I knew I wanted to knit Elizabeth Zimmerman's Baby Surprise Jacket, which is made all in one piece, a piece that looks like a weird and wobbly blanket, but which magically folds up into a cute little sweater. I started out with another yarn, a pinkier shade of raspberry, but a finer gauge and a fussy/splitty fiber that was not doing it for me, so I returned to the knitting store for this lovely, soft Malabrigo in a heftier weight (which meant fewer stitches per row, always a plus).

The directions were a little...vague (or, as the updated version of the directions say, "sparse") and leave a lot up to the knitter's knowledge, experience, and personal preference. But ultimately I only referred to the updated directions occasionally to confirm that I'd interpreted the originals correctly. I also enjoyed the humor in EZ's ("Hope you are still with me" when the pattern got very strange, and "The baby will probably be unmoved by this offering, but the parents may well be charmed, and your friends will be amazed."). Really, once I figured out how to tell where my increase/decrease spot was (and gave up being skeptical about the whole thing), it was pretty easy. 

I'd bought some cute little pink flowers for buttons, but they turned out too small for the buttonholes, so I fished these purple ones out of the button jar, hoping they'd give a "whimsical" not "Welch's" vibe.

And, wonder of wonders, even though the salesperson at the yarn store insisted I buy two skeins, I finished the sweater with about six inches of yarn to spare.

Ravelry notes here.

Finish it Friday ~ Pandemic Poncho

Not long after everything shut down in 2020, I started knitting this endless poncho from yarn I happened to buy, with no particular plan, when I ordered the yarn to finish C's vest. I'd enjoyed knitting, and wearing, the last poncho I'd made, I wanted to make another, and I found this fun pattern on Ravelry.

It's about 8 miles (okay, 80 inches, but who's counting) of zigzagging garter stitch, and it started to feel very Like Water for Chocolate-esque after a while. It represents many, many hours of binge-watching TV shows. After about a year of knitting, I took a long break, picking it up a few months later and again stopping when I was stymied about how to finish it. The problem was I could not figure out if the two halves were the same length or not due to the zigzags. (The whole thing is a kind of T shape, with a very short stem that makes up the cowl neck and a very long, fat crosspiece, that gets folded in half and stitched together.) Finally, after talking to a nice lady at a yarn store (wearing a fabulous, floor-length hand-knit dress), I figured out that I could mattress-stitch the seam together, starting from the neck, and work my way to the unfinished end, and either add or subtract rows as needed. (I still ended up adding rows, then ripping them out, because I forgot that the zig shouldn't line up with the zag.) After all that, I just needed to weave in about 16 trillion ends, and voila! The endless pandemic poncho is complete. If only the endless pandemic would wrap up as well.

Ravelry notes, cursory as always, are here. 

I Did It! 2021 (Apocalypse Year 2) Edition

For the past eight years, I've tracked my annual accomplishments via an annual I Did It! list, originally inspired by writer Lisa Romeo. Previous posts can be found here: 2020 (Apocalypse Year 1), 2019 (including decade-in-review), 2018, 2017, 2016, 2015, 2014, 2013. 

This year has felt strange, like suspended animation (or, perhaps, like college friends and I used to joke, animated suspense). Part of that has been the ongoing (never-ending) pandemic, of course, but also the limbo phase between having a book accepted for publication and actually seeing it in print (for all of you who keep asking me, "Isn't it published yet?" believe me, I feel your pain). Book work over the last year has been marked by long periods of waiting punctuated by brief flurries of activity (copy edits, proof review, etc.), which makes it hard to feel like I've accomplished anything at all. Let's review the last year and see if that's actually true.

Writing I-Did-Its!

There were the aforementioned layers of review of The Book, as well as inroads into promotion, reveal of the cover, and corresponding updates to my website and various profiles. (Do go here to pre-order if you haven't already.)

I also finished drafting a second book, a collection of essays on nature and motherhood. For some reason finishing this book felt anticlimactic. Maybe because three-fifths of it had already been written and published, so most of "drafting" it involved revising words already on the page. Or maybe because I expect the road to publication to be steeply uphill. But none of that means I don't deserve a little pat on the back, so here it is: pat, pat.

As far as short pieces go, I'm still struggling to both write and submit/publish. My submission stats for the year:

• Submissions: 8
• Acceptances: 0
• Rejections: 6
• Publications: 1

"A Review of World of Wonders by Aimee Nezhukumatathil" Literary Mama, May/June 2021

I know this is supposed to be a positive post, but oof, that's painful. Possibly the worst since I started this tradition. 

Other writing accomplishments:

• 11 Newsletters
• 36 blog posts (plus this one, which puts us one ahead of 2020)
• I worked on a novel (a different one from the one I worked on last year), getting to 14,000 words before deciding I can't stand it. One day I'll make it all the way to 60,000.
• I continued editing the Literary Reflections department at Literary Mama as well as being a senior editor, helping to bring each issue to publication.
• I started training to become a book coach. I didn't get as far into the program as I would have liked due to time management issues, but it's my goal for 2022 to complete the training and start bringing on clients.
• I got back into teaching nature journaling, with one remote workshop and two in-person, including one at a nature journaling conference in Acadia National Park, which was a delight.
• I gathered a group of Maine writers I know (some of whom I only knew from the internet), who all happen to be knitters, and formed a writing group called Maine Writers and Knitters. I hosted our first get-together in October, which mostly involved getting to know each other and eating, but also included a fun and slightly woo-woo writing exercise. We clicked really well and had a second get-together early this month, this time with actual writing workshops, and we have a third planned for February. It feels so good to have some actual writing community.
• I (virtually) attended a poetry festival and a crime writing conference.

Travel and Adventure I Did Its!

Again it wasn't much of a year for travel, but I got out a bit more than I did last year.

• We resumed our annual Hermit Island camping trip after a two-year hiatus (one year because of the pandemic and one because of work), and I resolved to never let a crappy job get between me and my family again (ultimately quitting that crappy job).
• We went on a fair number of kayak and canoe trips on local lakes and ponds (some of which I did solo).
• I swam across a nearby pond with a friend once or twice a week during July and August.
• I went on a solo hike to a tiny cabin at a nearby nature preserve.
• I drove all the way to Colorado and back, all by myself, to help out my parents for a couple of weeks in November.

Arts and Crafts I Did Its!

My word for 2021 was "finish" and I had a list of 21 things I wanted to finish this year, many of them craft projects (some of which were WIPs and some of which were mere ideas). These are the crafty things that got finished:

• Some handmade dollhouse furniture.
• That '70s quilt
• Wavy charms quilt
• Chalk painted furniture
• New bedroom curtains
• Birds & blooms quilt
• Little bird embroideries
• The endless knitting project that I'd started at the beginning of the pandemic I put down sometime last spring and didn't pick it up again until October. It's nearly done, but I'm at a stumbling place and not quite sure how to go on, so it will have to hold off until next year's list. I also have another needlework project that's so close to being done, but not close enough to make it onto this year's list.
• Finally, I started doing illustrations for my second book (mentioned above). I'd hoped to finish them up this month, but all of my time got sucked up by holidays, child transporting, and pandemic/ democracy anxiety.

Household I Did Its!

• My big accomplishment here was my bedroom refresh and reading nook. 
• I also deep-cleaned the living room and finally replaced our 1990s college student decor with a real couch and two swivel/glider chairs (I can't believe I don't have any photos or a blog post of these--probably because they are not the beautiful midnight blue velvet couch and orange patterned chairs I dreamed of but rather boring tan, gray, and beige). 
• I made some more inroads into basement cleaning (two steps forward and one back in that department, always--E moved out of the room he shared with Z to the basement; and lives sprawled between the main area and M's room; then this month M moved all of his stuff home from college in preparation for a semester abroad. And everyone throws anything they don't want down there.)
• I continued to expand my Fiesta ware collection, but at a more sedate pace than the previous year (I think this is a topic that deserves a blog post).
• I cleaned up the sunroom, repotted several plants so now almost everything is in a pretty, non-plastic pot, and repainted two ugly plant stands a lovely bright turquoise (again, gonna need a blog post on this!).
• I expanded my pollinator garden and kept it semi-weed-free.

Nature I Did Its!

• I did a lot of birding, especially in the spring (110 eBird checklists and 118 species), and C and I did the Christmas Bird Count for something like the seventh year in a row. I even got a couple of life birds right here on our own property, as well as one in Colorado.
• I did a little bit of butterfly-ing and dragonfly-ing, but not as much as I would have liked.
• I kept track of all of the wildflowers (starting with tree flowers) as they emerged in the spring and early summer (falling out of the habit in July/August) with a photo on Instagram.

Finish It Friday ~ Garden Beds

 I really had zero to do with this project, so there's no good reason for me to post about it, except that it looks so great! Earlier this month, C finished the raised-bed garden that he's been working on for at least five years, possibly longer, methodically building beds, paving the intervening space with bricks, and, finally, fencing the whole thing in. This shows an amazing level of stick-to-itiveness, and is further proof, in case we needed it, that C is the ant and I'm the grasshopper. I'm all about the instant gratification, and once I get a project in my craw, I want to get it done as quickly as possible.

And, look! We already have peas. Like tons of peas. Normally, you hope to have peas by the 4th of July here, so this is astoundingly early. We've also had one crop of spinach and we're working on the second. Radishes, lettuce, and arugula are coming out daily, and the garlic is almost ready. Tomatoes and peppers are on their way. I dug up a photo of what the garden used to look like, ten years ago, and you can see it's come a long way.

What's growing in your garden?

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