Resolutions, and all that New Year's stuff

I'm always a bit ambivalent about making resolutions, since it seems so trite.  Plus, doing them in public - which some say you should do to ensure success, because of accountability - triggers the dilemma of whether to do small, easy ones that you know you'll accomplish, or big ones that make you look ambitious and impressive, or reverse ones so you'll psych yourself out.

So, here's mine:

• I will knit one item for charity every month.  Maybe (OK, likely) more, but at least one.
• I will try to finish the two shawls for me that have been OTN for over a year each.
• I will try to write on this blog at least once a month.  I know I've said this one before, and not achieved it, but I'm no quitter so I'll make this resolution again until I succeed!

One convenient element is that if I track how I am doing on this blog, I'll have achieved the third item and quite likely the other two.

I do have other plans.  I'm going to be traveling, and I can blog about that.  I should have blogged about some of last year's trips, but I always seem to be having too much fun experiencing the trip and don't make time after to blog.  I'll try to change that, but no promises.

I'm involved in two book groups, and talked one into reading the same book in January that the other one had picked, so I only have to read it once!  It's Hidden Figures and should be fascinating on so many levels.  Some of us are going to see the film but promised to read and talk about the book for the book clubs.  I'm going to try to find something in the book that is not in the film, or is different, and raise that as a discussion item.

Rebecca and I have talked (very quickly) about cooking out of old cookbooks and blogging about it. Rebecca said she wants to do a meal each month from Christine Terhune Herrick's Liberal Living Upon Narrow Means from 1890 and I thought it would be fun to do as well.  I have many older cookbooks, and as some of you know, have cooked full meals from a collection of sources, but I haven't done a meal from a single source just to cook a meal.  This will be fun!  Watch both of us blog about our experiences.  I'm not making it a resolution because since we're on a friendly challenge, it is already a commitment.

Now, if you want to make "serious" resolutions, go ahead.  Based upon a couple of pictures circulating on Facebook, I've decided to add a few.

One is to review this list monthly, and decide if anything has changed:

A second is to try to do this:

And a third is to try keeping a diary.  I'm not a diarist or a journaling person or whatever, possibly because I think that I live an excessively boring life to the point that I don't want to read about it, so I see no reason to write about it.  But I can write down things that happen, and maybe one of them will end up as that week's drop in the jar.

Before this gets only aspirational, I'll close with this, my contribution to this morning's monthly First Sunday brunch: "Champagne" (because I used a dry sparking wine, and true Champagne comes only from the Champagne region of France - and did you know the industry was saved by a woman?) cupcakes:

Luckily, the group isn't one that goes on ascetic diets on January 1st.  The cupcakes are sprayed with edible silver color or gold mist for some added festivity.  The tag warns that they are full of all the kinds of things people give up at New Year's: gluten, alcohol, butter, sugar.  That didn't stop people from eating them!

I hope you have a good 2017.  I am going into it with a positive attitude - there are many reasons to be worried about the year, but I believe that each of us has the power to make things change.  Whether we band together, or work individually, creating good in the world and working towards changes that need to happen may be the best resolution of all.