Happy New Year! True to my word, I slept through the dropping of the ball, but I'm up early and there's a Monk marathon on USA, so I have a strenuous day of couch-sitting and knitting ahead. I need to felt something. I'm thinking that today would be a fine day for a French Market Bag.

It's insanely warm here - high 70s - and yet when I went to the NSLYS the other day, everybody was working on scarves. WHY? My thoughts are turning to the shawl I've been talking about for months. Now that I'm back on the diet path and working the freeweights again, visions of sleeveless sundresses are dancing in my head. I need a yarn consultation - I have a couple of patterns in mind. One is the "Beginner's Shawl" from A Gathering of Lace. The other is a purchased pattern that looks even easier, and I'm all about easy. Here's the sticking point - I don't want to make it in lace weight, because I know myself and I know I'd take forever to finish it and then probably slam it in a car door and destroy it the first time it left the house. So I want something sturdier and faster to knit than lace weight, but still nicely drapey. No mohair, because it makes me itch, especially in warm weather. I want it to keep the chill off while wearing sleeveless in air conditioning, I don't need to keep warm in an arctic blast. I'm open to suggestions.

Resolutions 2004:
First the predictable ones on everybody's list:

Diet. This isn't just about vanity and wanting to be skinny again, though a goodly portion of it IS and I freely admit this - I also have to face the reality of my genetic makeup, with a strong paternal gene pool of heart disease and Type 2 diabetes that starts rearing its ugly head in middle age. That's what attracted me to Dr. Agatston's diet in the first place (ordinarily something called "The South Beach Diet" would cause me to roll my eyes and groan) - his reputation as a cardiologist at a respected heart clinic, and the diet's track record with his patients. I have a lot of reason to change my lifestyle and adhere to this way of eating, and no good reason not to. A lifestyle change is damned hard, even an easy diet - and this is a very easy diet - can be tricky with business travel, etc. but I have never been in a better time of my life to do it.

Exercise. I used to love to go to the gym with my husband - we'd get up really early and be among the first ones there, and it was something we shared that made us both feel good. I love lifting weights, it was possibly the most enjoyable exercise I've ever discovered. I've toyed with rejoining the gym, but I'm honestly not sure I could motivate myself to go alone. There are some things that are hard to do without him and I avoid them, so rejoining the gym doesn't mean I'd actually go there. I need to develop a solo exercise program to take its place, at least for now. Walking is the core of my exercise anyway, but walking alone won't fix my sorry abs. This sounds like a job for the ever-perky Denise Austin.

Time Management - this is the blanket resolution that covers most of the other issues. I need to develop better time management skills, and I'm actually going to take a course through my employer to help in this. Under the Time Management blanket lurks all the time-eating monsters.

Learn to Sew, For Real. Self explanatory.

Landscape Backyard. Ditto.

My hairy little trainer says it's time to go for our walkie.