16 for 2016! The final countdown.
Sometimes it is hard to believe that a year has passed since I wrote my 16 for 2016. The theme if theme there was to challenge myself. So how did I do?
16 swims- I achieved this in April and kept swimming every week until the Autumn.Then the water seemed too cold and I was busy with other things. But there is always 2017!
15 walks- This goal changed several times. I wanted to walk more. I tried various ways of wording it before just settling on 15 walks. Which I achieved, with some super walks.
Can’t beat a moorland heather walk to my mind.
14 lbs lost. I started so well, but then came Easter, holidays and Christmas and well, it’s a fail. At a mere 3 lbs .
13 outings- I visited some truly lovely places, but the one I keep coming back to was the Royal Yacht Britannia, which has featured many times in my pictures for the photo challenge.
12 cookery posts- I managed five, before realising that actually I don’t have anything much to say about cookery.
11 flower photographs achieved with ease , so many lovely flowers to photograph.
10 handmade cards- achieved. I love making and sending handmade cards.
9 Garden posts- Achieved. I really enjoyed documenting our garden,the birds, the frogs, the plants and the produce. We are still enjoying the runner beans I froze and the leeks will be ready any day soon. So lucky to have a garden.
Our favourite blackbird with white feathers enjoying a drink.
8 stash/kit busting projects. I had such a clear idea at the start of the year what I was going to do, and then I fell in love with my scraps and became scrap happy.
and that is the joy of writing the goals for the year in the way I do. You just don’t know what will happen. Many thanks to Kate for encouraging me to fall in love with my fabric stash. Shame about the kits!
7 sewing/ embroidery projects- I was determined this year to master buttonholes on my scary not so new sewing machine. I made the same dress three times for my granddaughter. Oh yes I cracked buttonholes and completed 7 sewing projects.
6 acts of kindness- I recorded a couple of mine, two that I witnessed and two that I received. I think the one that moved me most was the lady who bought a pie for the Big Issue lady. But I also loved this.
Re use of a phone box, and I gather that there are now a lot of phone boxes available for reuse by local communities.
5- Read five non fiction books-Achieved. I think my favourite was the book about Workhouses, as my Great Grandfather was the clerk to the Guardians of the Pickering workhouse. I later went onto visit the county records office where I read about his interview and appointment to the post and saw what work his job entailed.
4 projects to improve my knitting and crochet skills. Oh my was this the biggest challenge of all. I got to grips with lacy patterns, 4 ply wool and repaired a crochet blanket where the magic circles proved to have been not so magic at all. And then there were cables. I didn’t do so bad on the first cable cardigan I made for master T.
Then I got over ambitious and started on the white cable cardigan for Miss F. Well there are cables and bobbles on the front , on the back and on the sleeves. I have at least stopped dropping stitches from the cable needle but oh I have to count every stitch and not lose my place in the pattern. And why on earth did I opt for white? The most useful part of all of this was discovering that I knit to relax and unwind. It’s therapeutic, it’s the way I settle down for the night. But not on cables. So I unearthed a knitting project to help me relax , and got on with the dreaded cables in afternoons when I could. First of my projects to relax by was the village I made been wanting to make for well over 30 years. Oh yes Miss F’s Dad should have played with this as a boy if only his Mum had pulled her finger out.
And hot on the tracks of this came the Tinsel obsession. Yarn by King Cole.
I think this might have played itself out to be replaced with an obsession for a yarn called Party Time by James Brett. And still I knit the cable cardigan. I have reached the raglan edge of sleeve number one.
3 things from my Bucket list- I achieved this, I visited Edinburgh, swam weekly for two months and made a cheese souffle, which I decapitated getting out of the oven! NB to self remove shelves above the souffle.
2 Railway journeys- I achieved this and renewed my rail card. I visited my son in Reading and we went to Wembley by train. and I went to Edinburgh by train too.
1 bus journey- we had a lot of bus travel around Edinburgh!
0 magazine purchases. Oh yes happy dance for this. Really really hard to resist. I love a craft magazine and a big pile of second-hand ones called out to me at the Whitby Quilt exhibition. I walked away from them…..
So that was the year that was. Will there be a 17 for 2017. Oh yes!
Hope you achieved some of what you wanted this year. Have a great last night for 2016, and all the best for a very Happy New Year 2017. Remember if you hit rock bottom in 2016, the only way is up!
And thank you all for reading my blog and making such encouraging comments. Without you I would not have achieved the things I did.
nanacathy2
