Places visited: Joshua Trees National Park in January with my parents; Oklahoma and Arkansas in April with my sister; Chicago in April with college girlfriends; Atlanta in May with K; Yosemite, Kings Canyon, Sequoia, and Lassen National Parks in July with my family; Seattle in September; Crater Lake and Ashland at the end of September; Mesa Verde and Durango in October, Thailand (Bangkok and Chiang Mai) in November; Arizona in December.

Number of National Parks visited: 8 (4 new!) + 1 Thai National Park!

Games played: Settlers of Catan, Dutch Blitz, Cover Your Assets, Dragonwood, and Really Loud Librarians with the niblings. 1 escape room with the niblings. Buffy the Vampire Slayer with friends for my birthday.

Puzzles completed: 1.4 (the Fellowship of the Ring is on my table right now).

Baby bunnies cuddled and hand fed: 6

Movies watched: Wicked, Home Alone 2 with the niblings, Top Gun and Outbreak with the parentals last night for the new year, Emma 2009. Inside Out 2 on the airplane.

TV shows watched: The last season of Battlestar Galactica (I cried so much), The Great British Bake Off, The Great American Bake Off seasons 1-2, the last season of Fringe (so good – I was so sad when it ended), Only Murders in the Building (through season 3), Doctor Odyssey (so so bad it was good and I have a weakness for Joshua Jackson), The Acolyte (I’m steamed that it was canceled). I’ve watched the first couple of episodes of Abbott Elementary, the first episode of Reservation Dogs, and half of the first season of Elementary.

Books read: 120.

Audiobooks listened to: 18!

Musicals/Plays watched: Annie, Girl from the North Country (pretty awful), The Preacher’s Wife (in Atlanta starring Amber Riley), Company, Peter Pan, Wicked.

Concerts attended: None? Really?

Number of celestial events witnessed: I swore there were 3 but I’m only seeing pictures of 2 – 1 complete solar eclipse, 1 stunning aurora borealis

Music listened to: A.P.T. by Rosé and Bruno Mars (this played all over Thailand!)

Nights spent in the hospital because my driveway too icy/snowy to get home: None!

Number of days without power and the weather was below freezing: Nearly 4.

Number of days stuck at home because of frozen driveways and downed trees: 8

Knitted projects: Four thick and bulky scarves, one shirt, one crocheted scarf

Number of skeins of yarn bought: Not bad! I limited myself to enough yarn to make 2 shirts/sweaters.

Number of faculty teaching awards: 1 (from the neurosurgery residents!!)

Number of new teaching positions applied to: 1 (to be a course director for the medical students. I’ll find out at the end of this week/next if I got the position).

Number of new kitchen appliances: 3 (the dishwasher kicked the bucket, ants were inhabiting the stove, and the fridge was old and small).

Number of papers published with my name on them: 3

House repairs: installed a garage door release so I can get into my garage when the power goes out, insulated the water pipes, installed a door so I can get into my crawl space, braced my house to the foundation so it won’t slide away in an earthquake,

Visits to the beach: 3, including the beach in Pattaya

Number of trolls visited: 4 (Jakob Two Trees in Issaquah, Frankie Feetsplinters in Ballard, Bruun Idun in West Seattle and Ole Bolle just down the road from me).

Number of waterfalls visited: 3 (Snoqualmie, Wachirachan, Multnomah)

Favorite new drink: butterfly pea tea

I knit four scarves this year, to go with the three I had made last winter and gave them to my college girlfriends. That makes a total of 12 scarves I’ve made in the last three years and I finally used up all of my Rasta yarn!

I made my first shirt! It’s a linen/cotton blend that was somewhat rough to knit, but definitely softened as I went along. I made a decision early on to not do shaping around the bust, and that was a mistake, as it’s a little more boxy of a drape than what I like. I also had to go back and reinforce the neckline because it was giving Flashdance vibes.

I learned how to crochet and made my mom a kerchief for Christmas. I like crochet because it’s only one loop of yarn you’re dealing with at a time, but finding the beginning of a round is so complicated, I basically did the whole thing three times.

I went to Thailand and learned how to do back strap loom weaving from some of the Tribal women. I’m pretty proud of what I managed to accomplish in just three hours!

I tried out spindle spinning, but I haven’t had enough time to devote to it – it’s really challenging pulling out the fibers just right to get the right tension and circumference.

My dolls from last year are still languishing. I was trying to design a little suit coat and haven’t gotten the proportions right and now it’s been long enough, I don’t know where the mistakes are, so I’m probably going to have to start over. I’ve also been trying to knit a pair of “glittens” (I don’t like the fingers on the pattern, so it’s a fingerless glove with a flap), but I’m struggling with the thumb and just discovered that I’m off on my count, so I had to go back several rows.

This was also the year that I discovered a knitting community and have been spending my spare Thursday afternoons at my local yarn store knitting with others. And I reconnected with a couple of friends: my next door neighbor and another friend from the old MoFem days both knit and spin, so they came over several evenings to “stitch and bitch.”

I met my goal of reading 120 books (although a good 11 of them were under 100 pages and one was only 5 pages, so it does feel a little like cheating). 33,872 pages of reading and 70.57 hours of listening. 18 were audiobooks. Several were rereads. 20% were nonfiction. I only had one book that I officially gave up on (A Short History of Nearly Everything) – eta, I forgot about Arthur and Teddy Are Coming Out which I tried to read last month and gave up, but I have 2 that have been languishing for months that I haven’t decided on (and I still may go back to A Short History).