New year, new life… – again

As much as I swore to myself to try and keep blogging consistently, the end of the year and the beginning January ended up being pretty silent…again. Packing during Christmas and moving at the beginning of the year seems to be a recurring theme in my life, well this was the second time in a row. If you’ve been following my blog for a while, you might know that I moved to New Zealand from the north-western corner of Spain at the beginning of last year. Back then we settled in Chan’s lovely house, about 20 mins away from Wellington city centre by car.

However, after a few months of struggling with commute and trying to make a truly HUGE space feel like home, we decided that life in the suburbs was definitely not for us.  Although we didn’t move continents this time, in a way, this was still definitely the biggest move I’d ever done. See, in my adult life I’ve been careful not to accumulate too many belongings, mainly because I never really lived anywhere for more than a couple of years. Chan, however, is the opposite.  So, it’s been a stressful couple of weeks over the “holidays”, but now it’s mostly done. We still have to find the right place for a few things and get rid of other stuff, but I’m happy to report we now have a place we feel at home at. And I must say, it’s a pretty good start for the year! Happy 2017! 🙂

But let’s get to business, plans and goals for the New Year:

• Be organized: I always feel like I want to do so much more than I actually do, and that I also really should be able to, if only I managed to be a bit more organized with my time. Of course, I probably also want to do way too much. Running, cycling, knitting, breading, reading, blogging… these are all pretty time consuming hobbies after all. In any case, the challange is on, I want to do more of all of these and get better at them this year.
• Finish what I’ve started – knitting: As usual, I have quite a few projects going on, some of them nearing completion. This might mean a series FOs coming up in the first half of the year, hopefully! Bring it on Waterlily, Improvised sweater and Little Wave Cardigan!

Waterlily tee in progress

• Patterns: Although I really, really, really want to venture more into trying my hands at knitwear design, somehow I always shy away. I guess all too often I just want to do some mindless knitting – i.e. following a pattern someone else already made up – instead of having to worry about doing maths for stitch counts myself. This year I finally published the RUN beanie pattern, and, who thought, some knitters actually liked it. I was so very happy to see this beanie made by a Portuguese knitter!

RUN beanie

• Jewellery: Because I cannot just do one thing, I ended up taking up beading again last year. Not only that, I eventually made the leap of opening my Etsy shop – árbore·do·fogo. I’m yet to find out where this project would take me, but for now I’ve enjoyed learning about all kinds of things related to starting an online business. Not to mention the thrill of creating beautiful jewellery pieces! I will really need to put my organizational skills to work to create at least a few new designs, maintain the website and social media accounts. But that’s where the fun is, right?

Double Triangle earrings – arboredofogo

• Learn something new: I am definitely one of those people who’d prefer that their days last 48 hours. There are so many things I would like to try/learn, especially when it comes to making… This year I would really like to get better at photography – maybe do a course? – and try dyeing and/or spinning.