New Year's goals...

are a bit distasteful to me. Simply because I cannot seem to keep them. Consistently.

Whether it was lose weight, exercise regularly, read Calvin's Institutes or stop biting my lip, I do not seem to make it to the next New Year with an accomplished goal.

So I quit making them.

About 4, maybe 5, years ago, I did set the goal that I would learn to knit. I had an issue of domestic crisis and believed that all the feminine arts would be lost to the generations before and no one would ever knit or sew or macrame (okay, no one ever need macrame again) ever again. It was my feminine and domestic duty to learn at least one of these arts. To sink the very basic craft into my brain so that I could pass it on to the "younger" women.

So I learned to knit. And I knit a terrible misshapen scarf followed by a few reasonably usable scarves, followed by a couple of really cool baby blankets. And just when I thought I would hit sweaters and bags in great stride, life happened, and the domestic art of knitting fell right out of my brain.

Every time thereafter that I tried to pick it back up, I could not, for my life, remember how to slip knot or cast on or long tail anything. My dreams of passing anything on to anybody were yarn lint.

But last night. Last night, a friend held a knitting party and she invited me. I didn't take any needles or yarn with me. I didn't take any aspirations or ambitions with me. I took nail polish so I could finish painting my toenails. My goal was simply to sit and be with fellow women. Knitting women.

After I finished my toes, I casually picked up some needles and began to play with some yarn. I watched my friend do a slip knot. And I tried it. Then she showed me two different ways to cast on. And somewhere deep in the recesses of my brain, a light came on. I remembered these things.

I was knitting. I was purling. I was not yarn over-ing. No need to blow out a neuron. But the pulse of domesticity began to beat in my heart again. So I came home and dug through the yarn drawer to find needles, a pattern and yarn; and I began to knit. A pink baby blanket. Because it's the color I had the most of in the drawer. Maybe it will one day be a blog giveaway. Who knows?

So while I'm still quite skeptical of the whole New Year's goals thingy, I'm relieved to know that this brain can retain a thing or two. There is still hope.