Thanks so much for the kind words on the little beast! This year "new year" takes on a whole new meaning for us!
Last year, I set some pretty vague resolutions, but did carry through with a few of them…let’s review:
1. Finish my mom’s afghan – Check! I finished it and sent it in January of 2006.
2. Thrummed mittens – I only made it through one of these, primarily because the intended recipient moved to a warmer climate, so I don’t know if it will be ripped or if I’ll make it’s mate.
3. Branching out scarf – Check!
4. Complete a Fair Isle Project – Check! Alice was my Olympic sweater. She hasn’t seen much wear, primarily because the sleeves are a touch long (I was overcompensating for my freakishly long arms) so I’ll either try to shrink her a bit or maybe send her to the repair bin this year.
5. Shop the stash first – Check! I did pretty good with this one this year. I only really bought yarn at yarn festivals and I’m working through a spreadsheet I made of things to do with my oddballs. This year, though, it’s looking like some stash enhancements may be in order!
Another goal that I made in a separate post was to do more charity knitting. This one was a serious failure last year, so I’ll carry it over this year. So here are this year’s goals (mostly crafty with a couple of other ones thrown in there).
1. Make a quilt for the new baby. I am pretty confident in my ability to do the quilt top, but it’s the actual quilting part that I’m nervous about. There is a machine quilting class at my quilt shop but I don’t know if my little machine can handle it, but I also don’t have any idea how much it would run me to have it quilted. Any advice from you quilter types would be great.
2. Do some charity knitting. While it may not sound like much, my goal of 12 charity items was obviously too many because I didn’t even do one! This year, I am going to aim for 6 charity items over the span of the year. I’m going to try to keep this one at the top of my mind.
3. Get serious with the baby knitting. There is a baby boom going on all around me right now, so I need to get going with some baby knitting. I am going to try to make some things and stash them so that I will have them when the baby showers start popping up.
4. Get moving again. Having survived the first trimester, it’s time to start exercising again. I had been planning to start walking around the neighborhood in the new year and I’m inspired by Rachael’s 100 miles by April 1 project to at least record how far I’m walking. My main obstacle is daylight, as in there isn’t any right now! I’ve taken the first step of getting some exercise worthy songs on the ipod. I’ll be ready to go when I find the opportunity. If nothing else I can get some time in on the weekend.
5. Get organized. I’m working on cleaning out the closet in my craft room (which has basically become a big fat junk closet) so I can move my yarn into my craft room allowing Jason to move his stuff out of what will be the baby’s room into my current yarn closet. We’ve already started accumulating items for the little beast, so I need a place to put them! The problem with closet cleaning is that it gets worse before it gets better. However, it will be good to get rid of some clutter. Now to buy a new shredder since I destroyed ours last night with three trash bags of shredding.
onestitchshort 
I didn’t even get all the way through the post yet, but I wanted to comment on the baby quilt problem.
My first reaction is that even if your machine can handle it, it’s probably going to be more of a hassle than you want to deal with. Sending it out to be quilted will probably be fairly expensive, too. Since it’s a baby quilt, I would tie it off instead of quilting it. It will be faster and less expensive, and you should be able to find directions online or in a quilting book, and any quilter should be able to help if you run into problems.
Feel free to send me an email if you have any questions about it.
It typically isn’t too expensive to have it quilted by someone else. Shop around though because prices will vary. My mom had a “hook up” who would quilt a lap quilt for about $50, I think it was $30 for a baby quilt. Unfortunately this woman died (with my quilt in her unfinished pile).
I’ve now found a place that will do a lap quilt for $65 or $70 which is still reasonable. Now I just need to get my quilt to them!
I agree with Anne though, tying it off might be the best choice.
I commend you on your effort to get moving! I took one prenatal yoga class and went a few times before it got cancelled due to lack of enrollment! I haven’t moved too much since then, but hopefully you will move enough for both of us!
🙂
Had dinner last night w/ a lady from church who is a master quilter (so much so that they tore down a wall in their house in between two bedrooms to hold her 14-foot quilting machine!) She said she does tons of quilting for people whose own machines won’t allow it, and would be more than happy to give you a quote. Remind me when the time comes and I’ll give you her number if you need it.