New Year's Eve, and we are definitely not party-throwers or party-goers these days, yawning our way through as we sit up to see the New Year in, watching everyone else's fireworks from the veranda, and that's that....how about you??
I'll bet some of you are doing the pineapple chunks and cheese on the cocktail sticks right this minute, and I hope you all have wonderful celebrations if you have some planned.
But thinking back over those years gone by when we have reached this day, and after this time of reflection... as Margarete called it in comments, 'the time between the years', and perhaps for one reason or another we may have thought 'Well, we'll be glad to see the back of that year,' and felt ready to welcome the next, yet this year I almost don't want to let go of 2012.
I know it won't be the same for everyone, in fact I can think of quite a few friends for whom the year perhaps can't end soon enough, but for us 2012 has been a steady gathering of Pleasings, almost too many to mention but all will live long in the memory...
Our trip to Orkney with the Tinker, and those flawless visual images and colours which nip back into my mind unbidden on a regular basis.
Being chosen by Magnus a few weeks after we got back.
Port Eliot Festival....all the preparations and the knitsuke, and then meeting and talking with so many excellent authors and some of you.
The whirlwind arrival of Little Nell, our new walking friend, who has taken us back out onto Dartmoor, and trust us to choose a dog who shows the dirt.... how many times we have said 'Should have had the brown one,' in recent weeks
London 2012 and the Olympics.. and the way we all cheered the success of each other's countries on here. We have really been enjoying all the recap programmes in the last few days...I came over all teary-eyed again about Super Saturday.
My usual spate of craft activities, and the inspiration I have found from so many sources. The Kaffe quilt will take me into 2013 and I have a few knitting projects up my sleeve too, more on those soon.
Team Old Ways and how much I have gleaned from reading Robert Macfarlane's book and what a joy it was to meet and talk with him this year. If I was off to a desert island with six book choices, this would most certainly be one of them, except I would probably ask for the trilogy (Mountains of the Mind ,The Wild Places, The Old Ways ) to be bound into one volume to leave me another five choices. There's a blog post in that idea, watch this space.
And not forgetting Team Middlemarch. It has been very special for me to re-read the book for pleasure, and with so many of you for company along the way...we reconvene here on January 16th for Book Seven.
Being asked to judge Fiction Uncovered (you should just see it here, I have had to designate a special table) which will take me into 2013 very up to speed on contemporary fiction before the announcement of the chosen books in May...
And no year would be complete without having read some really exceptional books. I am not going to do my Best of 2012 because if I have written about them here I have enjoyed them all and would hand-on-heart force everyone to read them highly recommend them....except one that is....oops.
It doesn't seem five minutes since the first million, but this week dovegreyreader scribbles crosses the two million hits mark, which feels like a super-special mammoth milestone, and a lovely solid foundation as I approach the start of my eighth year of writing and sharing here.
So my thanks to each and every one of you, I hope you will all carry on reading and commenting whenever you want to. Comments are the oxygen here, I love them, and reply to each whenever I can, because it feels like a conversation with friends. I'll do my best to carry on writing, because I love doing it and now can't imagine life without it, and without all of you out there.
And looking ahead to 2013... well Bookhound and I plan a year full of nice things and new challenges, because, being Coronation Year babies, we will both be celebrating diamond jubilees of our own (how can that be) and I have no doubt you will hear more about our year along the way.
At forty I was challenged to get that OU degree.
At fifty I was challenged to do something with it, which turned out to be writing this.
At sixty...well right now I just want to finally master the art of Fair Isle knitting and survive the steek...we'll see.
Here's wishing you all a year of Pleasings of the best sort, Happy New Year one and all.
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