Remnants

Today signals the beginning of a brand new year. I am glad to release the old one, which seems unusually worn and tired. Last night walking to the car after seeing Valkyrie, Jim and I commented on this very thing—our eagerness to see a new year dawn. Pondering what good things 2008 could claim, we agreed the major triumph of the year surely was the election of Barack Obama as our new president.

During the movie, I knit a square (really a first for me…I can knit in the dark just fine!), using up leftover yarn used to make Christmas potholder gifts for friends. Later, ending the day, I crocheted two rows of yarn, using up a bit of Blue Sky Alpaca left over from Chris’ ribbed hat and finishing a skein of Lambs Pride brown left over from a birthday hat for Jessie, and earwarmers for Jim and Dick. Today, I will felt this garter stitch square into a potholder. I like the idea that I gathered up these remnants to knit together a thing of use for my kitchen. A recycler, even before there was such a term, my great grandmother Edna Otto Bame took old coats and woolens and turned them into beautiful hooked rugs. It seems appropriate as we begin the new year while looking back over the past one, a year of dramatic economic downturn, that my grandmothers' motto, “use it up, wear it out, make it do, or live without” informs my own this year….