Year in Review

Sunday, January 1, 2012 by Marianne

Wow. 2011 is no more. This year, more than others, seemed to pass really quickly. It is the first year in a long time that I haven’t participated in a Project 365 and, I have to admit, it is a bit weird not having a lot of pictures to look back at to remind me of the year.

2011 was a nice year: not a lot of upheaval, I was offered some wonderful opportunities, and I got to take some really fun vacations. I hope this trend continues for 2012!

The first months of 2011 were very snowy and Simon and I spent a lot of time snowshoeing in the forest. I can’t remember such a snowy winter, and while I know most people didn’t like it much, we reveled in it.

Winter finally thawed, and I had the opportunity to go white water rafting on the Concord River. It was great fun and I am hoping to do it again this year (and I am trying to convince Gist to join me!)

Spring also brought us to Walt Disney World for the first time this year.

Summer brought the usual fun: picnics at the Lowell Summer Music Series and Lowell Folk Festival…

Visits to the Quiet Corner…

And to the Cape. (Summer was also the season of iPhone snaps that look vintage.)

My knitting output was low, a whopping five projects, including these mitts for Gist…

Madeleine’s Shawl, my fastest knit ever: I bought the book and yarn at SPA and finished the shawl a week later.

A cozy for my NOOK (this was the year of the e-reader for me, I switched in March.) The NOOK and the cozy are with Nance now.

And I rounded out the year with a couple of hats.

Summer seemed to extend into fall, which seemed to extend into winter: I can’t remember a warmer November or December. October, on the other hand, brought the only snow we’ve had so far: a freak nor’easter with such heavy and wet snow that we lost power for five days. The snow, alas, was gone the next day; we got all of the inconvenience of a storm but none of the joy.

The warm weather made winter bike commuting easy: a 38 degree commute is lovely, especially compared to the below-freezing bike commutes of December 2010!