Marie at 1 Write Way

Five Things at the End of 2024

A Christmas Gift

Although it’s not my first Christmas without my mom and sisters, I felt their absence more keenly this year. Especially the absence of my sister Shirley since Christmas was her favorite holiday. I still remember the utter shock on her face when, years ago, I said that my husband and I had stopped exchanging gifts. I barely managed to stifle a laugh at her reaction.

I do give gifts to my family, but I expect and ask for nothing in return. The gift is in the giving, as they say. But this year, I received a very special gift.

Front cover of the photo book.

Inside this book are copies of my sister’s recipes for cookies and cakes.

I can’t express how it felt to see her handwriting, the old recipe cards with smudges and stains from frequent use. I can only say that it was a lovely gift to receive at the close of this year and one that I will always cherish.

Writing

I don’t make New Year’s resolutions. I don’t make goals anymore. I often have tasks related to housekeeping, doctor’s appointments, grocery shopping, but they are not the sum of my days.

Still. I do want to renew my focus on writing. I have four unfinished novels. Three of the novels are a kind of trilogy as they share the same characters. One is a standalone. All were first drafted during a National Novel Writing Month. I want to finish them. Get them done. I don’t want to write anything “new” until they are out into the world. I haven’t set a way for publishing them yet (all of them need considerable editing first) but I’m not in this for the money. As I did with my short story Love Me Tender, I might produce the novels using Bookfunnel and Lulu.

Nature

I’m continually surprised by what I sometimes literally unearth on our property. While weeding around the tendrils of our strawberry plant, I found this little critter.

Wooly bully

At first I thought it was a wooly seed of some kind. Further investigation through my iSeek app revealed that it was a caterpillar curled up in defensive mode. If all goes well, it will eventually morph into a Giant Leopard Moth.

By Jeremy Johnson – http://www.meddlingwithnature.com, CC BY-SA 4.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=41471642

Knitting

While I contemplate renewing my focus on writing–that is, finishing my novels–I’ve been knitting. In early November I started knitting an intarsia shawl. Kind of like painting but with yarn. The shawl is still in progress but I wanted to share a couple of photos.

While intarsia isn’t difficult, the changing shapes and colors can be a challenge.

Here’s what the finished shawl should look like when completed.

https://shopflorencespurling.com/products/elvan-shawl

I don’t work on this shawl every day. What I like least about knitting is the finishing process (well, I guess that’s true with almost everything I do) so, as with writing, I procrastinate. One afternoon I procrastinated by taking a virtual workshop on knitting little cats.

This is supposed to be a cat in a box but with the edges curled under, I think the box looks more like a bed. And I like it like that.

Which leads me to my fifth thing at the end of 2024.

Cats

Wendy isn’t so much reaching out to touch Raji as she is letting him know that he better not get any closer to her.

Thank you for reading. I hope you all have (or had) a Happy New Year. Here in the U.S., some of us feel dread as we begin 2025. I hope it’s many of us feeling that dread because we’ll need a lot of us to show up in 2026 and vote out the authoritarians and broligarchs and vote in Democracy. We won’t be alone. We’ll have lawyers: Democracy2025.

As one of my favorite lawyers, Joyce White Vance, would say, “We’re in this together.”

Marie A Bailey

, , ,

31 responses to “Five Things at the End of 2024”

  2. Lovely post, shawl, photos, and memories, Marie! Good luck with your writing, and I wish you and your family a very happy new year. Yes, in the US, it’s challenging right now, but we must not give up hope. This too shall pass. And we continue to work for love and kindness, no matter what.

    Liked by 1 person

    • Thank you, Jo! Happy New Year to you. At a minimum, we can work toward love and kindness. Today I let two women ahead of me in a check-out line at a local coop. I had a full cart of food and they had only an item or two each, and it was the only line open at the moment. It was kind of funny, both of them surprised but very appreciative 😉

      Liked by 1 person

  3. I don’t knit but like you I write but I don’t like to finish whatever it is I’m writing. So even though I don’t do resolutions I’m resolved to finish my stories! The gift of your sister‘s recipes was magnificent. Happy new year!

    Liked by 1 person

    • Happy New Year! I have a difficult time with endings which I think is one reason why I haven’t finished my novels. Still, as with knitting, I don’t want all that work to just languish in a drawer. Best wishes to you and to finishing your stories!

      Liked by 1 person

  4. Thank you for your end of year update, Marie. I also found Christmas particularly hard this year with my parents and my brother gone.

    I’m glad to hear that you’ve decided to finish your unfinished novels. If you need support and encouragement, count me in!

    Liked by 1 person

  5. I’m enjoying reading everyone’s end-of-year wrap-ups. I am also a procrastinator extraordinaire and got mine finished just under the wire (thankfully I live on the West Coast so I had a few extra hours :) ).

    That book of recipes is such a treasure. I have a few of my mother’s original recipe cards and I treasure them even if I don’t use them to cook. And, I love your kitty in a box/bed. So flipping cute!

    Best wishes for a fabulous 2025 (at least I hope it won’t be too nuts) and you can count on me to show up in 2026 to vote out the crazies.

    Liked by 1 person

    • Happy New Year, Janis! Gosh, I had been planning my post for so long. I think because I had worked on a computer daily for 20 years, now that I’m retired, I’ve become resistant to turn my laptop on. No excuse, though. I’m writing now on my iPad 😆

      Best wishes to you, too! I do hope we make a big blue splash in 2026!!

      Liked by 1 person

    • I loved Silas Marner. I first read it in high school, but years after that, I found an old pocket-sized hardcover of it and read it again. Now I need to see if I still have that hardcover. 🙂

      Like

        • Ah, I think I had a small hardcover of Romola, although I never read it. When we lived in San Francisco, there was an antiquarian bookstore a couple of blocks from our apartment. If I could afford it, I bought small hardcovers that I might have no intention of reading, I just enjoyed the art of the bookbinding.

          Like

  7. Happy New Year, Marie! (Despite everything.)

    That gift is so thoughtful and touching.

    I like that you procrastinated about knitting with knitting. Good luck with your projects.

    And yes, we’re in it together. I told my husband yesterday that he isn’t even president yet, and I’m already exhausted by him. We’re back to every day waking to see what he’s said or done. Yes, thank goodness for the lawyers and people who like Heather Cox Richardson said yesterday are delivering a fact-based reality.

    Liked by 1 person

    • Happy New Year, Merril! I am dismayed that Greg and I are so quickly back to ranting about the incoming regime. And now it’s not just the Orange Felon going off the rails but his underwriter as well (Musk). Ugh. Still, we are making more of an effort to limit our intake of news. Heather is wonderful as is Joyce White Vance. Vance is great for understanding the legal stuff, like the recent ruling that supported E. Jean Carroll’s defamation suit. Some people still believe in the rule of law, thank goodness.

      Liked by 1 person

      • It is SO exhausting already.
        I haven’t watched TV news in years. I sometimes listen to NPR, and I get some headlines emailed to me, so I can decide if I want to read the stories, but I also rely on Joyce Vance and HCR.

        Liked by 1 person

  8. Happy New Year, Marie! And thanks for the link to Democracy 2025, which gives me a wee ray of hope for the coming slug fest. Like The Beatles said, things have to look better if they “can’t get no worse”!

    Liked by 1 person

    • Happy New Year, Kevin! I was so happy when I stumbled upon Democracy 2025. From what I read elsewhere, some of these lawyers banded together during the Orange Felon’s first term and worked to prevent or at least slow his efforts to use the courts to push his heinous policies. So … this isn’t their first rodeo, thank goodness. It’s a faint ray of hope, but I do think there’s more of us than there are of them.

      Liked by 1 person

  9. Happy New Year, Marie!

    What a wonderful gift to receive! Personal gifts like this are the best.

    Love that shawl. Wow. And like, Merril, I love that you procrastinate with your knitting project by knitting something quick (for you).

    Best of luck on the writing as well.

    Liked by 1 person

  10. Happy New Year, Marie!

    The recipe book is a lovely thoughtful gift. And what a gift that woolly caterpillar is to the world.

    The shawl is so beautiful! Also love the knitted cat. So fun! I’ve crocheted a cat or two. 😄😊

    Liked by 1 person

    • Happy New Year, L. Marie! I plan to knit more cats once I finish the shawl. Thank you for your kind words. I think the shawl will be lovely but I’ll be glad when I’m done with it 😆

      Like

  11. That is a wonderful gift and I’d be tempted to ask for copies but I am really not cooking anymore. Hmm. That reminds me, I have a post I should write about that. Anyway…. I’m glad you got that piece of your sister’s life and it brought a little joy to you.

    I also applaud your goal in writing and finishing your novels. Just remember, balance in all things. Find time for those recipes, cats and knitting. What do they call those little kitties? Koodles? Woodles? I’ve been seeing them all over the net. I don’t knit, either.

    Happy New Year!

    Liked by 1 person

    • Hey, Zazzy! I am so behind on all the things I’d rather be doing. Instead, I’ve been writing letters and sending emails to representatives and senators. I’m a nobody but I feel like I have to do something … even if my letters just wind up in a trash bin. Plus we’re in this freeze which is really weird for north Florida. It’s actually beautiful outside but cold! How is it where you are?

      Liked by 1 person