+JMJ+ 

So I have been away for a while. 

Over six months to be exact. I even missed my blogoversary (Nov. 19). 

The short answer, of course, is that I've been busy. With what, exactly? Well, let me get you a cup of tea and I shall tell you....

As some of you know, I had been in graduate school for about two and a half years. During these last six months, I have been finishing the last classes associated with it. Thanks be to God, I graduated with my Masters of Art degree on December 16 of this year. That journey is deserving of a post itself. But that is going to take a lot of prayerful reflection before it will see the light of print. 

In the meantime, I started to spend a lot more time with my family - in part due to guilt for spending so much time holed up in my room with graduate school. It proved timely because in April of this year, we had a major flood in our basement. This ordeal turned into a six month renovation and de-cluttering process which resulted in a much cleaner house and much happier people. 

My garden DID get planted, and it was a wonderful success! We had such a variety of vegetables this year, including new ones like kohlrabi, cabbage, and parsnips. Our growing season was miraculously extended with an extra long Indian Summer, which allowed me to squeeze out the fall crops to full maturity. 

In crafting news, I did successfully complete one project: my knitted sontag! I had planned a post on it specifically, and it's still sitting in my drafts waiting to be completed. In the sewing department, I did sew a new winter nightshirt to replace one that was falling apart at the seams (quite literally). I also inherited a lot of scraps from my mother, which will prove very useful for an upcoming project I have in mind. 

2022 was also a year that I greatly expanded both my book and movie collections. In September, I went out for my annual visit to Lia, and part of that trip included a trip to Half Price Books in Dayton. Lia made a fatal error and left me unsupervised. I wound up spending over $200 on books and movies. A full haul can be seen on my Instagram. 

An Update about the Podcast

Last year, I had announced my intention of creating a podcast, similar to my work here on the blog and talking about femininity topics. I had created graphics, some potential topics, and looked into podcasting platforms. I had even bought a microphone for the venture, and I found that it worked well (once I figured it out). I had hoped to start this podcast this summer. 

However, I must announce that at this time, I'm not going forward with the podcast. 

For the majority of the year, the issue was time. I had no time to write, no time for a lot of my hobbies, no time for hardly anything - much less record a podcast. Now that I've finished my MA, my time is now being reorganized to accommodate for many things that fell by the wayside, as well as focus on my novel publishing journey (which you can follow on my writing blog, The Rebelling Muse).   

In addition, my dear little laptop has been developing symptoms of a power supply failure. The sleep function is now destroyed, and thus, its starting to live on borrowed time. The storage, which was always poor to begin with, has been exhausted. Not exactly the kind of laptop that can really support a lot of audio files and then some. 

I also feel that I should do some additional spiritual discernment before I try it again. I went out the decision in a completely wrong-headed way by asking my friends if I should do a podcast point-blank. It was arrogant and conceited of me. I expected my vanity to be fulfilled and thank God it wasn't. Because I'm starting to take my spiritual life a little more seriously, I don't want to do something that's going to undo the precious little work that I have done and potentially harm myself, even in the service of others. 

Goals for 2023 

I had only a couple of goals in 2022. And I found that over the course of the year, I did hardly anything to accomplish them. Therefore, I have decided to take on some additional goals - some small, some big. Some of them are probably just going to be resolutions that get dumped later. But I pray that some will stick. 

So, in the spirit of plans for the new year, here are my goals for 2023: 

Spiritual Goals

I'm very slowly working towards incorporating the Third Order Dominican Rule into my own prayer life. I've always been drawn to Dominican devotions and saints, and I would like to root myself into them more. After all, I would like to be a saint myself, and if this is the path to save my soul, than I'm gonna go for it!  

Part of the Dominican spirituality is study or spiritual reading. I have discovered in 2021-2022 that I do really well with prayer and spiritual reading podcasts. I had really liked Bible in a Year by Fr. Schmitz, and so I went looking. And quite by accident (or was it?) I found a podcast on Spotify called Mystical City of God in a Year by Father Looney. So starting on January 1, I will be going through those episodes one day at a time, just after my morning prayer in place of the morning YouTube/Instagram binge. It will be a much better use of my morning "wake-up" time. 

The other major part of the Dominican spirituality is prayer. I've been using the Divine Office - both from Divinum Officium (Trad) and the Hallow App (Novus Ordo) - as well as the daily devotionals from to create a better prayer routine than the one I had previously. I've also been inspired by my parish, which is beginning to offer public recitation of the Divine Office every day (!). My current goal is to say the hours of Prime and Compline every day/night. If this is achieved by Lent, then I will start adding additional hours such as Terce, Sext, None or Vespers. 

Food Goals

One goal that I have been dying to take back up again my old practice of making bread once a week. I used to do this in high school, when I spent much of my time at home. I stopped making it in college, for obvious reasons, and have just never picked it back up again due to working or graduate school. I miss bread-making, and my arms need a good workout, haha. 

The second goal will be to use up old seeds for the 2023 Garden. When we did our de-clutter, my mom and I found bags upon bags of seeds from previous years. Rather than buying in fresh seed, I'd like to use up this old seed and get it out of my house for good. I may start some indoors again, especially those which I suspect might not germinate. 

Practice Goals

I've been keeping up with my French on and off over the past couple of years, and I've discovered that I'm starting to gain some fluency. Therefore, I'm making a goal to practice French at least once a week so I can work towards greater proficiency in the language. 

I also would like to practice my dulcimer and my choir music at least one day of the week. Choir has become *quite* complicated, and I'm unsure of how long I'll be staying in after this season is over. But I definitely want to get proficient at playing my dulcimer so I can play at parties and events, or with other people. 

Quarterly Crafting Goals

This section is a little different because rather than doing a yearly goal for my crafting, I decided to do quarterly projects instead. This will allow for two things: boredom and project complications. And maybe a completion or two, haha. 

Between January and March, I'll be working on two projects. 

The first is what I call my "Mums afghan", which features large crochet mum flowers on a granny-square kind of background. I had started this crochet afghan years ago as a project to help occupy myself during a difficult family visit. Now I'm using it as a "stash-busting" project for the acrylic yarns I still have hanging around, since I've grown to dislike how acrylic feels. 

I have worked one complete "strip" of blocks with a pink mum flowers on a purple background. Since I have more pink than purple, I'm now going to reverse the colors to make a strip with purple mum flowers and a pink background. Once I exhaust those, then I'll experiment with other similar colors, like light blue. My biggest fear, however, is that I won't have enough scrap yarn to finish the afghan, or even do a lap afghan. I'll continue until I run out of yarn, and then I'll figure out what to do. 

The second project is a scrappy quilt, my second. As I mentioned earlier, when my mom and I went through our craft supplies, I inherited a lot of fabric scraps. So many that they are spilling out all over the place. Something had to be done. Since I had some experience with scrappy quilts, I thought this would be my best option. Many of the scraps were strips, so I decided to create a pattern with a lot of stripe blocks. I'm currently experimenting with block patterns to see what will work best with what I have on hand. I also got a lot of quilting supplies over Christmas, which will help the project along tremendously. 

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And...that wraps up 2022! And now, I'd love to hear from you! What sort of projects have you all been experimenting with? Any new resolutions that you care to share/  

I hope that you all had a very blessed Christmastide, and I hope to see you all in the coming year! 

Old-fashionably yours, 

Catherine