Knitting Pretty

This is one of my first big knitting projects, and I think it counts as really big since I wasn't following the pattern exactly this time. I took a pattern for a duck, and adjusted it to make a hokie bird for the youngest son of some friends of mine, Hyrum and Bethany Bronson. Hyrum went to Virginia Tech, and graduated, and got a job in Florida and moved away. With so little time in Blacksburg, little Samuel wouldn't have a whole lot of time to really become a hokie fan, so I thought that knitting him a hokie bird as a toy would be a good step in the right direction to help him in becoming a true hokie fan after the order of his father! It took me a long time and a lot of trying again, undoing, and figuring things out to be able to make this hokie bird. I even undid the head after i had stuffed it and sewn it up because James said that the eyes needed to have eye whites; I had only sewn in little blue dots. So this hokie bird gets to count as one of my major knitting accomplishments, and one that I had a lot of fun with. It might just count as the transition between smaller knitting projects, like hats and scarves, and moving on to things like socks and sweaters! That, and the afghan I finished not too long ago for my nephew. I've been having fun figuring out this whole knitting things. Go fighting gobbler that was knit by me, right?

Goal Setting

We are plotting to do better with goal setting and self-improvement type stuff. James made some check sheets for us to use to make ourselves accountable, with places to write in the goals, and report how we did each day, he was suggesting using smiley and frowny faces as our method of reporting if we accomplished the goal or not. This seems like a good idea for me - to have it all written out and reporting regularly so I don't forget or get confused with things. James will probably benefit from having more accountability too.
Some of the things I want to work on include writing at least thirty minutes a day working on the novel I am writing (Abish), figuring out more about how to do a decent housekeeping schedule, learning more about knitting and working on that, and reading more just for fun now that I'm not in school anymore and don't have to read assignments for class all the time. I also want to read in Spanish at least a little bit each day and keep the language in my head. I also need to figure out how to keep a better attitude and not be so down on myself, but I'm not entirely sure how to go about doing that, or how to measure that as a goal. Maybe just keeping more evidence of the goals I am working on will help me not to have such a negative attitude - more evidence that I am doing okay with things.