Less Eating, More Knitting!

Read that somewhere on one of the blogs I follow and this is what I hope to do myself this year!
Determined to stick with weight-watchers and lose weight I slipped a bit - inevitably - over the festive period but now as we gradually return to "normal" its back to routine in the kitchen ..

 OK so I start with a photograph of a very chocolately and HUGE "mud pie"!
BUT its not for me/us!
My brother asked me to kindly make one for his friend's 30th birthday celebrations over this weekend as its her favourite dessert having shared one with David on his last birthday.
It is very VERY rich - and full of calories!  600ml of fresh double cream, 200ml of Bailey's and lets not count the "chocolate" and marshmallows!  its VERY rich and for a special occasion only.
It is, I'm told, to serve ten people ..

On the knitting front - Merrion from Tweed is done! and I'm wearing it too!

Its a lovely cardigan - a bit slow to knit on account of the frequent changes of colours for the stripe sequence which varies to give blocks of colour and some are just single rows - the needles are small too but its an interesting knitting and enough going on to keep you on your toes!
I resolved to FINISH this cardigan before starting anything new and next to go OTN's is the lovely grey chevron "Killing III" jumper - can't wait!

Finally! I love books and in the local The Works, I came across this!

and thought what a useful addition to my knitting bag!  at £2.99 its worth it for those moments when you don't have the ipad to hand to look it up and I spent ages in the shop looking at the questions and thinking "how USEFUL!" - if you have a branch of this discount shop, take a look and see if you can get one.

This weekend we take our no.1.son "home" or back to Uni - I can hardly believe its been a month since we were preparing to collect him!  I almost want to keep him here a little longer, but HE is ready to go!  Beginning to find being at home-with-parents a bit tiresome and tedious I think!
I'm pleased that he does enjoy his studies and life away from home, I shall miss him, obviously, but glad that he WANTS to develop his independance.

DH on the otherhand is possibly going to be retired from work in the coming weeks and I shall have another upheaval as we learn to adapt to his being at home f/t and losing his income.
Ordinarily at his age, he would be retiring and enjoying this time of life in a child-free zone, but with us being his second family he still has dependant children so money could become very tight this year as we see our no.2.son through his final year at 6th form collecge (and hopefully onto Uni to study English end of year).

My resolutions for this year are:
To knit more GARMENTS.
To finish something before starting something new/different.
To watch less tv and read more books.
To lose weight and eat sensibly.
To sew again.
I aim to plan and organise myself too, I shall knit/sew what I NEED rather than what I see and think : "I wants one too!"
I want also to keep up to date with my Reader and to join in and comment too, I may cut back on some of the older subscriptions and those that I barely flick through and concentrate on a new revised set of blogs that I currently enjoy.
I have purchased several "Craftsy" classes too and want to aim to work through this to enjoy both the learning experience and the making of something "new" - first on the list is the lovely beaded shawl but I MUST be mindful of my resolve to FINISH something before starting NEW and thus my 5-in-1 adventure gloves need to be completed before I get carried away with pre-threading squillions of lovely beads and unwrapping KSH yarn!

Good luck to everyone with your resolutions or plans for 2013 x