And so my New Year's resolution is resolved. I took one new class a month - cooking, yoga, tea class, lino cutting, rock climbing, dark room lessons, glass fusing, wines of New Zealand, Buddhist teaching, paragliding, book binding, and pottery.

But sometimes the things you already know do just fine.

Cat & a scrap quilt: A fitting end to the best year of my life.

Doesn't the past tense delight the crafting soul? I knit a blanket. Not will knit, to be knit, knitting.

Fifty two thousand four hundred and sixty knits and purls are in the past.

Craft with yarn that I didn't have to make: $2.99 at Goodwill

My parents live this life the way it must be lived. Fearlessly and counterculturally, with edges and humour, tenacity and the right doses of cynicism. Thus, aphorisms abound:

"My greatest goal in life is to be a bum, but I could never afford it." - Dad

Plastic gold frame: $0, roadside find

Paper and lettering: $0, scraps and destash

Snapshot mantra: $.29 developing fee

Being born to my momma and dad: $0, gift from God

I live the uncluttered life. I don't keep a single e-mail, hardly a scrap of sentimental paper, never a stored phone message, course readers and old assignments have long been reincarnated as toilet paper, and lord knows there's hardly anything other than the bare minimum kicking around between my ears.

Yet, the treasures accumulate. I can't help it. My little garbages are my joy. I cannot be so ruthless with them. At all.

35mm slide case: $2.99 at Goodwill

This post is about nothing other than my 12 minute journey to Shoppers to buy $4.49 worth of light bulbs. So terribly onerous, I know. One might understand why I spent 3 months in the dark. Next mission? Fill my fishy bank with future light bulb funds.

Incandescence: $4.49

Pashmina: $0, gift brought from Afghanistan

Fish: $1 at Dollarama

My skin lacks what the dictionary would call 'an intensity of colour'. (Read: I'm most pale, if not translucent). If I have a passing thought about sunshine I spawn freckles the way Octomom yields children. So fast and furious one can hardly keep track.

And yet, despite Scandinavian blood and Canadian East Coast rearing, I live and die for the tropical aesthetic.

Mug: $2.99 USD, ABC Stores in Honolulu.

Lately I've been enjoying the wit of others far more than my own. My friends and the Internet have been slaying me. Though I did spit on my computer when the image of me in a drop-in hip hop class crossed my mind, for the love of pleather chairs humans are a strange and curious kind.

Here goes:

So a virus walks into a bar. The bartender says, "We don't serve viruses here." The virus replaces the bartender and says, "Well, now we do."

So an infectious disease walks into a bar. And the bartender says, "We don't serve infectious diseases here." The infectious disease scoffs, "Well you're not a very good host."

Two bacteria walk into a bar. The bartender says, "We don't serve bacteria here." The bacteria say, "But we work here, we're staph."

Schroedinger's Cat walks into a bar . . . and doesn't.

Okay, so I will never, ever be able to read this post again without having fits and convulsions.

Area rug: $0, not at all related to anything

The saddest part about stayin' still is that your friends are always leaving.

Japan, Hawaii, India, East Coast, West Coast, Estonia, West Virgina, Australia, Edmonton - take care of the people I love and I'll take care of their junk.

Tin can & two rubber bands: $0, parting gift from Rohan

At what age are you just too darned old to sleep with stuffed animals?

Regardless, I wish this girl would hurry up and finish my paper so I can get back to blogging and other such amusing things.

Giraffe: 23rd birthday gift

Intellectual torture: Too expensive to mention on a blog with this name

These are my prison walls.

View from my desk: $4 worth of curtains from an auction.

I think this snapshot says much about my interest in developing time management skills.

Clock face: $0, roadside find

I really haven't been acting much like myself lately. It's pretty upsetting, really. I touched some business suits at the department store without shuddering, paid someone else to cut my hair, and forked out full retail price for this picture frame.

If I wasn't too old for it, I'd swear I had early onset maturity.

Postcards: $3/each at Mori Art Gallery, Tokyo

Frame: $24.99 at Black's

Wall space: None left

I was a mere baby of 21 when I arrived at Union Station with a touch under $600, a cat that hadn't peed in 27 hours, and no place to live. Grand images of living in a big weird city sustained me. I dreamed of a city that would receive my dream of wearing a giraffe print skirt. Toronto crushed me fast. Oh so bland and grey this city is.

Egg cups: $.49/ea at Goodwill

Wooden candle holder: $0, roadside find

Rare are my feelings of betrayal. However, I felt like a triple-crossed Shakespearian heroine the day the Dollarama jacked their prices to $1.25, $1.50, and $2. Dollarama Plus they called it. Judas kiss I called it.

But I still can't resist.

Pointy Buddha: $1.25 at Dollarama

Fat Buddha: $1.50 at Dollarama

Iron Buddha: Souvenir (therefore price is no object)

And so you've reached the end of my scheduled posts. The dirty secret is that I've been in Japan and I'm just about to head to Hawaii. Okay, it's not a dirty secret because I've been yapping about it non-stop for three months. However, despite my best pre-blog efforts I must leave you with a 10 day electronic silence. Perhaps longer if Hawaii treats me too well . . .

In the meantime, go visit Laura and Emily and they can help you out with Christmas shopping.