19 Favorites of 2019

In this episode, I share 19 of my “favorites” from 2019. The categories are wide ranging, but I hope you’ll enjoy it!

What are your favorites from this year? If you had something that really tickled you in the past twelve months, I’d love to hear about it! Please leave a comment here or on the YouTube video!

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(These may not be in the same order as I mentioned them in the video! And I’ve added a list of all of my audiobooks I listened to this year in a separate post.)

Favorite Knitting Project – My Soldotna pullover.

Favorite Knit that I’ve Most Used – My Hedgewitch Shawl.

Favorite Commercially Made Garment – A gray, open front, really drapey cardigan by Sonoma from Kohl’s. (I’m pretty sure it is this one, in the Hazy Night Heather color. I wear it a TON!)

Favorite Lip Balm – Tuft Woolens Luxury Lip Balm in the Cider Donut flavor/scent. This was their Needles Up Rhinebeck special flavor, but they have loads more!

Favorite Self-Care Practice – Doing a weekly manicure using Color Street dry nail polish strips! So much fun!

Favorite New Fiber Tool – My Classy Spindle from Classy Squid Fiber Co.

Favorite New Knitwear Accessory – My Shawl Cuff from Birdie Parker Designs. Love her stuff so much!

Favorite Beer – Helltown Brewing Buffy Hazy IPA (which has an IBU of 33…I just saw that on the website! LOL). (All of their beers are pretty awesome. Mischevious Brown is my hubby’s fave.)

Favorite Adult Bevvie – A Maple Old Fashioned, which I had a few times when I was out places, but I haven’t tried making one at home yet. Here’s a recipe I found for it though if you want to try!

Favorite Coffee – Dark Side Coffee Roasters from Ligonier, PA – Bali Blue Moon. Love!

Favorite Non-Knitting Accessory – A small purse I got from raoul and simone, a cool artisan gift shop in Percé , Quebec, on our trip this fall around the Gaspé Peninsula. So many cool things there, and all of them made by artisans from Quebec.

Favorite Trip I Took this Year – Our motorcycle trip in May down the southern half of the Blue Ridge Parkway (from Fancy Gap, VA to Cherokee, NC) including the Tail of the Dragon and other fun, twisty, mountainous roads! (Our other big motorcycle trip that we took this fall, around the Gaspé Peninsula in Quebec, was also quite awesome, but from a riding perspective, the BRP trip was a ton of fun and technically more challenging.)

Favorite Unique Experience – There are two, both occurred on our Gaspé Peninsula trip. One, seeing a bear up close and personal while coming back from a light house walk in Percé; the other was on our trip north, while in New Hampshire, and going to the top of Mt. Washington, where I got to experience 70ish mph winds at the summit…and of course had to knit there!

Favorite Concert – We saw Eileen Ivers twice this year, and both times she was amazing, as she always is! Really high energy Irish fiddling music.

Favorite Non-Fiction Book – It’s actual one of The Great Courses available on Audible: Food: A Cultural Culinary History, by Ken Albala. So very interesting and really thorough. Goes very deeply into history and then ties in food related to the historical periods.

Favorite Novel – Mr. Rochester, by Sarah Shoemaker. Such a fun, well-crafted story of Edward Rochester’s life, running parallel to the story of Jane Eyre. Definitely recommend it for anyone who is a Jane Eyre fan!

Favorite New-to-Me Author – Helen Russell. She wrote A Year of Living Danishly, Leap Year, and The Atlas of Happiness. I listened to all three of them this year and really enjoyed them all. She’s got a wonderful way of storytelling and a conversational tone to her writing, with a decidedly British sense of humor.

[For a complete list of my 2019 books, see this next post.]

Favorite Business Accomplishment – It was a wonderful year for FDW, but the thing I’m most chuffed about is my Twelve Days of Christmas colorway, which was my first 12 stripe colorway! (Until now, the most stripes I’ve done was 8.) (Also, sorry, but there is no more of it in the shop for this year!)

Favorite Family Moment – There are two: being with my mom back in February when she had her hip replacement surgery and getting to have so much one-on-one time with her; and getting to meet up with my half brother and his wife for the first time in over 40 years while we were on our Blue Ridge Parkway trip. Nothing is more important than time with family, something I am trying to be more intentional about acting on in the coming year and beyond.