yellow bird knits: 12.09

well, 2009 is all but over. as always, i am in a nostalgic mood. usually, the passing of the year is a slightly despondent and bittersweet time. there is always something i wish i had done, or somewhere i wished i had been. but, to my utter surprise, this year is different. 2009 has been a wonderful year [i'm including the last few months of 2008 in that as well]. i regret very little, and have made so many lovely memories throughout the year.
here are some of the highlights:

i returned to uni, something i wasnt quite sure i would ever do, and actually succeeded in my courses.
i took a month off from school and traveled from coast to coast, living out of a car.
i enrolled in art classes, bringing back the one thing that had long been missing from my life.
i passed a lovely winter living with the bears.
i spent a magical summer in flag; living, camping, and partying with my indie computer programmers, artistic druggies, and vagabond musicians.
i lived and studied in london for an autumn full of clubs, pub crawls, art, and laughing.
my knitting skills progressed and ran rampant, dominating my life.
i've ridden a motorcycle, dove off a cliff, explored underground caves, learned to swim, learned to surf, learned to ski, learned to ride a bicycle, gone skinny dipping, seen harry potter naked, flown across an ocean, and flown a kite.
i've rented my first apartment, left american soil for the first time, lived in a foreign country, and studied in a foreign country.
i've thrown a pot, painted a picture, learned digital photography, relearned manual photography, and started writing again.

all in all, i think i did well.

in the autumn of 2008, when i returned to school, a friend told me that, for me, this was the year for change. i took that to heart. i decided i was going to start living my life and make some changes. it was in that time that i actively began searching for my yellow bird. though i haven't found it, i feel i am so much closer than i was a year ago. i have had an amazing year, one of the best, but i am not sad to see it go. 2010 brings paris, a summer spent traveling, and a return to flagstaff, plus so many surprises that i cant even begin to know. but i am open, i'm just going to relax and let 2010 take me where it will. that's how 2009 worked out so well!

i decided to post a few pictures from everywhere i've been in the past fourteen months, i'm cheating and including a bit of 2008. most of these havent been seen before, since i wasnt blogging excessively when i took them. i tried not to include many photos with other people, i havent asked if its okay to put their pictures online. but i did include my sisters, in the vegas section!

alabama.