1. Bring new light to the old: keep working on the leftovers in my yarn stash (bead and button box, scrap bag etc.)

2. Explore new directions: try a new technique, color combination or work with new materials.

3. Share the love: who cares that Christmas is over? 'Tis always the season for handmade gifts and sharing your craft.

Now we all know that the trouble with new year's resolutions is that we often make them too grandiose and difficult to keep so that we end up feeling discouraged. In order to prevent this from happening, and also to help me stay focused, I decided to micro-size my project. I chose a hair clip as my canvas. This kept me from thinking too much or allowing myself too much time to fall into old patterns. Before you know it, you're done and have a lovely gift to share what you've learned, or a relatively painless example of what not to do next time.

I chose experimentation with colors and textures as my goal and limited my supplies to leftovers already in my stash. I wanted to really play with the personalities inherent in the yarn and see how they work together. I chose to work with knitting needles in garter stitch to keep the focus on the properties and colors of the yarns themselves but you could just as easily make this a foray into beading, crochet, embroidery or lace-making, this would be a neat project for scrumbles too. Once you get started your mind will race with possibilities! Just remember to keep the pattern simple and small so that you can eventually get it on your hair-clip without too much trouble.

My pattern goes like this:

1. Using 2 straight 5 mm (US 8) knitting needles cast on 16 stitches.

2. Work back and forth in garter stitch for 8 rows, changing colors as you see fit. For the hemp, cotton, mohair combination, I changed colors every two rows, joining at the edge and weaving in the ends. I spun the mohair and cotton myself in a class in college several years ago. That small experimental piece of mohair measuring a little over a yard was all that I spun of that yarn just to see what it felt like, but I couldn't bear to throw it away. Finally it's found its place in a project. For the fuzzy piece I was more experimental, holding strands together and picking up and leaving off colors in the middle of rows, I like how the multicolored ribbon and green fur fade into the background in parts and jump out in others.

3. Bind off and weave ends, or leave them loose and attach beads or braid into fringe.

4. Attach to clip. If you've bought hair clip back from a crafts store, these usually have holes at either end where you can sew your piece down, and you can also sew small stitches in the piece and wrap the remainder around the back of the clip a few times to hold it in place. If you don't like sewing or want some additional support, you can also hot-glue your knitting to a piece of cardboard and glue that to the clip. Or you can do what I ended up doing, which was hot-gluing my pieces onto ready-to-wear hair clips purchased at a dollar store.

5. Last but not least: don't forget to share the love. Give your finished products to friends, or better yet, invite a friend to make one with you. Tell a fellow crafter about the neat color, fiber, or stitch combination you've discovered. Chances are they will be just as excited about your new discovery as you are!