Fa La La…

‘Tis the season, or so they say.

As much as I try hard to avoid stress this time of year, after all, I’m actually not traveling anywhere and teaching, no one hires you to teach Christmas week, somehow the energy of the season grabs hold and I still feel rushed and not on top of things.

It isn’t like I bake.  Don’t need the calories, besides everyone else bakes, so I get the calories anyway.  Like my friend Misa with her cashew and peanut brittle with bacon!  OMG…

I don’t have family coming for Christmas, I never do.  So I don’t even have to really cook.  We go to them.

My house is moderately clean because I have to clean it anyway, I have two fluffy dogs.  And boys in the bathroom. 🙂

So I do my own celebration of the season, by weaving dishtowels as gifts.

Done.

I send a holiday letter to 150 friends and relatives.

Done.  (They went out this morning, and if you want to read it click here.)

I’ve been working on our family photo albums, my gift to my family, from the 1970’s on for a few years now, all in PowerPoint, and I just added years 2000-2002.

Done.  (I will say that with the invention of the digital camera, which my husband obtained in 2000, the volume of photos to cull through has increased exponentially, and so have the pages to the album.  He is a great photographer, and 2002 alone has 112 pages.)

My friend Candiss was here last week, and we did some fun shopping together and though I bought very little on our trip around Morristown, I came home coveting the most gorgeous vintage leather motorcycle jacket from Michael Kohrs, at Century 21, for a mere $279 (down from $600) and two days later I ended up back at Century 21 to buy myself an early Christmas present.  Talk about coat porn…  Sigh…

And to make my holiday complete, my fun creative and thoroughly entertaining daughter is home from college.  She always has some amazing surprise thing she is working on, and this trip home is no exception.  Apparently, who knew, she has always longed for someone to give her a totally tacky Christmas sweater.  Since no one has obliged, again, who knew, she decided that the only way to get one was to make one herself.  So she crocheted a sweater blank, and then crocheted all the little do-dads that make a holiday sweater tacky.  She added all kinds of beads and fluffy yarns, and found at Michael’s a couple strands of battery operated lights that she attached to the front and back of the sweater.  ‘Tis the season!

I am sooooo looking forward to January.  It is my most favorite month, mostly because it is 31 days, and because it is quiet, and there is ridiculously little on the calendar.  It is my month to really work uninterrupted in the studio.  I have 12 looms to clear, (no joke but that does include long complex inkle loom warps), and the panels for a felted jacket to finish.   I have a dyed warp ready to put on one of the only empty looms I have, and I want to get the dyepots going again.  Those are my goals for January.  We’ll see how far I get…

Meanwhile, as the year closes, thank you to all my loyal readers, I’ve been writing this blog since December 2008 and it has been a wonderful journey.  Thanks for the comments, they mean the world to me, and I hope all of you have good health in the New Year and plenty of opportunities for creative adventures and fiber fantasies.  And for those who live local to me in Northern NJ, who don’t weave but would love to learn, there are still a couple openings in the beginning weaving class I’m teaching January 11, in Mendham, NJ for the Jockey Hollow Weavers Guild.  It is a one day class.  I provide the looms. For more information click here.

Have a great holiday, Christmas, Solstice, Hanukkah, whatever you celebrate, or just enjoy the energy of December.  Happy healthy 2014.

Daryl (and family)