I can blog late on Christmas morning because something very strange is happening at my house. Every child is doing something fun, and quiet. Reading, playing a puzzle, jumping on a pogo stick, it's a Christmas Miracle!

[Oh, wait, a couple of them are erm, discussing whose candy is whose. That's what you get with chocolate for breakfast.]

I have been so spotty of blog of late and so -- scattered -- in general that I figured I'd just do lots of pictures. But then I started typing and. . . well, I get going. This has been the most difficult year I can remember in a long while. Nothing really terrible happened to me or mine, just lots of hard stuff right after another and I've been surprised at how much it took the wind out of my sails. So I hung on to what I could -- my family, some fiber, food and music, and I'm looking forward to the New Year.

Enjoy these promised pics, and I hope you and yours are healthy and happy, and you have much good to look at now as well as to look forward to.


Suzee was right -- we were in Tennessee. This tree came from my uncle's farm -- my kids helped cut it down -- and you can't pay for that kind of stuff. After the kids decorated, we hung out.
My mom took us to a an ice show at Opryland. It was cold enough to remind me why I don't live somewhere more northerly.

Thing 4 gave in to an impulse I completely understood:


In August, I thought I'd never see my father alive again. I was wrong. I'm very glad.


I finished my first round of 3-ply yarn. The brown is local Merino, the fawn black Bluefaced Leicester, and the white some Sheepshed mill ends, so there's some mohair.


My plying needs work.


Christmas joys involve lots of boinging around at our house.


Finally, while these are emphatically Not For Christmas, they're merely a Kitchener away from being done and on Thing 1's cold little feet. As I despise knitting socks, I'm pleased.


Merry, merry.

Notes from Somewhere Else

Clues about where the children and I are? Well, there's a lot of churches here, we just had a big lunch yesterday with my cousins and their children and my aunt and uncle, wild turkeys are walking outside of my window, we're going to spend the night at the farm I used to mosey around on as a child, and my children just put up a cedar tree in my mother's house that we cut on another relative's farm.

It's lovely, but the pictures are going to have to wait as my cable is at home, but there is actual knitting content -- I'm 50% through a sock. Yes, it is the only thing I can think of to knit right now, and Thing 1 is more than impatient for it, having walked through and then outgrown her only other pair of handknit. These are squooshy and soft, knit out of Cleckheaton Tapestry in some mix of blues and purples, and she'll love them.

I even did some spinning last night, even though I'd left the yarn guide that fits on the flyer at home. I MacGyvered a guide out of my wedding ring and a twist tie, and it's workable. I just hope I can find that little piece at home where I wrapped it safely to bring on this trip. . .

So even though I have about 28 papers to grade, this is shaping up to be a very nice pre-holiday family break. I hope you and yours are as relaxed.