Obsessions

Christmas was nice and relaxing. I got nice gifts, but I wasn't really focused on that end of it this time around. Not that I ever really am, but this year it was barely a blip. I enjoyed giving all of the women and girls their scarves, and they all seemed to enjoy them and the fact that they were made specifically for them. And I got all of the colors right, which made it even better.

I finished the last scarf to be given on Christmas that day, and my parents couldn't have been happier to have me sitting on their couch knitting while we visited. It was enough to get mom to pick her wallpaper box project up for a while too. They were even happier when I left the house with tons of calico for future quiltmaking projects.

I have come to crafts late in my life. I did a little sewing and other needlework when I was a child, but it never really stuck. I doodle from time to time, but I don't draw very well or very often. My main creative outlet for most of my life has been my writing, and most people don't see that. I've had a handful of pieces published, but those have been a few years ago at their most recent.

Suffice to say, they were impressed by my little quilt, and are thrilled that I am doing creative things with my hands. Along with the fabric, I took a small stack of decade-old quilting magazines and have spent the past couple of days looking through them and trying to decide whether I could actually make any of them and if I would have the patience to quilt one rather than simply tying it, and where on earth I could find room for a quilting frame. Like I said, obsessions.

I still need to make the scarf for my sister-abroad, in the event that she does come back here any time soon, or so that I can ship it off to her before July.

People kept asking if I was going to give the quilt I just finished to my new nephew. I heard something on Christmas that made me able to give a definitive "NO" to the question. My mother made my first nephew a beautiful quilt when he was born. She worked on it throughout my sister's pregnancy and put a lot of symbolic and hard-to-find fabrics into it, not to mention time and energy. Apparently it has either been lost or given away. Not by the two-year-old, mind. So, no, I won't be giving my first quilt to my brand new nephew. For all I know, they don't even still have the scarves I gave them a month ago.

I think I need to get bundled up and take a hike somewhere. I've been in the house all day, tense about whether there would be mischief. Now I am free and I think I'll take advantage of it.

Oh, saw Mona Lisa Smile yesterday. It was another weepy, but it was good. She may be smiling even if she isn't happy, post-WWII opportunities for women, etc. The girdle as a symbol of freedom. I sat in the dark, ate popcorn, got weepy, and laughed out loud a couple of times. It was a good afternoon.

Hope everyone to whom it applies had a happy and relaxing holiday.