Merry Christmas!

I would like to wish everybody who is reading this, and, of course, everybody out there in the entire world, a Merry Christmas, whether you celebrate or not. Who is not hoping it will be a more peaceful year ahead of us?

My husband is a fan of candle-driven pyramids, and we have two, both of which are not out and taking his attention to keep them in motion. So besides the choir of angels (barely visible in the background) Christmas decoration is now in full swing. 

As has been the tradition in my family since my son was very young we had our family celebration yesterday evening already, and today is a severe work day for my husband, who is busy with services and all the necessary. A few times I would take my son to the Olympic pool in Munich in the morning of the 24th, keeping us out from my husband's feet when he was busy with all his preparations, especially in years when there was a children's musical to be performed in the afternoon service. This was before my son could participate in that. It used to be really quiet at the pool, and I always enjoyed that outing. Too bad he is too grown up now to come on a trip with me nowadays (but he did write me a very nice letter for Christmas, which touched me deeply.) If I remember correctly, last year I was working, but today being a Sunday that is not necessary, and as I have said before, my next (and last) days of work are Wednesday and after. So I now have time to start preparing dinner that will be served when my husband is finished and we will have our Senegalese guest over, who has been joining us for Christmas dinners for several years now. A little bit of time to reminisce a bit more, though.

Yesterday, as I was scrolling through pictures, I found this very old picture, which must have been scanned from a paper print, from way back then, when our group of exchange students from the Charlotte Exchange Student Program was on a trip west at the end of the year. Honestly, I had not remembered that I had this picture, though I did remember that we had stopped in San Francisco. I came back from that visit with a sweatshirt I had bought in Sausalito, where I didn't even go this time around...

What a terrible haircut I had - and you can't see how ugly my glasses were, thank goodness. Another picture I found was this:

I do remember taking that one - I was out on a walk on the 24th, it was sunny and too warm for the season and I saw this little dandelion and imagined I would write a children's book with a story of "The Little Dandelion who wanted to Celebrate Christmas". Never happened...

The good thing about celebrating a day before is that one is basically 'done' on the real day, and in earlier years I used to be completely relaxed in case I still needed to do a bit of shopping for the upcoming days when the supermarkets would be closed. Today, Sunday, I could just sit down in leisure and play with my sewing machine. 

I finished the baby quilt I have made using up the blocks from my aborted first attempt at making a temperature quilt. It hasn't been given to the child yet, but I am happy with it. Actually, I was amazed at how lively the colors shine in the quilt, which seemed to suggest that it wasn't a bad choice of color range after all - although you can't see it well on the picture.

But it was over-intellectual in how I was trying to incorporate an average temperature in the large triangles. Now I am glad it's found a purpose, nine single blocks remaining that will be the background for my contribution to the EQA-Birds-Challenge coming up.

And I continued on my piece that will be entered for Brno. Still some work to do, and some issues to figure out, but I was happy stitching.

Thanks for following this blog, wishing you a peaceful and quiet time and change of year!