A Triple-Craft Blogpost

I was born on the prairies where the wind blew free and there was nothing to break the light of the sun. I was born where there were no enclosures. --Geronimo

I'm sitting here wondering how we got to two days after Christmas all of a sudden. It's as though a giant hand swooped me up and dropped me here, blinking and in shock at the sudden change of surroundings. This happens to me every year: the anticipation of the holidays starts a couple of weeks before, and then: wham! I'm sitting on my parents' couch, full of treats, wading through the holiday hangover.

One of the other odd things about this is the time of year is that I suddenly get all fired up to finish lots of little projects, like this little family of felted owls. I actually started them this time last year when I was new at felting. After accidentally stabbing my fingers a couple of times, I decided it was time to give it a rest. This year, I pulled out those three blue blobs of felted wool and made them into a little happy family of owls:

I'm glad I didn't try to do full pupils on the adults. I'm not very good at eyes (things tend to turn out cross-eyed in my hands). I think they look much happier like this:

I also did a last-minute crocheted Christmas ornament with some leftover cotton from my Over and Over Top:

I used an old ornament from the thrift shop, one of those covered in a layer of nylon thread. After I cut it off, it looked like I had scalped Strawberry Shortcake. It was sorta disturbing, I gotta say:

Then, the night before we left for Winnipeg for my parents' house, I decided my backpack needed a bit of personality. It's amazing how much a bit of felt and some embroidery thread can cheer you up:

We flew out last Saturday, the 23rd of December. They say it's the busiest travel day of the year. I've done it so often that I hardly notice the difference. The scenery is always nice, though:

Every time I tell people I'm going to Winnipeg for Christmas, I get sort of a blank look and then some unimaginative (and usually rude) utterance about the one thing they know about Winnipeg: that it's cold, why would I go there? I'm getting kinda grumpy about it, because yeah, it's cold, but it's also my home. I wish people would be more respectful. And those wimps will never know the joy of a winter hockey game on the river:

Meanwhile, I finished my Pincha Shawl. I'm half-and-half about it. It's beautiful, but man, that yarn sheds a lot. I had seven balls of the stuff, but I quit after I six-and-a-quarter because I was so fed up with it.  I'm hoping that, after a couple of washes, it'll calm down:

I did have to do an emergency repair on the inner edge, which unravelled for some reason. I'm proud to say that I didn't panic... not too much. And the repair is completely invisible... for now. I'm hoping it holds up:

I do love its wing-like appearance. It even kinda looks like a bird from this angle:

That makes a triple-craft blogpost this week: felt, crochet, and knitting. Man, I'm good.

We're here for another couple of days, and I'm grateful. It's nice to be close to my parents, and it's nice to just put down all of my normal worries and relax a bit. It's like being given a blank canvas: it's clean and clear and a little bewildering, after trudging through the cluttered brain of my normal life. 

And yeah, it's cold. And it's home. And that's that.

I hope you had a Happy Holiday. Onward to the New Year.