Lovelihood

This year's calendar was a simple print put behind glass in a simple clip frame, functioning as a not-so-white board. Packaged them with some neon crayons, which work brilliantly as dry-erase tools, and sent the off with the grandparents' gift packages. It would have been the quickest calendar I've made yet, had it not been for the turn-around time on the 8x10 prints.

Coming back from errands today, Bear lingered by the bike pile in the basement, straddled her own and gave me a silent, pleading look. So we strolled it down the street, her brother flying past us on his scooter, until she had her fill and steered herself back home.

Perhaps my favorite of the homemade decorations, these cardboard tube lanterns are so sweet, I've been stashing away spent toilet rolls to make up some more.

Tucked in with the Christmas goodies delivered to our porch today was a card bursting with a sampling of specimens from my parents' yard. That's a Christmas card I can get behind.

To fill the void that shipping out all the Christmas presents left, I cast on a jumble of stitches to make what I hope will be a quick hat. Nevermind that in the process of sifting through yarns and needles in various drawers and in-progress bins, I came across a dozen temporarily abandoned projects left to languish on needles I'd forgotten were part of my repertoire. Among the ranks: a sweater I started a decade ago in style that is no longer mine, a couple of scarves for The Mr. that never progressed past the cast-on, and a hat for some mystery recipient I can't quite place. So I've probably got no business starting a new knit, but, clearly, I have a history of ceding to knitting compulsions I can't realize.

Bear, known to hover around chess matches and abscond with unprotected rooks, was indulged with a game of her own. She played by her own rules while The Mr. played by actual ones, and she came to a quick checkmate. But she accepted defeat with the grace of someone who was happy just to be in the game.

Final touches on the gifts and then I'm handing it off to The Mr. for shipping, which I'm expecting to cost an arm and a leg. Because it always does. The gift tags got a fancy treatment with some hardware this year, and were printed on our brand new printer which, never having had fabric and children's fingers and cereal boxes fed through its rollers, still prints like a dream.