Made things, with bonus cat and bonus finger
So to catch up...
I finished two hats, the red one for my BIL, the blue one for my MIL. The grey pile in the basket is for my FIL. I'm not making scarves, they asked for aprons. Everything is on track. I finished the pillow because new(ish) couch needed more pillows. The warm colors fit the aesthetic we're going for. Traditional Eclectic is the compromise we settled on. What doesn't fit the living room right now is my Cottagecore corner, but in the new year I'm going to switch that over and move my Cottage-ness to the sewing room/my new office. After mumble mumble years in this space I want it to both look like an actual place and not a jumble and have my own space without compromise. I'm old and growing cranky in it.
My hockey team is not doing well, sigh
I'm in an odd space of the year right now. We're Pagan, so we don't celebrate the usual holidays, more or less. I like to call myself a Pagan in the Episcopal tradition, meaning I don't celebrate the usual but when I do it tends to be very traditional and kind of New England preppy. It's the same stuff, mostly, just on a different day. To that end we no longer do Thanksgiving, because when you really look at it it's a shit holiday from the 1940's that celebrates gratitude for what turned out to be genocide, so you know, no. We've decided to merge it with the Yule holiday, aka the Winter Solstice/longest night of the year/Pagan Christmas more or less. The turkey is still in the freezer along with the cranberries. We'll have our feast then, and give proper thanks for the end of the year. I know the Pagan calendar says that Samhain aka Halloween, is the proper end of the year, but we're not even done harvesting here by then. So maybe in Britain but not in Oregon. Yule fits.
Which means for us "Thanksgiving" is really Parade Day, because I stop the world to watch the Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade, the same as I used to with my Grandmother. After that we spend the weekend putting the garden to bed. There's a pile of sprinkler bits I get to sort over the next few days, and the frost cloth is over the flowers. Over the next few weeks I'll slowly turn the house over toward Yule, baking and decorating and shopping. And then the Yule season starts with Yule itself, then Book Night where we exchange, well, books. Then Christmas even and Die Hard (yes, it's a Christmas movie) and then Christmas with A Boy Called Christmas and then all the traditional things you would expect from the Christmas Season, only in January, the darkest part of the year, leading up to Imbolc/Candlemas on February 1st, when we actually exchange gifts. This keeps all the lights/colors/magic around longer and through the gray, depressing bits.
And as part of updating the house I will be updating the blog. Stay tuned.