We interrupt this broadcast.....

Unfortunately our Christmas prep was rudely interrupted by a destructive ice storm. We had a lot of tree damage (detailed here, if you're interested: http://cynthiadean.blogspot.com/2007/12/ice-storm-2007.html) and a relatively brief loss of power. The kids have been out of school for a week, though, and that has really put a monkey wrench in my shopping / knitting / mailing / planning for the season.

Ah, well. We'll muddle through somehow, and the fun memories will probably be the ones that last.

Here's one in the making:


The snowman stocking is for George -- he drew the snowman; I appliqued it. It is hanging in front of a stocking my mother made for me some 40 years ago. I've been "meaning to" make a stocking for George for six years; for the last four I've been "meaning to" make one for Charlotte, too. This year I decided it was time to get down to business.

Charlotte and I haven't begun the design process yet. She doesn't make representational drawings, so we might choose a picture from one of our Christmas books. We'll see. I'm limited by the colors of wool felt I have on hand. In fact, George and I started out to make a nutcracker, but I don't have black and George couldn't accept boots & hat of any other color. I was really proud of him for suggesting the snowman instead of pitching a fit.

Of course it then turned out that I didn't have any black seed beads to be the lumps of coal. I went to Michaels to find some, only to remember that they have a crummy selection of seed beads, mostly giant bags of one color. Since I didn't have time to go to Hobby Lobby where I could get a small tube of black that I might possibly use up in this lifetime, I opted for this assortment:

24 colors, 8 grams of each color -- it seemed like a pretty good choice to me. And in fact it still does, but when I went to open it I found this:


which really bugs me. The label was obviously designed to hide the giant gap in the middle -- it was even taped down so you couldn't possibly shift it and notice that the bead containers were about 25% smaller than the package implies. I kind of think that if they felt they had to pad it that much, maybe it wasn't a good deal after all.

I'm trying to get past it, though. Merry Christmas!