Christmas at Blue Moon

This afternoon is our holiday party. All of our extended blue moon family comes with their favourite dish to share and a white elephant gift to play that wicked fun who gets what present when game.  It is grand fun.

We ( Becky, she’s our party deco girl) decorated the barn earlier in the season. Lights hanging everywhere she could get them.

I especially like the ones on the back deck where the cookstoves are and these stocking ones by the break table.
Today we decided to mix things up a bit with the addition of a Christmas tree.  So… I went out obscenely early and cut one at our neighboring tree farm.  We spent the morning decorating our tree in the only way I saw fit.  It’s something I’ve been wanting to to do for years, so it’s kind of a Christmas wish come true. I do believe it’s also now the start of a tradition here.  We all had so much fun.
We used Pond Scum fun-fur and Quilla Silkmo for the garland, Happy go Lucky STR mini skeins, Jinglebell Rock Firestar top, Winter Solstice Luscious balls, chicken stitch markers left over from camp, smal skein of holiday angora and topped it all off with Saffron Surprise sock yarn starred with golden needles.
Way too much fun!  I love this tree. The Quilla silkmo looks like spider webs and the Pons Scum fur, moss. I think what tickles me most though are the Winter Solstice silk balls. I want several dozen of them for the tree in the house.

See? Isn’t it just loveliest tree? If you’re a knitter of course.

I’ll add in party pics later this afternoon. Both our our babies are going to be here.
and here we are:


As you can see a good time was had by all.  Kind of hard not to great friends good food ( we kind of rock the potluck) massive amounts of silliness all wrapped up in love. Dylan loved his new blue footed boobie friend and Paytan got her very first chicken. Up until this point it has been all about the monkey.
We thought it was time.

Ok I’m out. Blue Moon barn is closed on Christmas Eve Friday and then all weekend and the same will be true for the New Years weekend. We’’l be here Monday through Thursday next week.

We hope you all have a warm, safe and loving holiday with your loved ones.

On a Merry side note, the Holiday Gifting Chicken suggests that maybe if you know a procrastinator ( voice of fowl experience speaking) who still needs to buy a present for you (or perhaps you want to shower a fellow knitter with yarn), we have plenty o’ Rockin’ Sock Club membership and Blue Moon Fiber Arts gift certificates available.
Give the gift of good yarn, all year long. Bawk Bawk!

Merry Midwinter

It is an hour before midnight on the Winter Solstice and I am doing what I have done since I was a very little girl. I am basking in the light of our Christmas tree. The rest of the household is all tucked up cozy and warm in their beds and the house is dark except for our tree.
The night is quiet and peaceful and brimming with mystery. The moon shining all bright and full of itself outside after the eclipse the night before.  Oh yes,I do believe that is magic.
As a little girl I would wait until the house was all quiet and sleeping. I then would crawl out of my bed ( top bunk. no small feat) tip toe downstairs with my blanket find a cozy place under the tree and settle myself in.  Surrounded by a huge aromatic fir ablaze in light and adorned with my families history and memories in ornaments.  Bliss for this child. I absorbed the peace of all those twinkling lights in the dark, made up stories and finally sang myself to sleep.
Winter Solstice embodies the spirit of this season for me. The cold dark night. The longest darkest day of the year, cycling back ever so slowly towards the light.
And tonight I’m reveling in the wonder of us all celebrating our own beliefs, with our own traditions, in our own way,the light. As I sit all wrapped up in my blanket in front of this tree’s illuminating light in this darkest of nights.

Happy Solstice!

Contemplating white space

I had every intention of sitting here today and sharing with you my experience at the silk retreat and some thoughts on running events. I even have awesome pictures and a cool story.  As happens and is certainly my experience of late my plan has been thwarted. Mother nature has influenced my intention by decorating my world here in the hills of Scappoose with a fair amount of snow.
Our first snow of the season. 
We woke up on Sunday morning to a cascade of flurries gently collecting on limb and tree until there was the slightest blush of white everywhere. I love the first snow of the season it’s magical. I forget that quiet that descends with a snowy blanket.  As if each flake carries within it solitude, a silence that envelopes flake by flake.
Since Sunday I’ve been graced with the peace that snow brings with it and wondering why. Why do I feel cocooned in this bliss of white winter wonder? 
I know some of it is heart warming childhood memories. School closes, we stay home and we get to sled, ice skate on the canal buy moonlight, have cocoa and curl up with a book… . Magical.  Time is suspended, if only for the briefest moments.
As a woman with not a whole lot of time for herself just the idea of time suspended makes me want to weep in joy. I stood out in the woods yesterday right before the light of the day faded into evening and took in all of the white.  Took a deep cleansing breathe of frosty cold all the way down to my woolly clad toes. 
Filled my usually colourful self with white space.  Just about everywhere my eyes lit was white space.
Open, distinct, clear pure white space.
Shimmering with light and a whole lot of possibility.