When You Have Evergreen Boughs

We have a delightful woman in our community who has been volunteering with the Homestead Foundation this year. A few months ago, she offered to lead a wreath-making workshop as a fundraiser for the Foundation. A group of us met at her house last evening where she helped each of us make a holiday wreath to bring home. Fortunately, we live right smack in the middle of an evergreen forest, so the raw materials were easy to come by.

I love mine:

I hung it on the door when I got home:

It occurred to me afterward that mine is more of a winter wreath than a Christmas wreath. That must have been my subconscious at work. I won’t have to take this down at the end of December unless it starts to dry out too much.

We had so much fun watching each person’s wreath take shape. Each one was unique and beautiful.

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I’ve spent most of the past two days running errands in town. I had a lot of catching up to do after 10 days away, and I’ve also been dealing with a sensitive personnel issue that called for face-to-face and phone conversations with several individuals. They were necessary and important, but I hadn’t factored them into my schedule. Will I be able to keep next week on track? We will find out.

I’ve got too many sewing projects underway right now. Part of the issue is that I am trying to keep things from stalling due to lack of materials—ironic, when my sewing area looks like a Joann Fabrics annex—which means that I’ve started about six different patterns. Nothing frustrates me like getting enthused about a new project, then having to wait for a week or two for some crucial component to arrive in the mail. My reasoning is that if I can’t work on Project A, I can move on to Project B for a while.

While I was in Seattle, I popped into the big Joann Fabrics store near the airport. I didn’t buy anything, but I did walk around and look at all the fabric we can’t get here in Kalispell. I’ve about given up finding anything I need at our store. This week, I was looking for zippers. If I found them in the right color, they were the wrong length, and vice-versa. And it seems that all of the things I want to make call for specialized notions.

</whining>

I haven’t cut any fabric for any of these projects yet, just the patterns, so I am going to choose the one that has the greatest chance of being completed (probably little boy hoodies) and finish that project before moving on to something else.

Today, though, I am going to can carrots. I use them in soups and stews over the winter and we are completely out of last year’s batch. I might do another batch of pumpkins tomorrow. I might as well do all the orange foods at once.