Breathing Again

I have a confession to make. Around here, at this particular time of year, things go a little over the top.

We keep our tree up for the Twelve Days, so we don't get it until the weekend before Christmas.














In between decorating, there is The Baking. We've pared our cookie list down to five essentials, and then add on if the year permits. This year didn't . . .














. . . because there was a lot of this going on.





















(And this is your knitting picture for the day.)

Ordinarily, we engineer a break for this:














Orchestra Hall and the CSO's "Welcome Yule" concert. Instead, John ran a fever, so he and I stayed home and the healthy ones got to go. Still, it was a break of sorts.

Things reached a bit of a fevered peak on Christmas Eve at my sister's house. I was permitted to assist Clare with the little piratical rats from Dream Toys: A Collection of Knit and Crochet Fantastical Toys by Claire Garland (an early Christmas gift to Clare because she Really Needed It). Clare did the knitting. I got to sew up. Then she let me crochet the two tiny, tiny scarves and sew on the ears while she knit minute eye-patches to match the scarves (the rats were all of 3 inches long). Since we were pretty much past the eleventh hour, she also allowed me to embellish one of the two crowns she made from Interweave Knits Summer 2006 issue. This, upstairs in one of the cousin's bedrooms while the Christmas Eve family party gamboled on below. She felt strongly that, having knit for her uncles, aunts, grandparents, and older cousins, the younger four cousins should not be left lacking knitted gifts. She made it, too. Admittedly, she did the last row and bind off on one of the scarves after gifts were exchanged, but she finished it before we left the party.

Honestly, is it any wonder we need reminders to breathe?