Between the Old Year and the New

The week between Christmas and New Year's Day always seems busy to me.  It's a catch-up time for unfinished things, especially ones that need to be finished before January comes.  And then there's planning and preparing for the coming year, particularly as regards quilting, family history research, and blogging for both.

Burgoyne Surrounded is not one of those essential things, but the top is finished as far as the extra blocks.

It is now four blocks by five blocks and measures 75" x 94", which seems seems huge.  My husband and I sleep in a queen-size bed and my thought for this quilt is to add an applique border on the long side to make it closer to 82" x 94" so I can lay it horizontally across the bed.  Neither of us likes the weight of a quilt handing over the end of the bed, and I love having extra on the side so I can pull it up and wrap it around me.  So it might work

I'm envisioning the border across the top appliqued with oak leaves and acorns, which means I'm almost right back where I started two months ago when I decided against a border all the way around the smaller version of the quilt.  I think that must have felt too daunting to me at the time.

I have lots of  leftover 1½" squares and strips to be cut.  I don't know if I'll make another Burgoyne Surrounded quilt or not yet, but they'll become something.

For years now I've made my own purse-size calendar book.  Many years ago I bought one that worked perfectly but when the new year came, they weren't making that style any more.  So I made my own.  Closed, it measures ~4½" x 7". 

A couple of years ago I bought a ream of paper and took it to a binder who has a guillotine paper-cutter and a machine to punch holes in the edge.  Old school, I know, but I go with the idea that "if it ain't broke, don't fix it."  I'm also a person of habit and love consistency in some everyday things.  When the last week of the year rolls around and I don't have my calendar book finished, as happened this year, I feel rushed and focus my attention on just it.  Yes, it takes time to make it but I love it.  And now it's ready for 2023.

Christmas passed almost without my catching and enjoying it.

One of our favorite Christmas activities is going to Merry Tuba Christmas.  Thank goodness it was inside this year!  I love this experience for so many reasons.  The feeling of being inside a whale with the blubbery music all around fills me with wonder.  One of the other reasons I love it is because the audience is invited to sing along to some of the carols.  It reminds me of when I was a child and we sang from small booklets of carols.  Except with Merry Tuba Christmas, for someone who can hardly carry a tune, it's a great pleasure to know that the tubas are so much louder and cover any mistakes I make.

We baked Spritz cookies--so festive and delicious--

and made Buckeyes.  Yum!  From experience I now know that buckeyes are best with real butter (as opposed to vegan butter).

And the last event of the Christmas season came today when we visited the Nativity in the city.  It is a life-size or larger display of the Annunciation, of Mary and Joseph travelling to Bethlehem, of shepherds in the fields with their sheep, the Wise Men, Herod, and Mary and Joseph with the Baby.  My photos do not do justice to the atmosphere of the environment when in person among these displays.

This display has been set up every year since 1931 by State Auto Insurance.  For many years it was in front of the building, elevated in a narrow space between the sidewalk and the building.  It was okay but a few years ago they created a small park where they arrange the figures in groupings to create scenes.  It is amazing to me that a secular insurance company can create an environment that feels so special and spiritual, holy even.  There is a sense of hushed reverence and awe while in that little park.  

The weather now, in the 60s, feels like spring.  But on the Friday before Christmas we had snow and the temperature was -5 degrees with a "feels like" temperature of -32 degrees.  No doubt the 26 mph winds helped it feel so cold.  I think that's similar to what many experienced around the U.S., except, of course, the Buffalo area was worse.  I love the snow, not so much the negative temperatures.

This is the last post of 2022.  I would breathe a sigh of relief that the year is over but I'm not letting myself do that yet.  The way this year has gone, anything could happen in three more hours!  It ain't over till it's over, as they say.

Happy New Year to you!

--Nancy.