Tis the Season

It's that time of year again, that time of year when I'm knitting gifts and therefore not showing you pictures until after the holidays. So, moving right along:

This year I'm making fair progress on the holiday preparations- since we're hosting family this year, I procured a tree (have I mentioned lately how much I love Freecycle?). It's even up and decorated. I know what they say about gift trees and branches, but in my book, it's better to know up front if you're going to have to improvise a missing piece of the tree stand or fabricate a replacement for a missing branch. But this tree was perfectly complete (and a vast improvement over the last free tree, which had a cracked base and occasionally enlivened the holiday preparations by collapsing- sometimes even without feline assistance).

There has also been wrapping. In another brilliant instance of forethought and planning I stuck a few old Christmas cards in the box with the bows and wrapping paper, and actually found my scalloping scissors. Voila, gift tags!


When I first started recycling old cards into gift tags, I'd only use the ones that were blank on the back. Then I figured out that a fine point Sharpie will write clearly even on slick card stock. It pleases me to give these cards another season in the sun (metaphorically speaking) as opposed to just throwing them out after the holidays. That it helps me justify my pack-rat tendencies is possibly less fortunate.

And, I've had help in the Christmas preparations. Woats was really gung ho about wrapping until she figured out that I wasn't going to let her sit on the wrapping paper, nor would I let her eat the Scotch tape. (I don't know where she gets the whole glue-sniffing thing from, but she adores anything sticky.) So she went and thoroughly inspected the bows. (I wouldn't let her eat off the sticky bits on the back of those, either. I'm so mean.)


Anyway, despite Woats' help, most of the presents are wrapped. Gifts for our young nephews are boxed up ready for mailing (thanks to a brain fart, I didn't get it done early enough to take them to the post office Saturday). I'm still a couple of gift tags ahead...though I'm sure there has to be another pile of old Christmas cards around here somewhere. I could go tear the place apart looking...but maybe I'll just knit a couple more rows first....