Christmas was as Christmas usually tends to be around here: hectic. There were plenty of ugly moments in the days leading up, including Daniel cutting his own hair and one of the older boys deciding to glue a Christmas card to the wall when they couldn’t find the tape.

However, there was a lot of beauty in there too.  I work at our church as a cantor/soloist, and really, is there anything more beautiful than Christmas Eve services??  And I was lucky enough to be a part of FOUR of them!  And then Mass on Christmas morning.  Christmas Mass at dawn has always been one of my favorites, despite the grumbling I make about getting up so early after late night Christmas Eve service.  It’s so easy to get caught up in the hectic and busy of the Christmas season, and spending so much time at church is the reminder of the real meaning of the season that I usually need by that point.

Speaking of Christmas Eve, remember how I talked about learning to spin, and I told you we’d update on whether attempting hand-spun, hand-knit hats for Christmas worked out? Well, I’m happy to report that it was a big success: we managed to spin and knit a hat for each of the boys. And it wasn’t even a “last-minute-2 am-race-to-the-finish” either!  They’re really nice hats, I’m so impressed with how well Steve did at knitting them. In fact, he received over 400 likes on Facebook when I posted a picture of them in one of my spinning groups. Apparently husbands that know how to knit get a lot of respect. (Oddly enough, it seems to attract more positive attention than husbands who do their own home butchering…)

Speaking of spinning, Steve gave me 2 eight ounce packages of wool roving for spinning. (This might not sound like much, but trust me that eight ounces is a LOT of wool! Think thinly pulled sections of wool wound into a sphere the size of a basketball.) One package was from an Icelandic sheep, one was from a Shetland. His reason for this was to help decide which sheep we will one day get, since we’ve been considering one of those two breeds. I thought I knew which one I preferred after only a few moments of working on it: the Shetland. Hands down. The Icelandic seemed a little coarse, hard to spin, and generally, not enjoyable.  But then I posted about it in that ever helpful spinning group, and it turns out, it just needs a different touch than the other wools I’ve been working with.  With some helpful suggestions on how to handle it, I’m off and running again. I LOVE learning new things all the time!  And since the Icelandic is white, I plan on delving into the world of wool dyeing before I spin up any more of it.  It’s exciting to me that what started out as a way to just make the most of our rabbits has turned into an amazing new hobby.

Some may think that copious amounts of wool to spin was thoughtful gift on Steve’s part. That might be in part, but I’m sure that there’s something political behind it too. He’s trying to warm me over to one of the types of roving enough that I might agree to getting a couple of sheep soon. I’m not against sheep, per se, but not yet. It seems that every time we finally settle in to a good rhythm we throw something else into the mix. It’ll be nice to just be for a little while, if only for a couple of months. At the moment the only good thing that I can see in bringing home a couple of sheep would be that it might keep him from trying to find a dog to bring home. And at least sheep don’t have to be house trained!

I hope everyone had a wonderful Christmas, and don’t forget, the season lasts for thirteen days–keep celebrating the birth of the Savior!