Snow day

The pace here is tremendous. There has been a sad loss in our extended family, I’m still working to meet my deadline (you will note the use of the singular. I am getting things done.) and the knitting schedule has totally gone bust in exchange for the needs of my family. I stood a chance of making up time until I fell down the basement stairs Saturday and lost a full day of knitting time to holding a damn ice pack on my elbow. (I am bruised but not broken, although I do find it ironic that my fall was softened by the enormous load of laundry I was carrying.) With all of the work and the difficult things, this season was starting to be less fun than it should be. When a massive storm started to blow in on the weekend I got really annoyed. There are things I need to get done, there were places that people needed to go and the planet was clearly not on the side of efficiency. I looked out the window, I thought about all of our plans and I got pissed off. Then I had an epiphany. There was nothing I could do. I can’t make there be more time. I can’t knit faster. I can’t clear the roads. I can’t work harder…I certainly can’t stop the snow. Screw it.

Snowinyrad1612-1

I gave up. Just for one day. I took a deep breath. Baked cookies and made five colours of icing.

Sheeppreice1612

(I got the sheep cookie cutter at Rhinebeck.)

Then we threw open our door to friends and family. Whatever happens, happens. (Yup. That’s snow piled up outside our window to table height. It’s a lot of snow.)

Prepartyglas1612-1

We were stunned. Turns out a lot of people were feeling how we were. Joe and I knew our evening was a winner when amid the chaos we were dusting off the extra chairs from the basement, had the Bee Gees Christmas album on the record player (Yup. Old school) ran out of wine glasses, washed icing off the wall upstairs, heard people singing and playing Christmas Carols (the best musicians in the world cannot hold a candle to a whack of little kids with percussion instruments) and saw snowshoes piled by the front door. (We all agreed that cross country skis and snowshoes were the only solution. Certainly cars were out of the question.) Our house was filled to bursting, and everybody decorated gingerbread. Grown-ups, kids, knitters, non-knitters…

Alimakescookies1612

Expertscook1612

The best part is not just that we got some great looking cookies….(Although I think you can admit that these are some fine looking cookies. I think a little kid (or maybe my mum) might have eaten Rachel H’s stockinette sheep. It was quite brilliant.)

Exsheepi1612

Knitme1612

Thear1612

Sheepiced1612

Asfarcookies1612-1

but that we spent a whole day (rather forcibly) unplugged from pursuing whatever mayhem modern life would have us believe is Christmas and its trimmings… and there, buried in the snow, we found a nice big dose of the real thing.