Photo by Nina

Isn't this a beautiful Christmas photo? It's from the creative commons section of Flickr.com. The title link takes you to this particular photographer's work.

I finished up the other earring last night. I've used a needle to sew in the ends of these and it seemed to work well. It's usually easier for me to use my fine crochet hook but I was able to take the thread farther and less conspicuously with a needle this time.

I really hate to use stiffener, especially where beads are concerned. It tends to dull the beads and no matter how careful I am, I manage to get stiffener on them. This design appears to hold it's shape well and I suspect that is because of the beads which give it weight and make it less bendable. There is a matching necklace pattern but I'm thinking the gold would be too scratchy around tender neck skin. The other threads would be fine.

My family's Christmas will be Saturday instead of Friday. The bigger your family, the more schedules there are to work around. I have a son who works nights and has many mandatory weekends. Plus, one DIL works nights at a hospital and the days differ from week to week so she works some weekends AND they live about 45 minutes away. Then there's my sister's family and their schedules. Add to that, most of our kids are married and we're sensitive to them wanting to go to spousal family gatherings too. I well remember trying to go 6 places in the space of two days, with little kids and food and gifts, the throbbing headaches and the not being able to enjoy any of it because of the stress. I refuse to do that to my kids. That's not what Christmas should be. Back then I went to midnight mass too. When did I sleep???? LOL! Some things I miss, most I don't. This will be the first year in many years that my kids will all be at MY house. Because of all the scheduling, we just all meet up at wherever we are having Christmas and I try to get to each of their houses individually with their gifts. This year the gathering is at my sister's house but it's late enough in the day that the kids can come to my house for a few hours and we'll have our exchange then. I'm looking forward to it.

Well...except for the stress of cleaning! That's what I'm doing today, if I can ever get OFF of this computer!

Happy Holidays Everyone!