Today I am still in the afterglow of Thanksgiving, which I love to celebrate before getting totally focused on Christmas. As a small business owner, I understand the importance of planting seeds for early shopping, but at home I keep my Thanksgiving decorations up until the day after the turkey is served. Then it’s time to get a fresh tree (always from the Lion’s Club) to put in water for a couple of days. Meanwhile I decorate the entire house and finally, by Sunday morning, the tree comes in with great fanfare to be secured it in its stand. I do have the perfect spot for a tall tree to feature my old European ornaments and many new blown glass beauties from local artists. It will take me most of the day to put up about 800 lights and hundreds of ornaments and by tonight I hope to be able to put my feet up and enjoy my festive home.
The first week in December will bring our ladies’ card party together for games and festive snacks and by the end of this first week I will be headed back to the Folk Art Center to set up my sales table for the first of our annual Christmas Sales. The date for this first sale is December 7th. The second sale will be on December 14th. This is a great tradition that brings in many of our loyal local customers and gives the artists a chance for holiday hugs! It seems like a long time till spring when many of us start demonstrating again.
November was still filled with ongoing recovery efforts from hurricane Helene damage. The Blue Ridge Parkway was cleared from the Arboretum in Asheville to the Folk Art Center by the third week in November and I was very excited to set up my demo in the lobby. I used a lot of green and pinned crochet snowflakes between some of my pieces. Nature took a hint, and it started to snow overnight, so the Parkway was closed again for a couple of days, except for one on-ramp from Asheville. This resulted in 2 very quiet days! The demonstrators usually bring work so we can stay busy, even if we only have very few visitors. On the following two days, a Saturday and Sunday, Mother Nature graced us with lots of sunshine and we had 2 busy days to make up for the previous sleepy ones.
After a couple of quiet days, I enjoyed Thanksgiving with some of my friends, while others left town to celebrate with loved ones. After a wonderful meal and too many treats I watched the Macy’s Christmas Parade, which I taped – it always gets me in the mood to switch from Thanksgiving to Christmas.
November brought 2 interesting restorations; one banquet sized machine-made family heirloom from an estate in Boston; I mentioned it in my last Musings because I had just started to work on it. It has since returned home in time for Thanksgiving. This was the largest tablecloth I have ever worked on; it reminded me of my grandmother’s banquet linen cloth that she washed by hand in hot water in a giant pot on the stove, stirring with a wooden spoon. She dried it on a clothesline, preferably on a sunny day. Then we ran it through an electric mangle, an interesting mechanical ironing aid. There are several on display in the laundry of the Biltmore Estate and I visit them occasionally. They make me smile.
Back to my grandmother’s laundry days. Once she secured one end of the cloth between the 2 rollers, she used a very hot setting and fed it carefully into the mangle. I caught the ironed end and guided it carefully back on the table or 2 more hands helped to fold and put it away.
One of my great-uncles in Germany was a catholic priest when I was a little girl. In large families the oldest son was always given to serve the church; several of the younger uncles died during the war. Since my grandparents and their siblings lived in the country between the Rhine and the Mosel, they often visited each other, and we frequently had a group of priests at the farmhouse and even a bishop on a couple of occasions. My grandmother always used these visits to clean the entire house, polish the silver and cook and bake up a storm. Everybody ducked when she was flying through the house!
My husband used to tease me when I was getting ready for family or friends or any time there was company coming. He would watch me for a while and then exclaim: The bishop is coming! What a nice way to tease me. At least entertaining was and still is so much easier for me than it was for my grandmother.
Just after hurricane Helene and before I had power, water or internet restored, I saw a voicemail on my phone from a very nice priest wanting to talk about restoring one of his albs, the garment Catholic priests wear during mass. I told him that it was a miracle that I was able to receive his message. Some of my family and friends had not been able to check on me. I explained that I was in the middle of the Western North Carolina disaster zone but would love to do the work for him. He sent me images of his alb so I could send him an estimate once my internet was connected again. We had a great conversation and eventually I received his images and was able to give him an estimate for the needed work.
I received his beautiful alb a couple of weeks ago and, starting on the cuffs, I worked my way through the delicate designs and reconnected, restored and reinforced the 2’ wide hem. Then I steam pressed it on the wrong side to really pop out the design and it is on its way back to Maryland.
I hope to have a couple of quiet weeks after our big sale to enjoy my Christmas wonderland at home. There are several get togethers with special folks, but I really wish for a quiet and peaceful time to end this challenging year.
Here is wishing all of you fiber friends a merry Christmas or holiday celebration! May you receive the gifts that are most important to you – and maybe some yarn under the tree!
New in the Studio:
The Banquet size tablecloth before and after Restoration
The Irish Lace Alb
“I do what I love and I love what I do”