Merry Christmas

Back on January fifth, I wrote that I had something which I couldn’t blog about until after the eighth. Fighting Windmills jumped the gun a little and assumed proposal. It wasn’t quite that big a deal, but it was a surprise which I didn’t want to spoil. One thing led to another and I dropped the ball. One of these days, I’m going to have to dredge my back entries for broken promises: there are a bundle. Most of the good intentions are related to photos. Today I finally stripped all my files off the eleven year old laptop that was limping along and am getting them organized on my Core Duo machine which has been serving me well. From now on, it should be easy to get photos uploaded and blogged about.

Sometime in my youth, my mother made me a Christmas stocking. Originally I thought it was made shortly after I was born in 1965, but my sister (born in 1970) has one made from some of the same materials; also, thinking back, I seem to remember several Christmases with a brown paper sack for a stocking. Anyhow, my stocking has (mostly) fond memories for me and I still use it today.

My stocking is yellow – not the most traditional of colors – with a pink and white candy cane design and red rick-rack across the top. My sister’s is pink and has white and yellow designs on it. Our older siblings and parents all have matching red stockings with white tops and sequined names and designs on them. This sharp contrast always drew my attention to how the common colors make my sister’s and my stockings into a kind of set; which got me thinking.

Since I am planning to start a new life with my girlfriend, I thought it would be a nice idea to make her a Christmas stocking. I hope to wake up many Christmas mornings and open presents with her and the kids. Pondering the design took some time, but worked out well. My primary thoughts were:

• Use some colors from my stocking
• Design a traditional emblem
• Have some idea for other colors to ‘expand’ the set later

On my stocking my name was hand-stitched with shiny gold cord. For my sweetie’s stocking I chose a dark blue base color. This allowed a good match with a star emblem using yellow (my base color) and white (also in my emblem); and also, went well with silver cord for her name. I bought some raspberry rick-rack for the top which tied in with the felt in my candy cane. My red rick-rack has always struck me as not quite matching, but giving a wonderful childlike brightness. I think the raspberry color works in a similar fashion here.

On my flight from Seattle to Tokyo I was getting a bit of attention because I was sewing the name onto the stocking. The ‘S’ is a little funny because I was having trouble working with the cord. After I learned a few tricks, it got a lot easier. I’ll try to remember all that for the next one. I even varied the h’s a little to reflect real writing.

Also, we introduced her to the concept that stocking presents should not even come close to fitting in the stocking. Properly, the stocking should be stuffed to overflowing and a few extra presents should be nearby. I think she liked it.

Advertisement

Tags: Christmas, felt, present, star, stocking, symbol, tradition