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Joy! (or, The Frayed Edges, December 2006)
Pure, unadulterated, abundant, bountiful JOY! That was what the whole day was! We met at Kathy’s house, ate, talked, exchanged gifts, talked, enjoyed our wonderful homey colorful surroundings, enjoyed the snow outside the window (which was melting…sigh, it is that change-able time of year in maine), ate, talked…oh, and did I mention talked? Including…hooray… long distance with Deborah in Texas!
The drive up (and dang! I wished I had pulled over, backed up and taken that picture of Lake George State Park…a large lake to the south side of Route 3, island in the middle, quintessential Maine-view of pines and water, dusting of snow visible on the ground and on the trees, mist rising from the lake and through the trees to a high gray sky—glorious!) was uneventful, and when I arrived at Kathy’s charming home there was a tree with bare branches and bazillions of berries in the front yard with Chickadee happily hopping from branch to branch.
Kate had a brilliant gift-bagging idea: cut off tops of boxes (triscuits, cereal, whatever), spraypaint white, add decorative yarn handles, tissue paper!
How perfect is that? You could make paper snowflakes and spray over them as stencils, or glue them on, or all sorts of fun ideas….GREAT idea!
Then we exchanged gifts! A couple of us had mailed ours to Deborah in Texas so she could open with us, and she had mailed all of ours to Kathy. Kathy made the cutest little suitcases for us…she started with something else, then painted and embellished and decorated to perfectly match our personalities. It was a hoot…each of us had done something similar, and and we ALL picked the same colors for each –Kathy and I got aquas and blues, Kate got leaf-green, and Hannah got warm reds and pinks! Deborah made each of us ornaments, and I got “Blossom” which she showed in progress on her blog!
Here are the ornaments Kate made….with a tag that says “Peas on Earth, Good Wool to All”–she even sacrificed her favorite green sweater for felting to make the pea pods (and yes, it was the perfect color!). Here’s a photo of my 2006 new ornaments on our tree. From left to right: “Joy” on a Blossom by Deborah, Kate’s Peapod, and our blown glass fox (a set of eight critters like chipmunk, squirrel, snowhare, owl…) that they had in the LL Bean store…I love woodland critters and birds on my tree!
We had orange-cranberry scones in the morning (I made them last time, too…this batch was a lot better! the first batch was too sweet / cakelike!), and goodies. 
Kathy had on the most wonderful necklace she made of beads she felted, and Kate LOVED it. Well, Inside our suitcases from Kathy were Artgirlz felted wool beads, so Kate promptly started making one.
Kathy got out her beads and sequins trays:
And here is the bracelet Kate had by the end of our visit:
Before that, though….we did our group photo, with everyone wearing the “art aprons” I made with goodies tucked into the pockets, and we held our goodies from one and all:
And Deborah had her 4-year old photographer take a picture of her in Texas doing the same…yeah!
We had a wonderful lunch, and for once I remembered to stand in for Deborah (who always remembered to take lunch pics). Here we are at the dining table (ready to tuck in!):
And here is the wonderful vegetable stew Kathy made (recipe in the original Moosewood cookbook…you can tell from the rippled page how often Kath has made it!):
And you can always tell how much fun we have had by the state of the table (notice the Christmas mug, our gifts from Deborah last year! and of course the current issue of Quilting Arts which we are IN! We were all still giddy with joy):
As I drove home, I realized I was smiling and happy all the way. Yes, pure, undiluted, bountiful JOY…just like my ornament from Deborah said!
December 15th, 2006 at 5:09 pm
The Moosewood Cookbook by Mollie Katzen copyright 1977??!!