I had lots of good intentions about various posts, but somehow none of them got written, and ten days two weeks slipped by without my noticing it. I’m going to go with the zeitgeist for slowing down, and blame my lassitude on that. Ahem.

This evening finds Devon under a thick quilt of feather-like snow, downy and soft. Last night, six inches fell, and more is predicted tonight; this is so unusual in this area that most people have been quite caught out by it, I think, so often are the forecasters wrong when it comes to ‘wintry showers’. We ventured into Exeter, our nearest town, along roads thick with ice and slush, and the drive along our lane was easily as interesting as I would want it; no gritters get within two miles of us, which, given the tiny nature of our lane, is not surprising, and I was glad to get back safe and sound, with a bootful of food and a toddling person gleeful in the face of impending blueberry consumption. (The small girl has been out of sorts for a few days, with a temperature and a cough, hence tantalising morsels to eat.)

We have also acquired a wooden sledge, knocked together by Quercus the first morning of the snow, and perfected with plastic drainpipe runners; this means longer walks are good fun for all of us, rather than presenting boot-topping challenges to the smaller of our number…

These days, one of the best things about living in a house which needs, ahem, a bit of work is that we have so many things kicking about the place. Of course we had drainpipe and suitable wood, because, well, who doesn’t keep eight metres of plastic pipe kicking about? Er… It’s both delighting when we get to make something out of, well, not quite nothing, but certainly oddments and remnants, but at the same time maddening, as we have so much stuff which has yet to find a proper home, and even more stuff for which a suitable home is unlikely to appear unless we move to a much larger house… Oh, the irony – fix your house, in the process acquiring so many tools that you then need to, er, move…

And yes, that is the goblin hood I mentioned a while back, which I managed to put together quite quickly as the sewing machine has switched its allegiance back from the powers of darkness to me, largely, I think, due to blandishments involving fine-grade oil.

It took about three hours to get the sodding door shut, of course, after we were foolish enough to open it…

Predictably, while I have yet to finish some of the things I’d like to do before Christmas arrives in earnest, as it were, I’m happy to undertake side-tracks right left and centre. Note: felted winter fairy queen whatsit stage left. But the weather shift has changed the feel of the days already – we live at a slower pace, aware of impending darkness from mid-afternoon, and waking when the light bounces off the brilliant white of the fields and hedges which surround us. Somehow, the sense of busyness which I felt only a few days ago has receeded slightly, and I’m just letting myself go along with that. (See earlier jumping-on-bandwagon-excuse-making.)

Things have been crossed off lists not because I’ve done them, but simply because I’ve ended up questioning whether it was actually that worth getting worked up about. I have nearly finished grouting our tiles (for interested parties, we ended up with a sort of biscuity colour, which seems to set the bright colours off well), and I’ve managed to make some clothes for Bluebell, the small girl’s doll, and to attain a level of control over the craft cupboard not seen since shortly after its arrival, but for the most part, I am trying to feel OK about Just Being. Because it’s a bloody good thing, isn’t it? If you can get it to sit right?

Just Being is so important to one’s sanity, isn’t it? It’s something Quercus and I are both utterly rubbish at. We both struggle to sit, to contemplate, without constantly Doing, and Achieving. I only realise this, really, when we have nothing obvious on our lists (of which there are many, naturally, at levels ranging from ‘fix house’ to ‘sort escutcheon on front door’): these last few days of snow, neither of us has been out and about doing our normal things, and we’ve both been a bit on the antsy side, casting about for Tasks, for Purpose, for Things To Finish. Funny, really, for two people who often lament the lack of Time Off – when we are given it, we don’t seem quite sure what to do with it! It has meant, however, the completion and organisation of a few bits and bobs which were just sort of hanging; we’ve shoved (what felt like) hundreds of demijohns up on top of the oak cupboard, and we’ve put things in the newly-finished workshop, and we’ve hoovered the place and generally sorted a few things out. All of which is good. And makes me think, slightly, ‘this must be what sane people do at the weekends, rather than buggering about with knackered old houses which have a tendency to fall apart’. That said, of course, I know enough people who do what we do to realise that we’re not alone…

Anyway, with Quercus’s mother arriving tomorrow and a small girl who quite miserable (and has her first ear infection, we learned this morning), I’ll be back in this space in the new year, folks, so a medley Crumphole to all who read and visit and comment here, and bright starry wishes for 2011.

Every year, since I’ve been a grown-up in control of my own household (ludicrous! the very thought of it!), I’ve had various ideas about Things I Ought To Be Doing at any given time. This gets particularly ridiculous as winter draw(er)s on. Chrimbly, it seems, is quite important to me. Not, I hasten to add, because I’m Christian, or indeed religious in any way, really, but rather because I so love this time of year that I want to celebrate it with gazillions of biscuits, with strings of lights visible quite maddening in their multitudinousness (is that a word, one wonders?), with Comfort and Joy and All Things Nice. I wonder if it’s because my parents were a bit haphazard about the whole festive affair; usually, Chrimbly involved a last-minute dash, normally conducted in the pissing rain for maximum enjoyment, to some dodgy car-park or oddly dark household wherein lurked a Christmas tree vendor normally seen only in police line-ups, to procure a tree of dubious vintage whose needles numbered somewhere in the region of, well, thirty, or so, on a good year. This joyous trip was normally sprinkled with various enticements such as the opportunity to see one’s paternal relative invent new phraseology to cover falling over in the ice, the inability of the car to shift its arse on its own, its stubborn to start despite multiple kicks, verbal and physical – you get the idea.

So much for the hunter-gatherer end of the equation, whose giddy jollity was complemented by my mother, largely displaying signs of one who felt she Should Have Done More By This Time, i.e. there should have been handmade decorations a plenty, set off to perfection by a veritable shedload of biscuits (of some predictably Germanic or Swedish origin, for it is written that They, and Only They, know how to do Christmas, and indeed winter as a whole). Instead, she’d have sort of thought about it, and then ended up playing the piano for a while, and making a few biscuits while telling me the story of the Nibelungenleid. That was the thing about my mother; she was so incredibly knowledgeable, and so very talented, that it was hugely frustrating sometimes to watch her beating herself up about not having done something which she could actually have done in a jimminy-whatsit had she so girded her loins.

Loins, the girding thereof, is not my problem.

My problem, gentle reader, is overstretching myself, and taking on so much that even the fun bits end up feeling like some hideous Herculean task designed to extract the very last ounce of festive spirit, before distilling it, adding in a little hemlock just for kicks, and asking you if you’d like ice with that.

So, this year, I found myself compiling an ever-increasing list of Lovely Things To Do. Somewhere, this list metamorphosised, cunningly and slyly, into a list of Things Which I Must Do If I Am To Be A Good Person. See? Not cool, is what that is/was. Suddenly, my old friend Procastination was creeping through the door, bringing with him his cousin, Guilt, and I found myself swigging back the hemlock like mother’s milk.

Part of my problem is that, while I’m not particularly avaricious by modern standards (it only really takes shiny or bright colours and you’ve got me, hook, line and proverbial), I am crafty-avaricious. I read blogs. I look at pictures. I think about the things I could make, the things that the small girl would like, the things that, if I’m honest, would make the people who I love love me more than they already do, because, obviously, it is completely logical and unassailably reasonable to assume that nothing says ‘I love you, and I am a lovely person who you love! Right? RIGHT?’ like a felted reindeer.

And there you have it, you see, in (in)glorious technicolour. For some reason, I seem to equate making, producing or otherwise creating with love, to the degree that I feel that I am almost betraying people if I think of making them something and then back out for some reason, even if I hadn’t mentioned the plan to them. So, the list of things that I wanted to make for the small girl grew, and grew, and grew, until it assumed quite fairy-tale-like properties, and I started to wonder if there was an ogre on the other end of it, piling on the suggestions until it wasn’t just the craft cupboard which was threatening to explode… ‘Thar she blows, Cap’n!’

This week, I have reached a bit of a low point. I was dreading doing any of the things on my list, even though in theory I was happy to do them, and had got the things necessary, and could see them complete. I procrastinated. I spent more time on Facebook than can ever be good for a human intent on making it past forty. I even cleaned the sink. Oh, it was quite like old times – many, after all, was the happy hour I spent thrutching about in u-bends for old tealeaves rather than writing the odd word towards my thesis. So, after realising that I’m going completely bollocking mad, and all for the sake of the random assembling of buttons, beads and felt into a small herd of Chrimbly reindeer, I have decided that this is lunacy, and must be set to one side until sanity can prevail. (Assuming that day comes, of course.) I’ve put the thing I’m making Quercus on hold (largely because a two-week break from it served only to produce a ‘…. But that is complete shite! What was I thinking?!’ reaction during our reunion. I’ve scaled back my plans for the small girl, and I’m trying to remind myself that what she would really value this year is a mother who doesn’t twitch involuntarily at the mention of the word ‘present’, and who is able to remember she has knitting needles in her hair before leaving the house.

It’s a learning curve, this sort of bollocks, isn’t it? Pass the biscuits.

So far, December has been very cold, from the outset. The night before last brought a beautiful hoar frost, covering the land in a blanket of icy crystals which didn’t leave even in the brief midday sun. The small girl and I walked to the top of the hill along the lane, to see reindeer and to look at Christmas trees, which, thankfully, appear to be half the price they were last year. I’m trying to make sure that the cold weather doesn’t prevent us going out and about as much as ever; it may now involve snowsuits, mittens and wristwarmers over the top, but the small girl’s ride in the sling was clearly good fun, and she loves to make observations about what we see as we walk, enjoying the superior views afforded by my towering… 5′ 6″. Ahem.

In between our forays into arctic survival, we have mostly been baking and making. So far, six jars of apple mincemeat, with, rather conveniently, no ingredients bought beyond what we happened to have in the cupboards. (This probably testifies more to the strange contents of our kitchen than to any particular fortuitousness…), several batches of gingerbread and Chrimbly Scandinavian-style biscuits, nine red fleece hearts to hang on the Chrimbly tree, when we get it, and three moosibous (somewhere between a moose and a caribou, these felty critters are now lining up on the shelves, complete with antlers, bells and the odd button nose). Still to go: lots more felt hearts, lots more biscuits, cake, puddens, and various crafty bits about which I cannot speak for fear of Prying Eyes. (And yes, I am looking at you, Quercus.)

Oh yes: before I go wittering on, has anyone out there perfected The Ultimate Chrimbly Biscuit? I am thinking of something along the Pfeffernüssen and Lebkuchen line, with spices and whatnot. We’ve tried a few recipes this year (and I wrote my own recipe a while back, when I was blogging as Kitchen Witch; I’ve meant to add my archives from that site to this, ever since I started here, yet have I done it? Have I buggery. This means I will have to go through the hideously long text file version to find the sodding recipe. That’ll teach me) but I’ve yet to find The One Biscuit To Bring Them All And In The Gluttony Bind Them.

The ice was about an inch long on some of the ferns; just beautiful.

Holly leaves, with cinnamon, orange zest and whatnot. Lovely smell, but recipe was a tad disappointing as the biscuits were a bit on the dry side, despite adding extra milk, and a bugger to roll out as a result.

I’ve never been particularly sure about this lamp, which is in our garden; it always looks a bit out of kilter to me, with its nineteenth-centuriness, against our blatantly-older-than-that house, but it does do a good Narnia line in this sort of weather, so I think I will get over it.

This morning it is bright, sunny and cold once more, though the magical dusting of yesterday has now gone, and apparently it’s going to be warmer this weekend. I love winter; this time of year is my favourite. I do hope we’re not about to have a bout of warm-and-wet, though, because that is all sorts of crap in my view. Let’s stick to the cold and bright, please, weather gods.

In about a week, it will be ten years since my mother died. I can’t quite believe it: an entire decade of this alternative life, this strange, skewed existence which still seems off-balance to me sometimes despite the passing of time. I have decided that December 14 will now be the day when we get our Chrimbly tree. I don’t want to wallow, and I don’t want to dwell on the fact that my mother isn’t here to do this with us, to meet the small girl, to watch us grow, together. Rather, I will spend my time with a small girl for whom Chrimbly and the midwinter is so very exciting, this being the first time she has really taken note of what’s going on, and I will celebrate the going-on of life rather than its disappearance, inevitable, inescapable, ineffable. This small girl of mine has done what no amount of counselling, or thinking, or mourning, or distraction, could do, and she has done it without even knowing she was doing it, never mind trying – she has flipped the coin, making me the mother, and recasting my loss in a new role. I am now the mother, and in so becoming, I feel in charge of myself, grown-up in a way that I thought I had lost forever when my mother died. So, here’s to the healing powers of mincemeat, and of cake-baking, and card-making, and present-plotting, and cold walks in the crisp frost, and reindeer who live at the top of our hill.

I had a moment of insanity on the afternoon of 30 November, where I suddenly thought what fun (fun!) it would be to make the small girl an advent calendar. Not for us those cruddy chocolate nonsenses available at supermarkets the world over; oh no – we – we – we would have a nice, homemade, felt-and-wooden-button confection, with pockets suitable for hiding all manner of festive delights.

Fun.

FUN.

And, of course, the fact that this epiphany struck only at three o’clock on the afternoon of the day before advent begins – well, a minor detail. Ple-e-e-nty of time for creativity to whip its way through a little diversion like this.

And, of course, the fact that the sewing machine decided to bugger about and start snapping the thread right left and centre, well, that just added spice to an otherwise doddle of a project.

Ahem.

Let us not speak of the fact that the sewing machine appears to need another service, after having sewn three layers of felt together. I fear that perhaps three layers was just asking too much of it, though it is rather strange that it worked fine as I sewed the back and front together, and when I sewed on the first five of the twenty-five pockets. And let us also not speak of the fact that its needing attention will probably necessitate a round-trip of some sixty miles, as I take it to the magic-weaver who brought it back to life for me last summer, when I thought it was my own ineptitude which made every project take ten times as long as I’d thought. (Well, of course, my ineptitude accounted for at least three-quarters of that time, but the sewing machine was buggering about too, I learned.)

That said, it was worth it when the small girl got the hang of it, and she was very nice about the concept, and said just the right things about the tree itself being pretty. She is a very rewarding audience, and every time I make something for her, or for us, I feel remarkably fortunate to be able to do these things, and to have her to introduce these things to. I think I’ve written before about the genuine delight I feel in creating family traditions of our own – ditching the Christmas Eve hunt for the inevitably dog-eared tree in which the aged parent used to indulge was a revelation, for example, in lowering stress levels – and bringing her along, showing her the world and the joy which it can hold, is just the bestest of the best.

God.

How twee am I?

(And yes, that is a very obvious join in the wallpaper you can see. Technically, this is known as ‘papering over the cracks’, because the plaster is actually falling off the wall here. So, another layer of paper, just to get us through until the summer of next year, when hopefully we will replaster.)