Randomday after Christmas

Somehow it always works out.  Christmas is stressful, we don't take enough family pictures, we eat too much ham and pie and candy, the youngest in the family has at least one meltdown and we become groggy, irritable and lethargic at least once during the evening.  We're not the kind of family that posts gushing Facebook updates about "best Christmas ever" or sends out those perfect family picture greeting cards.  We don't mock you if you are.  In fact, you are the impossible ideal and we have been forced to adopt a policy of admiration from afar.  No, perfection is not achieveable in this life and we aren't trying anymore.   But we still have pretty nice Christmases and they don't last long enough.

 I like this picture of Steve's mom, who joined us about 10:00 am for the opening of presents.  She was a good sport about not getting too many gifts herself and just watching while the rest of the family did their thing.  She enjoyed the homemade eggnog, sampled some of Daniel's plum wine, and I think she won all the games of cribbage she played.

 Peter bought Quarta a set of Minecraft paper animals and she spent most of the day crafting her menagerie.  Steve put together my old bedframe that has been in storage for years and we are going to get her a new mattress since the one she has been using is at least 50 years old.  She also has a Minecraft account of her own now, and fuzzy Minnie Mouse pajama pants.  Tertia has fluffy pink pajamas and a brand new Facebook account.  It may be the beginning of a whole new era.

 Steve gave me a hammered dulcimer for Christmas, which pretty much tops last year's gift of a Kindle (also spectacular), and was totally unexpected because it was, in my mind, in the category of Unachieveable Things that Might Materialize in the Far Distant Future.  I've always wanted one since I first started listening to Celtic music more than 3 decades ago, so I guess now is the far distant future from then.  Apparently in this futuristic world, one learns to play hammered dulcimer by watching youtube videos.  Or, since I'm kind of an intuitive learner, I just dived right in and started picking out things.  I can play Simple Gifts, Good King Wenceslaus, and the Star Wars theme (for Tertia) without too much trouble now.  I'm working on Come Boat me Over and an old harp tune that is NOT called Nonesuch but is similar, only now that I looked up Nonesuch I can't remember it and am picking out Nonesuch instead.  Such is the way my brain works, very prone to distraction.  I won't be earning money playing at dances and weddings anytime soon, but I am managing to make music.

My gift for Steve was a sweater he helped pick out himself when we were shopping at the mall, and the board game Ticket to Ride (Europe).  We played it last night and he, predictably, won by a large margin (yellow).  It's a fun game and I would like to play it again now that I have the feel for it.  I was green, Daniel was black, Tertia was red and Quarta was blue.  Afterwards we watched Peter's video of Guardians of the Galaxy.  Apparently this was the only thing he asked for for Christmas (it was the movie I took him to see on Family Day after Basic Training).  I'm really glad he remembered to ask for it again right before Christmas or I wouldn't have been able to snag the next-to-last copy at Target.  It finished after midnight.

Today was a nice lazy day.  I celebrated my 1 year anniversary of using Duolingo by finishing my German "tree", and Steve and I took a 2 mile walk, and Daniel is catching up on the last few episodes of an entire missed season of Doctor Who (with the girls' help) so that maybe tomorrow we can watch the Christmas special.  I am trying not to eat all my chocolate, and there will be our traditional Ham Pasta dish for dinner, and there are still a few slices of the Chocolate Bourbon Pecan Pie that I didn't make for Thanksgiving.  Soon enough we will start the after-Christmas shopping trips to buy clothes, and the kids will choose their annual "date with Dad."  And soon after that school will start up again and we will need to plan the Last Noel.

Celtic Solstice on the Design Wall

Enough to see the lovely patterns formed by the 2 different blocks, this is Celtic Solstice.  I have all the 54-40 or Fight blocks pieced and am not quite halfway finished piecing the second blocks.  Then of course I will need to sew them all together and add borders to make it finish at 75" square.  It's a good design; I like it a lot.  There are several overachievers linking up at Bonnie Hunter's site who have already finished the top, I bet.  I will be content if I can finish the top before her final link-up.

My quilt is inspired a bit more by my Scottish heritage than the Irish, so I chose darker greens and plenty of plaids. But if you look at my ancestors it doesn't take too many generations for the Scots and the Irish to intermingle a bit.  And they all ended up being Americans together.  I thought of the colors of the Irish flag and the colors of the Scottish flag mixing in this quilt, (and orange for the Dutch too!) with the sun sparkling on the water, and I thought of this song by Battlefield Band, which seems appropriate:



Many thanks to Bonnie for another beautiful mystery quilt and a fun way to spend Christmas break! I'm also linking up to Judy L.'s Design Wall Monday, but not to the stash reports yet because I have no completed projects for the year.  Yet.

New Year's Eve

What else to play on New Years' Eve?  There's a beautiful acapella version of this that I mislabeled 20 years ago and I will probably never be able to find the artist for, but this is the right tune.  Or you can link to this version by Mairi Campbell.  Either way, I've always liked this tune better than the one you're more likely to hear.

Gaude! Gaude!

Ancient Ballads

I have always loved traditional Celtic music.  In college I read up on the Child ballads: collections of ancient British Isles songs in all their numerous variations, preserved by wandering bards through the centuries.  This is where you find all the different versions of "Scarborough Fair."  As a young single woman I listened to folk music programming on Friday and Saturday nights on the Washington D.C. public radio airwaves, and especially the Thistle and Shamrock.  The souvenirs of those days are a series of (ahem) slightly irregularly obtained, taped off the airways cassettes that I have loved to death over the years.  Now, with our latest children's audiobook finished and needing something to fill the commute time, I trotted them back out.  The kids have been listening to me singing along with these tapes for the last few weeks, and are either developing an appreciation for Battlefield Band or learning to suffer in silence.

However, the audiocassette format means that we will not have them forever, and so Steve has begun a massive project combining some of his favorite things: internet research, ancient music, and spreadsheets.  The net result may be, finally, legally purchased MP3 files of all my favorite songs.  It gets a bit tricky when some of the artists and pieces have incredibly obscure, Gaelic names that were impossible for me to spell phonetically 20 years ago, and then the pen faded, too.  But I'm telling you, the internet is amazing.

In the course of re-listening to old favorites, I noticed that Annachie Gordon, by Mary Black (above, on Youtube) and Glenlogie, by Danny Carnahan and Robin Petrie, are two versions of the same story; the first with a sad ending, the second with a happy ending.  Both have the strong-willed teenage heroine, Jeannie, who knows the man she wants -- and it's not the rich man her father wants for her.  The surname Gordon shows up in both of them, the object of her affections has duties that take him elsewhere, both contain a scene where she threatens her father she will die if she doesn't get the man she wants; both contain a scene where the hero returns to the dying girl, either just in time or just a little too late.  Even the tune and meter are a little similar.  Annachie Gordon is more what we expect of an ancient ballad -- both good and bad: dying of a broken heart is just so 13th century, you know!  Whereas the Jeannie of Glenlogie is the kind of modern grrl-power heroine we all recognize from chick-lit: manipulative, determined, and shallow.  The last two links take you to the two Child ballad sources, so you can judge for yourself.