Cheryl Katz

2-ply superwash merino in blues and greens!
Originally uploaded by cinediva

Here is the crowning achievement of approximately the last week. At least, the crowning achievement of which I already have pictures. I spun this yarn on a wheel lent to me by a local spinner, after an ad hoc crash course in the functioning of a wheel.It happened like this. About two weeks ago, I posted on Ravelry that I had scored a spinning wheel on Craigslist but didn’t know if it worked, and asked for advice on how to tell if it could be used and if so, what repairs might be in order. Lovely Wendy came to my house and tinkered, prodded, hammered and oiled, and told me that my wheel could indeed make yarn, and that while it is a quirky fellow, a beginner spinning on it certainly garner props of the mad variety from people who know spinning.

To wit, the wheel has been christened “Cantankerous ‘ol Dude,” because after having spun on the modern wheel Wendy lent me, I can say for sure that every inch I spun was a challenge.

In any case, the blues and greens pictured here are my handiwork, two bobbins of singles spun separately and then plied together to form a textured, bulky yarn. I am rather chuffed with my handiwork, and am also pleased to mention that subsequent offerings are improving on the first.

Need I say that I really like spinning? I have my eye toward saving my pennies for my first new wheel.

In other news, Christine and Greg were visiting, outstanding and home-warming guests that they were. They were here to see Christine’s new nephew – my friends Cathy and Mike’s baby boy Christopher (I believe my pile o’ possessives violated some kind of grammar law, but I’m beyond caring.) Greg was unbelievably cute with Sami (Christine is believably cute with Sami, but only because she’d handled Sami when she was nary a month old, and so I could already believe it.) I really loved this visit because it’s comforting when friends come to stay who are really more family than friends. We had a blast, and I really just let C and G set their schedule, as I didn’t have many pressing things to do. They’ve left for Vegas and then back to New York after New Year’s, but I miss them already and can’t wait to see them in New York whenever we manage to get there.

I got up early to make bagels for everyone this morning for breakfast before the planned departure, and they were a hit.

Sadly, I never once pulled out the camera, so all the Sami/Greg/Christine pictures were taken by Christine. Bad momma, no cookie.

This post is actually of very little consequence, just a space saver to let the world know what I’ve been up to lately. I expect there will be a year in review of some sort coming up.

This was my first year celebrating Chanukah as a former Catholic with an eye toward conversion to Judaism.

This year, also, our family joined a local synagogue, and Sami will be attending preschool there beginning in March.

Chanukah is a beautiful holiday, even if it suffers elevated visibility because of its general proximity to Christmas. Any celebration that puts candles and frying at the forefront is A+ in my book. We celebrated with my husband’s family, and our one year old is just old enough to understand what it means to get presents. (In fact, she understands it so well that she broke into the gifts out of turn, opening her gift at 10 AM instead of around sunset when she would otherwise have received it.) And yet presents aren’t the ultimate goal of the holiday, and I appreciate that, too. I am never one to turn down an opportunity for gifting, but when this season’s major holiday is better described as Giftmas, it’s easy to be attracted to less materialistic holidays.

My Catholic parents sent Sami one gift, which is perfect. I want to allow her to explore religious traditions and to feel free to celebrate the more cultural (rather than religious) implications of The Holidays. But I don’t want her to become a Spoiled Brat, which appears to be so easy these days, if you look around at kids in toy stores.

This post isn’t really about what holidays Sami will grow up celebrating, though. We’re an odd family and have our share of odd little traditions, and I’m sure Sami will learn to withstand or appreciate them as she sees fit. This post is really a short elegy for Christmas as I knew it, because I know Sami won’t know it the same way.

I should start by mentioning that I went to Catholic school, and so it was inevitable that at school, Christmas was regarded as the Birthday of Jesus. However this wasn’t carried over at home. At home, Christmas was really Familymas – a time to eat special foods and celebrate each other with thoughtful gifts.

The most memorable detail I have is that Christmas morning was so exciting for me as a kid that I was literally unable to fall asleep on Christmas Eve. I’d go down to bed around 8:30, I guess, allowed to stay up a little later because of the Christmas specials on TV, and then lie awake for hours just imagining what kind of surprises lay under the tree. I’d wake up at 5 am and run into my brother’s room, where he was also awake, and we’d run around, shake packages, peek in on my parents to see if they were up yet. We’d climb into their bed, lift their eyelids, do our level best to not wake them up (which, of course, always woke them up) until finally they dragged themselves out of bed, grabbed the camera, and let us go to town.

There was never anything particularly expensive under the tree. But it was all so very exciting nonetheless. I think the biggest fight my brother and I ever had over a present was a cardboard space rocket my brother got. I can’t imagine how much the thing cost, but I bet it was pennies compared to the Hot Toys of the Day today. A glorified cardboard box, and it was hours, days… MONTHS of entertainment for us.

There doesn’t seem to be quite the same magic around Giftmas. Maybe it’s because it’s become Giftmas and has moved away from the kernel of Christmas that put the thoughtfulness and love into the gift-giving. Maybe it’s because I’m actually a grownup now and the artifice is gone; I know my parents stayed up late after I went to bed, wrapping presents and doing last minute prep stuff so that we would really believe that Santa had come down our chimney. I know that for Sami to believe these things would require a stiff serving of story-telling on our parts with a side dish of time I don’t really have. All for a mystery that would be handily dispelled when she starts kindergarten (believing in Santa is SO preschool….) Maybe it’s because I’m looking at the tradition of Christmas that I grew up with and am only seeing materialism, artifice and work.

I know despite my lack of investment in Christmas, Sami is going to grow up with a healthy sense of tradition and wonder, even if it will be distinctly different from the traditions I knew as a kid. Maybe she’ll be a little less materialistic than I turned out to be, which wouldn’t be a bad thing. I just hope that without the magic MY parents gave me for the holidays, she will still find the magic somewhere, some other way.