unwrapped

So I handed in my resignation on Tuesday. My last day is not till January 5, and I won't start my new job till a week after that, but I'm already giddy with excitement. Whenever I've told someone where I'm going to work, the response has been some variation on the theme of "You'll really like it there!" Which is sweet music to my ears. As this past year in my present office has shown me, no amount of good work can compensate for a miserable working environment. Sad but true. Actually one person described my new office-to-be as a loving but dysfunctional family, which I must say made me feel right at home.

I won't say "speaking of which." I'll just say that my father and stepmother visited last weekend, and we took that as an excuse to start Christmassing it up early around here. And since I gave my father his gift, I can now stand back with the camera to reveal the whole thing:


A scarf of the softest fleecy knit on one side, pieced-together woolens and velvet on the other, with a couple "windows" on the solid side for the patterns on the reverse to show through. Hope it keeps you warm all winter, Dad.

In remotely related news, this morning on the bus I was watching a woman crocheting a baby blanket and it made me contemplate the ingenuity of the person or persons who invented crocheting and knitting. I mean, if turning fibers into textiles is your goal, I think weaving is kind of a no-brainer. But using sticks to twist and twirl a single length of string according to arcane patterns until it makes something you can wear? Who first woke up in the middle of the night and said, I've got to try this? Knitters and crocheters, past and present, I salute you.