A Wonderful Christmas

 Life happens and I had been very busy preparing for my Christmas visitor.  I had a great many things to do and I find as I continue to age, that I no longer can get as much done in a day as I used to be able to do.  Sometimes I run out of energy.  But COVID pandemic fatigue has also set in and I just do not feel like doing anything on some days.  So I needed to get several things cleaned up and sorted in preparation.

My youngest son Brian was coming to Alaska for his first Christmas in the long dark days that Alaska has at this time of the year.  I know... it was not the thing that one should have done with a pandemic raging all across the country and around the world, but the last time I had seen him was well over a year ago when I visited for a day or so in the middle of the three weeks of travel to get me, my dogs and my car to Fairbanks to establish residency in my new home.

Brian and I had been spending several weeks together each year.  Usually, in the summer I would drive to his house, spend a week or more with him before driving home.  These trips afforded me the ability to also visit my cousin Linda in Lake Villa, IL as well as making stops at many quilt shops across the country.  Then he would always fly out to Parkesburg for Christmas, spend several days with me before heading out to see his Dad in New Jersey before flying back to Minneapolis.

He had not come for Christmas last year as I was nowhere near ready for guests and he needed to see his Dad on the East Coast.  And since I can no longer drive out to see him in the summer, I had not seen him in well over a year.  So, he spent Thanksgiving with his Dad in North Carolina and then flew here for Christmas this year (2020).

Brian and I did not do much in the way of exploring.  1st, we had never really done much exploring at Christmases in the past,.  2nd, in today's pandemic world, it would have been reckless of us to have exposed him to anyone after being out in the travel world... just in case he had picked up COVID.  In fact, we did not go out of the house at all except to get rid of some trash at the transfer station, pick up some Dremel Tool cutting wheels, and later to go to one of the "liquor" stores to get beer for him to enjoy while he was here.  So, nothing new except location!

We did not even go grocery shopping.  We looked at what I had on hand and made that work.  It was a good thing as in the first week in January we are going to have a new kitchen floor installed along with a new dishwasher and trash compactor.  So getting foods out of the fridge was a good thing.

Here is the only picture I took of Brian this Christmas in my living room.  The funny thing was I was looking back at older Christmas pictures and found one not too many years ago with him in almost the same position and in the same outfit.  We laughed and laughed at that.  Notice the boxes and wrapping paper, he had opened his Christmas presents that morning.

For our Christmas dinner, we had made a pork loin roast, cooked a pot of sauerkraut and potato dumplings.  It is one of our favorite meals that had been taught to us by his paternal grandmother, Ann Cermak.  I handled the roast and the sauerkraut and Brian made the dumplings.

This is the sauerkraut.  It was a jarred variety that I have found at Costco, a good amount for not much money and it is delicious.  I like it because I can store it and have it already on the shelf when I get hungry for it.  I add a little sugar and onions to the pot and it simmers pretty much all day!

This was the pork roast.  It still needed another hour at this stage, but it turned out tender and juicy.

This is the water getting ready for the potato dumplings.

These are the raw dumplings waiting to be dropped into the water to be cooked.  I will be enjoying this meal again on New Years Day for good luck in 2021.

This was the remainder of the Blue Cheese Ball from Thanksgiving.  Brian and I finished it off before he left for home.

This was our meal before we began to eat.  It was wonderful!!  I do not usually go through the trouble of making the dumplings, so I was very thankful that Brian did.  Yum, yum!!

Kate had been working on this new jigsaw puzzle.  She had really almost completed it.  So Brian found it interesting and finished putting in the last pieces.  This puzzle was made up of all ugly Christmas sweaters.  So, I need to get this one back in the box and get another one out.

I put Brian to work.  I needed some help in the craft room.  The items along the back of the room at the front of the house (a table with my desktop computer and a printer, a bookcase for storage, my Happy 12-needle single-head embroidery machine, and one end of my new quilting frame) that was just not working for me.  Happy had not been assembled since the move.  The quilt frame was in a position where if I wanted to use to for quilting it would need to be moved a couple of feet to access the entire frame plus the carriage for the sewing machine was just not moving very smoothly.  So I asked Brian to look at it all and perhaps suggest a way to set it up a better setup.

This is the left side of the room during the course of trying to get organized that I took back in April  The table was the first item along the wall and had to be a foot or more from the side wall.  Underneath the white, flannel wall is a double closet with folding, wooden doors.  So the table had to be there in order to open the closet.

Right next to the table is a white bookcase.  On top of the bookcase is a set of wire cubes that I had used as displays when I would sell my embroidery at Red Hat Conventions.  I had put together some to hold my pre-cuts.

Right next to the bookcase is the Happy Embroidery machine.  All of the parts and pieces that had to come off of it were there but I had not yet attempted to reassemble it.  And right next to Happy was the new, metal quilt frame with a Husqvarna Viking Mega Quilter sewing machine.  It was all the way against the front wall of the house and the side wall of the house.  It was just not working for me and as I continued to sort and get things put away, I just could not get excited about doing anything back there, so I eventually just stopped.  I was still able to sew at my regular machine, so I could just put it on the back burner.

Brian's suggestion was quite simply to take the doors off the closet and move everything to the left, thus opening up an area where I could access the quilt frame without having to move it at all.  I further refined it to move the bookcase next to the closet, then the table, then Happy, then space, and then the quilt frame.  And that is what we did.  The picture above shows the door gone to the first part of the closet with the quilt wall material hanging in front of the closet.

Here you can see the bookcase is now tight against the closet wall.  Without the doors, the closet is still accessible.  The pre-cuts are still in the cubes and next to the cubes there are rolls of elastic along with magazines.  Now the shelves hold embroidery thread for Happy.

The table now is almost tight against the bookcase.  I will still have to sort out this table as I need to add the laptop that I have that runs Windows 7 as the only software I like to prepare designs for embroidering only runs on Windows 7.  I am not prepared to spend thousands of dollars to buy new software as I am no longer doing embroidery as a business.

And this is Happy.  The thread holder on top has been re-assembled and thread placed on top.  Needles have been replaced as one of the movers tried to pick up Happy where the needles were, inserting most of them into his hands.  So I am sure they were bent. After getting the screen put back into place, attaching all of the cables, and re-threading the thread, I ran it, using a design that was still in the machine and Happy worked as though he had not been moved from Southeast PA to Fairbanks!!  I am an extremely happy person as I feared the move might have created a $10,000 brick!

And finally, I now have space between Happy and the quilt frame.  Brian moved the frame a few inches off the front wall, but I can now get to all portions of the frame in order to attach a quilt, batting, and backing.  Now all I have to do is to continue to fine-tune the room.  But I am now satisfied with the entire room, so getting it neatened up will be much easier.  I promise to post pictures when it is finished.

I cannot thank Brian enough for being able to see a better way to have things set up.  I was just too close to how things were and could not see the solution.  So 2021 will be the final push to get organized in the craft room.