Peg Kerr's Journal

I had a bit of trouble coming up with a topic for this week's collage, because what has preoccupied me the most for this particular week were two topics I'd done collages about before: the arthritis in my hand and my sleep disorder. Both have been extremely troublesome.

But I've done those subjects before, as I said, and frankly, they are pretty damned depressing topics. Good lord, I don't want to be a tiresome old lady who natters on boringly about details of her life that cannot possibly interest anyone else.

After the election, I wanted to do a collage about something hopeful.

Upon thinking about it further, I realized that I did have something hopeful to talk about specific to this week.

Every year, the week of Veteran's Day, my Dad's birthday, and Rob's birthday, I always plant an amaryllis bulb. I do this at this time of the year because if you time it this way, the bulb will usually flower right around Christmas.

Planting a bulb for Christmas does not cost very much at all. I usually buy a bulb at Ace Hardware every year for about $12, which includes the soil and the pot, but I always use the same red pot I got years ago and use only for this purpose. This year, I am simply re-planting the bulb I used last year as an experiment. I had put it in the basement in the dark for several weeks in preparation--we'll see if it works.

It is a Christmas ritual that is dependable, comforting, and cost-effective (which cannot be said of all Christmas traditions). And it is hopeful. I plant the bulb and can look forward to a huge, extravagant bloom.

I need some hope this year.

Edited to add: A friend just emailed to remind me of this song, Amaryllis by the Flash Girls.

I can't get the embed code, but you can listen to it here.

Background: fallen autumn leaves on concrete. Lower center: a red ceramic pot planted with an amaryllis bulb. Hovering over the pot: a semi-transparent red amaryllis flower in full bloom.

Amaryllis



Click on the links to see the 2024, 2023, 2022 and 2021 52 Card Project galleries.

This is late.

I have Covid. Peg, why couldn't you skip doing a collage this week?

Because I can't, that's why.

Nevertheless, explanations will be abbreviated.

This is a card about the pleasures of baking yummy things. Our family annual cookie bake often coincides with St. Lucia's Day. Longtime readers of this journal know I've celebrated this holiday for years.

Compare this previous collage, for the same week, also titled "Baking." Sorry that I couldn't come up with another subject, but I have no brain.

Baking helps keep the darkness away.

Unfortunately, not Covid.

But that's next week's card.

Image description: Background: christmas cookies spread in rows on a long table. Overlaid over that: coffee and lussekatter (saffron buns for St. Lucia Day celebrations). Overlaid over that lower right: a woman dressed as St. Lucia: white dress, red sash, crown of candles. She holds her hands in a position of prayer.

Baking



Click here to see the 2023 52 Card Project gallery.

Click here to see the 2022 52 Card Project gallery.

Click here to see the 2021 52 Card Project gallery.

I spent over 3 hours trying to put a card together without success. I didn't quite take the right pictures to capture my ideas that would crystalize the week. Or perhaps I did, yet I couldn't put them together into a pleasing composition design.

So I finally decided to throw in the towel and declare the project done for the year with just one image. Hey, I'm on vacation this week, and I'm not going to struggle with this collage anymore. Sometimes enough is enough, you know? I AM proud of what I've done with the collage project this year, and I intend to continue with it next year.

See the link to the gallery below. What was your favorite digital collage of the year?

Image description: A closeup of a silver star ornament on a Christmas tree

Christmas



Click here to see the 2022 52 Card Project gallery.

Click here to see the 2021 gallery.

This week, as I have done every year since 1986, I started preparing my annual holiday letter, which I send out with a photo card of my family. The girls still put up with this, although assembling us all for a photo is getting more and more difficult. This year, our respective sweeties (Eric, Alona, and Chris) were included in the photo, too, thanks to my brother-in-law good-naturedly snapping a few pics at our Thanksgiving gathering.

Updating the addresses on my list and getting the cards assembled and sent can be a little bit of a pain, but sending the letters and photos out is important to me. I am in touch with some people only this one time a year. I thought a lot about this when Rob passed away, and I continued to send the cards out to my husband's friends, too: his law school buddies, his college buddies, guys on the bowling team he was on years ago, his cousins, aunts, and uncles. Even the people I've never met. I enjoyed getting family news every year because I liked seeing pictures from those trips to Paris, and I wondered who beat that cancer, and where the kids ended up.

This year, I decided to use a format for the letter I've sometimes used before: It's a sort of impressionistic thing, just short words and phrases, snippets of things my girls and I have sent to each other in Snapchats, etc. Small sample:

• best hoodie ever • puzzle rings • getting rid of books • new kitchen floor • repainting • visiting Mom each weekend • Aldi’s • the kindness of friends • Zoom writing sessions • mentoring •
I closed the holiday letter the same way I always do when I use this format (see below):

Frame: a holiday letter border with gold/brass foil Christmas trees. Within that border: top: french horns tied with Christmas greens. Lower left: corner holly greens Lower right: a smiling snowman gestures toward the center of the card. Center reads "this is our life / this is what we say / this is what we do / this is how we love."

Cards



Click here to see the 2022 52 Card Project gallery.

Click here to see the 2021 gallery.

I had such hopes for this holiday season.

I spent it last year alone, and I was so looking forward to getting together with my family. We have had some holiday rituals that we've done for decades: my extended family gathers between Christmas and New Year's every year, and I was excited to see everyone. We are all vaccinated and many of us have received boosters, and we are all willing to wear masks. It felt like our reward for being so diligent about keeping safe all year.

My nephew Lewis flew in from New York. He tested twice before getting on the plane and was negative each time. He came home to my sister Cindy's...and then tested positive the next day (Christmas Eve). Cindy, too, had really been looking forward to Christmas: this was the first year in decades that they would have been gathering in their own home instead of going out East. But now this meant that Cindy and her husband were forced to go into isolation, and her other two sons, Mitch and Stuart, could not come home. It also meant that my brother Chet's family canceled their trip to join us--they had intended to stay with Cindy's family (although one nephew did travel separately later). Disappointment #1.

I had planned an event during this family week for the women of the family, a cream tea at Bingley's Teas, but since our group was now reduced by one-third, I regretfully canceled it. Disappointment #2.

I spent Christmas Eve with my sister Betsy and her family, including my mom. Mitch and Stuart joined that party.

Christmas day, Eric and I had intended to go over to Fiona and Alona's for breakfast--but Eric tested positive that morning and so couldn't join us. His sons subsequently tested positive over the next several days. Disappointment #3.

That evening, Christmas night, I invited over Mitch and Stuart, Cindy's two sons who hadn't been able to go home for drinks and appetizers.

Delia had planned to come to Minneapolis with her boyfriend Chris on Tuesday the 27th. All of us--Fiona, Alona, Chris, Delia, and I tested negative that morning, so I went over to Fiona's and we had our gift opening. Yay! We had planned two more days of get-togethers before Delia and Chris had to head back to Eau Claire.

The next day, yesterday (Wednesday) Mitch called me to tell me that although he had tested negative on Christmas day, he was now testing positive. So now I am in isolation and unable to get together with Fiona's household, including Delia and Chris. I will not be able to see them again before they leave town to go back to Eau Claire. Disappointment #4. I will spend New Year's Eve alone again.

I thought of making another plum pudding on New Year's Eve, as I did last year. What better way to recognize the end of a difficult year than by setting something on fire in my living room? But I have a colonoscopy scheduled for next week and have to start limiting my diet, and I have to avoid some of the ingredients in the plum pudding a week out. That also means I will have no 12th night celebration--I will be fasting that day. Disappointment #5.

I'm grateful that my family and I are all on the same page, getting vaccines and boosters and wearing masks and testing before getting together. But despite our best efforts and diligence and cooperation, people have fallen sick. Omicron is just so damned contagious.

I am trying to keep my spirits up, and I'm glad that at least I did have a few get-together's, and the girls and I got to open our presents together. I will see Eric soon again and we can exchange gifts between the two of us then. But it's still hard, and this still sucks.

Edited to add: I took a rapid test tonight, five days out from my Christmas day exposure (per CDC guidelines), and it was negative.

The background for the card is the charcuterie board I created for my nephews Mitch and Stuart on Christmas night, with a rapid Covid test in the center. Upper left: Covid virus (wearing a Scrooge hat), with a dialogue bubble that reads "Humbug." Upper right: logo for Bingley's Teas with "no" sign. Lower right corner: Fiona and Delia overlaid with "no" sign. Lower left corner: Eric overlaid with "no" sign.

Humbug



Click here to read about the 52 card project and see the year's gallery.

Woo hoo, I did it! 52 collages for the year completed!

Which one did you like the best?

I will continue the project next year, starting a new gallery with my next collage.

I tried.

I adapted my usual full-size Nutella star recipe traditionally served at Christmas breakfast (comparison picture from last year):



and made a quarter-sized version for one person.



I couldn't bear to pull out the dishes we traditionally use only for Christmas morning but instead used another holly berry set.



Everything tasted absolutely delicious. I'm not ashamed to say that I cried as I ate it.

I took very few pictures this year because I fell ill with a bad cold the morning of Christmas Eve, and so Christmas was very subdued this year. I did want to show you my utterly impractical, incredibly fragile Christmas gift for Delia. At my instruction, she opened the mirror first, and THAT made her cry. Then she opened the crystal coach and utterly lost it.



Here is the same picture with an arty Instagram filter:




I picked up this beauty at Sophie Joe’s Emporium in St. Paul. Delia and I were in there browsing one day before meeting some friends for coffee. Delia admired the coach, and then I slipped the clerk my card as she was browsing further. I came back for it later and found a mirror (also at Sophie Jo’s) to place it on, and I added the lettering (using stick-on lettering found at Michael's craft store).

The clerk told me that it was a custom-made piece that was created for a Cinderella-themed wedding: it was used as the cake topper. Eventually, it was sold to the Emporium.

The words on the mirror are from the Disney movie: it is what Cinderella's mother tells Cinderella when on her deathbed. Delia has adopted it as a personal motto. The reminder to "be kind," is also a reminder to be kind to herself.

Everyone's home for the holidays



I have my Christmas manicure, so I'm ready



Stockings!



Breakfast preparation! Here is our Christmas star, uncooked:



And golden brown, hot out of the oven:



The table is set with yummy things


Rob and the girls



Me and the girls


My place setting:


Delia:


Fiona, rejoicing as she does every year when Delia gives her extra pastry stars to eat:


Rob enjoys his breakfast:


For the fifth year in a row, I am the only one in the entire house awake during Christmas afternoon


Merry Christmas from us all!

Fiona has a work shift and wants to get back to her apartment, so we held our 12th night celebration today, a few days early.

On the menu was sweet rolls, bacon, fruit salad and cocoa:









( More pictures behind the cut )

Happy Twelfth Night (early) to you and yours:

It is really an advent carol, but almost entirely unknown, I think. About its origins Mudcat.org says:

John Taylor, Postbridge aged 85, Tune not recorded in Killerton Ms but can be found in the Rough Ms. Baring-Gould gives a second version which he says is closer to the broadside ballad.
K3 p297
from Sabine Baring-Gould and the folk songs of South-West England

The gorgeous version I have is by Jennifer Cutting's Ocean Orchestra (here you can hear small sample).

I found another artist who put the whole song online, giving it a different title.



( Here are the lyrics of the version I know )