We had a lovely Christmas at Paul’s parents. Lots of food, board games and good company. Unfortunately this year Paul’s nana came down with a cold just before Christmas and so didn’t come to stay. Hopefully we will see her and catch up before too long. We saw my parents in the middle of December when they stayed with us while doing their pre-Christmas relative visit. We were going to have Ashby-Family-Christmas on the second weekend of January, but have postponed it for a bit because of the snow.

I really enjoy our spread-out Christmas celebrations. There is more opportunity to savour the time together, rather than feeling that you are on a visiting treadmill with no time to actual spend in each others company. I like to spread the fun out, and enjoy it for as long as possible 🙂 It makes for a more relaxed time, and also the chance to do things you have been wanting to have a go at but been putting off.

I took Suzie along for Christmas, and had a lovely time spinning away while Paul read his book, Paul’s dad did his crossword, and Paul’s mum worked on her tapestry weaving. Paul’s mum had a go on Suzie too and made some very respectable yarn, which I completely forgot to photograph.

As part of my Christmas present I got some lovely knitty and spinny things. From my mum a skein of Debonnaire sock yarn, 100% superwash merino, 100g, 365m. I think the colour is called passion / envy but the band is hand written and I am having a bit of a failure on the handwriting!

The colours are actually a bit darker in real life. Lovely saturated jewel tones. Yum!

She also got me a bag of guanaco fibre from Texere, and two sample bags of silk fibre from Winghams.

The guanaco is the wild relative (possibly ancestor) of the llama, and looks really interesting. I think there are still some guard hairs in this fibre, but it still feels very very soft. The silk is unbelievably luscious, and the colours beautiful. It is so shiny and squidgy!

My sister and her husband gave me a lovely surprise pressie from their holiday in Scotland. A skein of Angora Ecosse, from a farm they visited.

The label is a bit lacking in detail but I am guessing it is about a 4ply weight, 100g, and probably an angora / wool mix. I think I might make a little cowl, there seem to be a lot of nice patterns about at the moment.