Last school day

This is the last day of classes for the semester (I still have exams to give and grade next week, but in the Gen Ed class the exam is an all-machine-graded and one of the other faculty is even going to do the curving of it, so I'm pretty much off the hook for that one).

On the agenda this afternoon: clean up my house. (I had thought of running down to Sherman just for a fun afternoon, but meh, it's raining and my house really needs the attention more).

I'm considering baking cookies this weekend to bring in during exam week. I may also make the cheese ball I got a mix for at the AAUW meeting last night. (My "blind bag" gift was a decorative plate with a cardinal on it, and a mix for something called "Banana Split Cheese Ball." Um, OK. You make it with cream cheese so I guess it's a sweet, rather than savory, cheese ball. I think I will make it up and bring it in here because even if it is something I really like, I could not consume a whole one before it went bad. I guess you get vanilla wafers or something like that to serve with it).

I've also decided I want to finish Potter this weekend. The second sleeve is about half-done, so I just have to finish that, assemble it, and knit on the collar.

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I'm also planning on doing a little illustrated tutorial on a type of Christmas ornament I've made over the years. I talked about these, oh, way years ago, before I had a camera to photograph them. They're little icicle-chains of beads that you can make. The original idea I found in one of the Better Homes and Gardens craft publications sometime back in the 90s, but I've made modifications to the idea.

(And a book I recently bought on "Vintage Christmas" has instructions for something very similar in one of the chapters - this is the book and it's a pretty wonderful one. It covers the era from the 1920s to the 1960s and talks a bit about each decade. It seems that a lot of my family's celebration incorporates some of the 1940s traditions (dressing up, the type of music) which would kind of make sense as that is when my parents were kids....

The author also talks about the old clear-glass-with-stripes balls (of which we have one or two, from my dad's folks) and how they were made during WWII as a way of doling out scarce paint so instead of a few people getting pretty ornaments and a lot having to do without, they kind of invented - necessity being the mother of invention yet again - a new style)

The author talks about the beginnings of the "nature" movement and the "Americana revival" in the 1960s. Which strikes me as interesting; I thought maybe that was a bit later. I guess I tend to think of the 1960s style more in the early 60s, pillbox-hats and "Camelot" style. But I do remember natural-materials ornaments from my 1970s childhood; my mother has a huge wreath that has pinecones and sweet gum balls and other things wired onto the form (I think it must have been coated with some kind of preservative; it's shiny and also it's survived summers stored in a garage where there were mice). And we still have some ornaments I made as a child, where I glued glitter and beads onto milkweed pods.

And the whole Americana Revival thing is very familiar to me; as much as my parents' house followed a particular "style" when I was a child, that was it. I thought that came in with the Bicentennial but I guess it was earlier.

The author also talks about how the 1960s tended to be the beginning of the era of "theme" trees - where all one color, or all one style of ornament was chic, and how some of the "nature movement" people went against that, and tried to bring back "granny's" tree (though she points out - not so much THEIR grannies, as people-who-would-have-been-grannies-at-the-turn-of-the-20th-century.) And I definitely fall into that second camp. Themed trees are fine for some people, but I like more of a gallimaufry of stuff on mine - some handmade ornaments, some purchased figural ornaments, and especially, on the tree my parents put up, ornaments I remember from my childhood.)