Time for another round of submissions! Note for next week: I’m going to do a recipe post with cookies and such, so if you want to send me holiday photos of some of your treats, meals or edible gifts, that would be fun.
On to the festive photos. This is one of my favorites, I’m in awe of these eggs from Cheryl from Maryland:
Re Holiday Joy — during the 1960s and 1970s, when I was a child, my mother was a regular consumer of Womens magazines dedicated to homemaking and enriching your children. Her favorite was McCalls, which had regular crafting articles for semi talented children. I was my mother’s guinea pig, which actually was genius on her part as I became an art historian and had a 30 year career in the arts with the Smithsonian Institution.The craft experience which I still do today was painting blown eggs for Easter, which I as a teen turned into Christmas Decorations. Many of those I still have are at least 45 years old. My mother got the idea from McCalls magazine where Betsy McCall painted blown eggs and hung them on tree branchesThe eggs are regular grocery store eggs, size extra large. Take them out of the fridge for a couple of hours, use a metal lacer for a turkey or similar to poke holes at the top and bottom. Use the lacer to punch the yolk and stir the interior egg stuff up so it is as liquid as possible. Over a bowl, blow on the top hole until the egg contents come out. My mother had great lung power and had useful egg contents for brownies, etc. Me, I throw away the contents. Rinse the egg with water through the holes, set in an egg carton on the counter to drip for a few days.Then, draw what you want on the egg. I use pencil, then paint with watercolors (classic elementary school Binney and Smith), with black acrylic paint to give the work an illuminated manuscript/wood cut look. I use thin color washes on the egg and blot the color often with a tissue.After you like what you did, either use a twist tie to make a hanger, or use a long needle, metallic thread and beads to make a hanger. I can crochet, so I make a chain with beads threaded through the egg. I’m sorry I can’t explain how I do it as I’ve been doing it for so long.
So, some images. I was and still am a devotee of European art from about 1300 to 1500, which I think you can tell. Also King Arthur and fantasy. My mother-in-law has about 30 eggs on a tree with the nativity story (the image shows mostly angels). I have about 45; various cousins and friends have some as well.
Also, attached are some images of creative gift wrapping! I’d like to emphasize, especially in this time of children not in school, that crafts not only are important for eye hand coordination and boredom, but they can develop the imagination and habits of a lifetime so one is an active person at leisure rather than a passive one. Such things also lead to quality work as an adult. Under my mother’s tutelage, we also made puppets out of paper bags and jello/pudding boxes and wrote plays. Bad plays and puppets, but I believe the work of envisioning, planning, reviewing, making, etc. was crucial to my 30 year career overseeing exhibitions at the Smithsonian Traveling Exhibition Service.
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That gift wrapping would so fit in my household. Next up more gift-wrapped presents from frosty:
This is a picture from Christmas morning 2018. We kind of overdid it on presents – those are for four of us. We’ve had Christmas at my older son’s apartment or house since 2016. This year it will be at his new house that he just bought.
I have to say I like this arrangement. We had several years when we would cut a tree, with the boys doing the work that involved lying on the cold ground (yay!). I don’t miss setting up and decorating the tree. A string or two of lights outside is it for me these days.
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Some adorable pups from Miki:
Cheesy pic from the olden days, Da Boyz: Chowley Socktoe, Morning Glory Mike, Tucker, and Ryder.
I started the Spoo Era with Mike, slid Chowley into my sister’s heart, grabbed onto Tucker for myself, all of whom made it impossible for the last sister to resist being tagged by Ryder. They’re all gone now (the poodles, not the sisters). But each of our lives was immensely enriched by their presence.Poodles Rule. Labs Drool.
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And finally from me, another oldie. Christmas 2004 with Emma, Harley, Missy and Jake. Emma enjoys another Christmas with us, and the rest are always here in spirit.
And that is about the only way you can herd four cats into a Christmas photo, LOL.
Thanks everyone for sharing, it’s been a great way to get me into a more festive mood. Don’t forget, send me your holiday food photos for next week.
Respite open thread
TaMara (HFG)
The formatting is a little screwy again, but I think you guys can figure it all out. :-)
Immanentize
Here is an OTish respite — I was this many days old before I learned this and now I must see it for myself!
Immanentize
Also, kittehs are cute.
Puppies are fluffy.
randy khan
Love the eggs!
dr. luba
My holiday eggs are snowflake themed: I glue findings to the big ends and hang them on the tree. Except for the goose eggs, of course. Too big and heavy.
trollhattan
Years ago the spouse worked with a woman from Sweden who made amazing egg carvings using a Dremel tool. Incredibly intricate, gorgeous things. What I can’t recall is what kind of eggs, possibly turkey since they’re larger and thicker.
Dorothy A. Winsor
@Immanentize: That is very cool
StringOnAStick
Wow, a career at the Smithsonian! Many kudos. Smithsonian magazine has been a favourite read since I hit my teen years and I’ve rarely been without a subscription.
Major Major Major Major
For my Xmas respite, in addition to my daily respite of video games and teevee, I’ve been enjoying the crap out of Hogfather, reminder book club Sunday at 3 eastern.
we got Samwise a little elf cape. I’ll let you know if I ever get a good picture lol.
trollhattan
@Immanentize:
Nuh uh, Fake Seas!
That’s very cool, indeed. We have a very minor mimic here with the confluence of the Sacramento and American rivers. The Sacramento is loaded with agricultural silt and the American is still clearish after its trip from the Sierra Nevada. It’s most distinct in fall when flows are at their lowest.
I thought osmolarity was when Donny and Marie got their teeth cleaned.
JPL
Cheryl, Your egg ornaments are magical, and beautiful. I’m so pleased that you shared the pictures, along with the story with us.
@Immanentize: Nature is amazing. How much snow did you get?
Gin & Tonic
@Immanentize: Sorry to burst your bubble, Imm.
Mandarama
Cheryl, thank you for sharing these! I actually made some blown eggs when I was a young girl, based on a magazine tutorial. (I can’t draw, so mine were decorated with rick-rack and beads glued on.) Your watercoloring is amazing! I agree that learning to make things when you’re a kid helps foster a lifetime of tinkering and crafting…I am not wildly talented but I’m always busy with something! Right now I have an old 5-and-10 nativity set (badly painted even when new!) that was my late mother-in-law’s when she was little (1940s). It’s chipped and broken, and I’m (very inexpertly) renovating it because my husband has happy memories of it (he is responsible for most of the breakage, circa mid-1970s).
A stitcher I follow calls this “Make, not Break”–keeping a sense of creativity and accomplishment in these long hours of worry and isolation.
Yarrow
Your egg ornaments are so gorgeous. Really impressed. Love the pet pics and that gift wrapping is excellent, especially that cat wrapping. Heh.
Major Major Major Major
I always get so nervous around blown eggs… always impressive to see what people can do with them.
Being horrible at wrapping gifts runs in my family. My dad is the absolute worst. He created a persona to deflect blame so all of his tags note that it was “wrapped by Jacques, a student at the Parisian School of Gift Wrapping.”
SiubhanDuinne
@Cheryl from Maryland:
Those eggs are beautiful. I loved the stained-glass leading and the timeless folk themes. And thank you for connecting the dots between your youthful crafts and your eventual career at the Smithsonian. That’s a really neat story!
ETA: I was a McCall’s kid too, but I never got beyond the Betsy McCall paper dolls. I used to design outfits for her. Also Mopsy and Katy Keene from the weekend comics section of the newspaper.
SiubhanDuinne
@dr. luba:
Good Lord, those are utterly stunning. I browsed through your gallery and am simply speechless with admiration.
Gin & Tonic
@TaMara (HFG): It’s also false.
zhena gogolia
Great pictures.
I’m kvelling because I just got to see my Russian goddaughter on YouTube as one of three finalists in the comic-book category of the association of Spanish illustration artists! She didn’t win, but it was very exciting for a totally unknown Russian artist living temporarily in Madrid.
TaMara (HFG)
@dr. luba: Whoa.
zhena gogolia
My mother filled our house with McCall’s crafts. The infection didn’t take with me, I’m afraid. Beautiful ornaments!
zhena gogolia
@SiubhanDuinne:
Oh, God, I did those paper dolls too.
Paper dolls were my crack. I had the Lennon Sisters and lots of other great ones. Then I went through it again while babysitting my niece — I got into Dover, which had these fabulous paper dolls of Greta Garbo and other great screen stars with their most famous outfits. Even that was 30 years ago, but just talking about it makes me want to get some paper dolls right NIAOW.
Ceci n est pas mon nym
@trollhattan: I remember something like that with the Chesapeake Bay from when I lived in MD. Water from the Atlantic is mixing with the fresh runoff from the rivers. Salinity varies widely with location and time of year, and flora and fauna living there have to be able to adapt to the variability.
Immanentize
@Gin & Tonic:
That is too bad that it is a fake — but I don’t for a minute believe you didn’t enoy pointing it out.
@JPL: We got 10″ or so — but my Mom near Binghamton NY got 40″! none of us were going anywhere anyhoo….
Major Major Major Major
@Immanentize: it’s not fake, though, right? Just mislabeled?
I’ve seen this effect at river confluences and stuff, it’s always stunning.
Ceci n est pas mon nym
About crafts: I’ve been an origami enthusiast for many years but it comes and goes. Mostly it’s around Christmas that I get the urge. This year I bought a Christmas origami book and I’m working my way through it, leaving my wife to deal with the completed figures. I like pretty elaborate models, which don’t always work out, especially in those last few steps where you’re shaping tiny microscopic little bits of paper. Just finished a sheep (successful) and a five-pointed star (less successful).
Gin & Tonic
@Immanentize: I’m just trying to set the record straight. Feelings have nothing to do with it.
It just seemed obviously wrong when I saw people in shorts on the boat. I’ve been to Patagonia in summer (although not that far south) and nobody would be in shorts. In fact, when my son was in Ushuaia in February it snowed.
waysel
@Immanentize: If you google ‘Fraser River strait of Georgia’ you’ll see a YouTube from 2015 by Maryan Pearson that is the original video. It shows the silty river water dumping into the strait between Vancouver island and Vancouver. I suppose the strait is part of the Pacific Ocean. Cool phenomenon regardless.
Gin & Tonic
@Major Major Major Major: It is, in fact, a river confluence, so you’re right. But it isn’t Cape Horn and isn’t two bodies of salt water.
ETA: Apropos of nothing, I recall many years ago on Long Island, when it was cold enough to freeze the bay, it also froze some of the rivers that feed it, and there was always a very pronounced seam at the fresh/salt boundary. We’d ride our bikes on the salt ice, jump the boundary to fresh and slide – because the fresh ice was smooth. Not really a recommended activity in hindsight.
NotMax
Apartment building I once lived in the NYC area had the plumbing in one wing entirely glorked by a hippy dippy couple who made their living selling painted eggs at street fairs and the like.
The would blow out eggs by the hundreds and dump the contents down the drain of their kitchen sink.
zhena gogolia
@NotMax:
Now I’m picturing Al Sleet blowing eggs.
Kristine
Those eggshell ornaments are gorgeous!
Enjoying the photos of holidays past.
Kristine
@dr. luba: beautiful ?!
JPL
@Immanentize: Wow! Forty inches is a lot for one storm.
zhena gogolia
Since I’m the JL Cauvin booster around here, very nice interview with him in the LA Times:
https://www.latimes.com/entertainment-arts/story/2020-12-17/donald-trump-impersonator-j-l-cauvin
sheila in nc
@SiubhanDuinne: Yes! Betsy McCall! Hours of fun storytelling to myself with paper dolls on the floor of my room… haven’t thought about that in decades.
Immanentize
@waysel: thank you! Now that is some setting the record straight!
Immanentize
@JPL:
I can really only recall one three foot storm when I was in kid growing up in that area — it must have been the early 70s! I remember building loooong fort tunnels in the swale. Which I now understand is deadly when plows rush through.
But we lived!
Tdjr
Here in Pittsburgh, the Allegheny river and Monogahela river meet at the Point to form the mighty Ohio. The Mon is muddy and the ‘gheny is clear and you can see a line quite a ways down the river until they really merge.
Keith P.
That cat photo has to be a photoshop
dr. luba
Thanks for the lovely reviews. For my information on snowflake eggs (and snowflakes), check out this portion of my website. I have been writing pysanky since about age 7, so more than 50 years now. The snowflake version is a relatively recent (for me) one.
Shana
The egg ornaments are lovely and I too used to play with Betsy McCall paper dolls as a child.
Out of curiosity, what Smithsonian art museum did you work at? My daughter had a one year internship at the American Art museum (SAAM) after her BA and before her MA and loved it. I know you said you worked with the traveling exhibits department but assume there was specific museum work in there too.
sab
Back when I was a young adult and had my first puppies and my first Christmas tree I used to paint eggshells for the tree. The puppies could crunch through the ornaments without hurting themselves. They ate a lot of them the first couple of years. Then they settled down. I eventually had dozens of egg ornaments with all sorts of pictures, including puppy portraits, and many of conifers, landscapes and pointsettias. Also tiny deer. And holly.
Cheryl’s are are so much nicer than mine, and I thought mine were quite nice.
Kattails
Cheryl from Maryland, these are wonderful, and working with the Smithsonian would be a fabulous career! Wow. I’ve done a lot of calligraphy and am also drawn to medieval art, particularly manuscripts and illumination.
BTW wondering how the Pigma micron pens would work for black outlines, they’re lightfast and waterproof and come in a good range of sizes from very fine .25mm, you probably have already tried them.