There comes a time to pack up the Christmas decorations:   just before it starts to feel more depressing to leave them up than to take them down.  For us, that day was today.  So down came the nutcrackers and tinsel and santa clauses and angels and nativity sets and snowmen…

We are determined to do a good housecleaning now that the shelves and mantels and all are bare (and the house really needs it after all the festivities and tinsel!).  So, everything stays bare and cheerless for now.  It is kind of visually peaceful – like the nude tree branches (if the nude tree branches were covered in dust and glittery bits and unidentifiable crumbs….).

We should really turn off the timers on the outdoor colored lights, too (we brazenly keep the white lights on til mid-February because it is so dang dark at our end of the street).  But tonight they are still on.  I think there is a full moon tonight, but it is rainy and so a black night nonetheless.

I really wonder what people who don’t knit do in winter.  Music or an old familiar movie, an evening that feels like forever, tea, a fire, a quiet companion, my knitting.  

And I kind of wish the days would be as uneventful with no reason to leave the house and nothing very pressing to do in the house.  Just my knitting, books, letters….but I will just have to be content with long quiet evenings.  Okay, I am going back to my knitting now.  Happy winter, happy knitting.