Home again

Well, we've been back from Iceland five days, having spent a couple of days in between with my lovely sister, niece and sparkly nephew-out-law, and our house sitters have just this morning left.

Peggie, Sidney and Millie waiting to go

They provided us not only with that service, and lifts to and from the airport, and canine cuddles for the dog-deprived, but also, as ever, overwhelmed us with all kinds of generosity too abundant to list in detail, from the piles of delicious food, such as this Christmas cake:

Yes, those marzipan plums do look rather suggestive

 to these floral beauties just opening as we arrived home, and now filling the entire space with their luxuriant perfume:

to gifts of stunning art pottery, a passion of theirs which they can't resist sharing:

mince pies and hot chocolate in salt glazed mugs for supper tonight

Also, dismayed at our culinary shabbiness and with typical practical thoughtfulness, a new oven seal ordered on-line so we can actually use our proper oven for Christmas dinner rather than managing with the table top one until we get around to buying a whole new cooker.


So now, having had a couple of weeks filled with gorgeous gifts - pools of steaming blue water, swirls and ribbons of light, rides in the snow, walks on the ice, ravishing crystalline cold and wonderful human and animal warmth - the approach of actual Christmas threatens to be something of an anti-climax, and I find it is almost upon me with little time left to buy stamps, write cards, catch posts, put up decos etc etc and generally do all the things accomplished effortlessly by people with far more demanding demands on them than travelling to fabulous places and being looked after and spoiled by kind family and friends. So if we owe you a card and it's a no-show please forgive, but know you are surely in our hearts*.

However, I am looking forward to taking some time now to go over the enormous number of pictures from the trip, getting rid of the many blurry and duplicate ones, and sharing them here or elsewhere, as well as searching for the perfect Icelandic yoke jumper pattern to best show off the really very cheap Lett Lopi wool I got at the Handknitting Association of Iceland shop and had posted on since there was no way I could fit it all in budget airline hand luggage and maybe even knitting it, or indeed just eating our way through a small fraction of the delicious food left by our house sitters.

So, more anon.

~

*Though of course much of the essence of the votive pieces of printed cardboard exchanged at the Feast of the Mutual Obligation is that they exist to placate the spirits of connection and acquaintance so old and atrophied that there is usually no possibility of reaching their recipients by the normal means of communication practised and followed by actual, still active friends and loved ones. In other words, if you read here you're not likely to miss getting a Christmas card and draw the conclusion that we're probably dead. I know, I snark about it every year, without justification or good grace.