Part 1: On Vaccation In California: Sock hearth

We went on vacation to my grandmother's house for Christmas. This is where I lived until I was almost 16 years old. This is what Christmas looks like to me. Other Christmases just never seem quiet right to me, silly but true. When I was kid we had a lot of socks over the hearth upstairs. Now that I am grown up, we have a lot more socks on the hearth downstairs. When I was little there were two for my grand parents, two for my aunt and uncle, one for my mother, and nine for my cousins, my siblings and me. Siblings and cousins were pretty much the same thing because we all lived together in this house.

When I was a little older, my cousins were my grandmother's neighbors ,so we were always together. Especially in the country where your next neighbor, who is 1/4 mile away, is your cousin, and the next neighbor was 1 mile away and that was your best friend, then there were no other neighbors. That has all changed now; town is in encroaching on my grandmother's home.

So, when we were kids, there was a grand total of fourteen socks. Now, there are sixty-four of us from those two grand parents. So it is just amazing what two people can produce by having two kids who then have eleven kids between them, and it just goes on 'till there are 64 of us. Quiet the ruckus on Christmas Eve when we all gather at my grandmother's house.All the wood things, such as blocks, wreaths, Santas and so on, my Vo-va made over the years. Each Christmas we all get a new wood block to add to our collections. This year it had the family brand that is over 100 years old on it.

One of the socks was in major need of repair. So, yes, those are my hands in the photo. Sorry for the bad lighting; I think my husband had the flash set wrong. The sock I was repairing was my mother's. So, as a favor to my grandmother, I reassembled it. It is actually one of my favorite socks on the hearth, next to the wool ones made by the nuns. The one I was repairing is an old velvet one from over 60 years ago and has real rabbits fur around the top, not like the things you buy today. Actually, this is one of only two socks hanging that were made by my Vo-va; all the more reason to repair it. It uses green sequins for the name. Now it will last a few more years.