Resting between…

Random lines in my sketchbook

“Sometimes the most important thing in a whole day is the rest we take between two deep breaths.” ~Etty Hillesum

I realized this week that I had gotten away from wrapping gifts at Christmas. For the past few years, I have loaded up on after-Christmas bargain gift bags and made good use of them too. They are organized by size on hangars in one of our extra closets. And God forbid someone actually throws one away! That goes for the tissue too – I’ll smooth that out and use it again. It’s not about the money, it just seems such a waste to throw away things that are barely used. This drives my husband crazy, though he LOVES gift bags. As far as he’s concerned, if it has a handle it works to wrap a gift. Many of his gifts come right in the shopping bag.

As I contemplated the mound of gifts to wrap, I decided to resurrect my gift wrapping skills. I had lots of lovely red satin ribbon left over from the wedding and couldn’t resist some really pretty paper on sale at Hobby Lobby. Oh, and I had some cute peppermint decorations left from my pre-gift bag days. As a child, I always loved to see a prettily wrapped gift. Many of the gifts I loved best were all about the wrapping and not so much the contents. So I wrapped and wrapped and wrapped some more. I also remembered why I turned to gift bags in the first place; wrapping gifts is exhausting! Though I think it was worthwhile when my grandchildren exclaimed over how beautiful all the gifts were. Jack was especially excited when he realized the one he liked best was for him. To be fair there is one gift bag, but I gave myself a pass. It wasn’t a gift I am giving – the wrapping got pawned off on me.

Feet and back aching at the end of the day, I sat down to relax with my sketchbook. I haven’t had much time to tangle lately, so I just decided to play around with some new tangles I had been admiring, but had yet to try. See the list at the end of the post for the tangle names and links to the instructions should something catch your fancy. Then I just started drawing lines. I’m not sure that it’s anything to write home about, but I really like it. The random repetition was very meditative and helped me relax at the end of a busy day. By my definition, that makes it a winner.