Winter Traditions

This year in Pittsburgh, we set out to honor our favorite winter traditions and discover new ones. The rest of the year, we especially thrive on a certain amount of serendipity. In the winter, traditions reign! They get us through short, cold days.

Every year for four years now, we've gone to glassblowing studios so that Jasper can make his own ornaments. The first time was on a homeschool field trip, and Jasper said, "This is what I want to do with my life!" There was nowhere for him to take formal lessons, and he's since revised his plans for his future. But we did have two local studios where he could make holiday ornaments, and he was hooked. So for our first year in Pittsburgh, we headed over to the Pittsburgh Glass Center for one of their 15-minute ornament making sessions. This time, both of us signed up to make ornaments. I've had many glassblowing classes before, and I was quite excited to visit PGC because they offer a stunning array of in-depth hot glass classes. Jasper has made ornaments 7 times before, each time with a different instructor, also in 15 minute sessions.

We were both surprised that this time, aside from a few minutes of blowing into the blowpipe, participants were only able to observe. At other studios, when Jasper has made ornaments, they took students one at a time, and he was able to complete many more steps in the process himself in the same 15 minute period. PCG had several ornaments being made at once. So perhaps the careful choreography that is necessary when

wielding red-hot glass on the end of long pipes in a busy studio was a factor. No need to put them in the hands of too many amateurs at once... They also offered fewer color choices than we expected. But we did both end up with lovely ornaments that were made to our specifications. Next time we may try out one of their more hands-on ornament making classes, which would probably let him do more himself than he's ever been able to do before. But this will clearly require a lot more advance planning and $.

We also always make a gingerbread house together. Actually we use plain sugar cookie dough, because years ago when we started, Jasper was not a fan of gingerbread. They always look as if a cat made them, but we have fun! We make stained glass windows with melted Jolly Rogers, and Jasper makes bizarre "snowmen" with marshmallows. This year, we stopped making "grass" from coconut dyed green for the lawn. Pittsburgh actually has real white Christmases! So exciting! 

I always think making "gingerbread houses" from graham crackers is for little kids, and for families that don't know that it's really not too hard to make the houses from scratch. So I was skeptical when the awesome mom who uses her superpowers to run the Homeschool Teen Meetup at the Monroeville Library suggested that the teens do it. Boy, was I wrong to doubt. The kids had a lot of fun, and really took the concept and ran with it! It was astonishing to see the variety and creativity they employed. Jasper had a blast!

On New Year's Eve, we headed up to the Harmony Museum for their Silvester celebration. It was sooooooo cold that we were scared off from their outdoor festivities by frozen toes. But we loved their "Bleigiessen", a German New Year tradition in which molten lead is dropped into water, and visitors are presented with the resulting formation. By interpreting the shape (much like reading tea leaves) a prediction can be made about what the New Year has in store. They gave us a long list of possible shapes and their corresponding interpretations. The only problem was that we each decided right away what our shapes represented, and none of them were on the list! Mine was obviously an octopus, Jasper's was definitely a dragon, and my husband's was positively a poodle (what?!). I guess mine means there will be cephalopods in my future, or maybe I'll just have to multitask?  Jasper was pleased because... dragons! My husband never did explain poodles, so your guess is as good as mine...

The octopus. As you can plainly see.

We love New Year celebrations, no matter which New Year it is. As the infamous Charles Fort famously said, "One measures a circle beginning anywhere." There is something quite appealing about marking new beginnings several times throughout the earth's orbit. We love joining in Lunar New Year celebrations. Each year the Jewish Community Center hosts a Lunar New Year festival, and we definitely wanted to check it out. We were surprised to find mostly non-Asians in attendance, and many countries represented in the festival, including several that do not popularly celebrate the Lunar New Year. There were lots and lots of tasty foods for sale, fun crafts for kids, and lovely cultural items for sale. We stuck around for the Lion Dance by Steel Dragon.  There was only one lion to dance, but it was the best darn lion dance of all time! Bravo! 

The lion eats New Year lettuce, and spits it out!
Maybe not great table manners, but quite auspicious.

One of my favorite and enduring winter traditions that gets me through cold winter days...is growing bulbs indoors. Watching their green shoots appear, and slowly produce lovely blossoms, carries me through to spring. This year I grew both paperwhite narcissus bulbs, and five kinds of amaryllis. I've been getting them from Easy to Grow Bulbs. (I have to admit this is partly because when I am lazy and wait to order, they still seem to have good stuff that isn't sold out!) My paperwhites were the first to bloom, filling the house with their sweet fragrance. As the last of their blooms are dying, my amaryllises are beginning to bud. The different varieties all seem to be growing at different rates, so we should see them bursting into bloom for several weeks to come.