Merry Christmas!

Today is Boxing Day, and it's been raining and now becoming stormy.  Such a day isn't for a walk but good for writing my blog.  :)

After the hectic days, we have spent relaxed Christmas days.  Making Adventskränze (Christmas wreaths in the German traditional way) became a tradition for us among German-speaking friends.  We bring leaves, branches with berries from each one's garden and decorations.  It's always nice to share the materials among us, and to catch up with a or more cup of coffee and/or tea, of course.

Since my husband is German, we follow the German way more or less.  Putting and decorating a Christmas tree, and unpacking the Christmas present take place in the Christmas Eve.

This time, I chose a necklace for myself as a Christmas present.  I saw it on a stall next to me on a craft fair.  Yuki, whom I got to know at the last Christmas fair, creates beautiful fine jewellery with the name of 'locca'.  She uses a distinctive technique of Japanese Shippou-enamelling, and is inspired often by plants and animals.  The necklace I bought is not used the shippou-enamelling technique, but I fell in love with the delicate form and texture.  It looks like a petal of, say, rose.  But she told me that the necklace was inspired by a scale of a cone of a kind of spruce or larch.
(Yuki has her own blog: locca.exblog.jp)

Christmas Day was chilly but sunny with the crisp air and the blue sky.  My eldest son, who is usually not keen on walking in the woodland, suggested a family walk in the woodland.  As we knew the ground was quite muddy, we all put on wellies or sturdy water-proof walking shoes.

The stream was quiet and clear despite the recent bad weather.  But the ground was muddy as expected.  A flock of sheep was browsing on the green field.  At the fringe of the woodland, the fern leaves were now died down.  But I find a batch of the grey beige leaves was beautiful.

As we entered the birch woodland, we were surrounded by the quiet atmosphere.  It was Christmas Day at noon.  Most of people were gathered at home and busied with preparing Christmas dinner.  Quiet; even birds might have been resting in the rare sunny day.  

A tall old birch was fell down onto a foot path.  Was it not able to hold its long trunk?  

Birch trees grows mainly in the woodland, but some other trees also cohabit.  Larch trees fell their leaves but left some cones on their branches.  I found it on the ground and imagined Yuki might have saw one like that and made the beautiful necklace.