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I email and write letters to certain people all year round, but this time of year I use the season as a motivator to write to some friends and family that I don't write to all the time. And many of them send me cards, too.
I love reading the family newsletters that some people send. A lot of people groan and complain about this type of letter, but I am fortunate to have interesting friends, I guess, because I enjoy these letters, even if I don't know a lot of the friends and family members who are mentioned. I even wrote my own letter this year, talked about our summer projects at the cabin, and going to my cousins' family reunion. Yes, I'm related to them, so it was my family, too, but it is the children of my uncle and their children and grandchildren, so more their family than mine. It's fun to get together with them anyway, and there were moments when I thanked my lucky stars I had different parents and was brought up differently. These are the ones I will see again at the end of January when I go to one of the children's wedding in Laredo, Texas.
The cards I like least are where the senders just sign their name and don't write any kind of a message. Certain family members on Mr. Troutbend's side are more prone to this than any of my friends, and I don't know why they bother sending cards. I always write a personal message, even when I include a newsletter because I have special thoughts to share with each person to whom I send a card. One year I had a bunch of old holiday postcards, so I sent those. I didn't like that very much, and didn't send out very many because there were only ten or so people to whom I had so little to say.
I keep track of which cards I've sent by jotting the year next to the person's name in my address book. Some of these go back to the 80s. When someone dies, I cover their old address with a sticker and write in someone else's name. The margins of my book are getting full of old dates, so I am trying to decide between blotting them out with white-out, or covering them with that cover-up tape, or cutting pieces of sticker to cover them. I've had this address book for more than 30 years, and don't plan to buy a new one just to solve this problem. It is one of those small ring binger deals and I could replace the pages from the refill pages I have in the back of the book, but I'm saving those for when the current pages are worn out. This will never happen, those refills will be in the back of that book the day I die.
I don't have a set time that I try to get the cards sent out, although when Thanksgiving comes, I start thinking about it, and I don't have a big push where I try to get them all done at the same time. One year back in the 1990s I didn't send cards out this time of year, I sent them out in July.
Last winter I made custom cards that had a little tiny pair of mittens I'd hand-knitted on the front. I spent a long weekend making 60 some 1-inch long mittens from a variegated blue yarn and then I matched them up according to how the color changes came out so they looked like a pair. I sent them to the people I thought would appreciate them, which isn't everyone I send cards to. I should have made matching hats for this year's cards, but I didn't. One reason was that I couldn't decide how big a head would go with hands that would fit those mittens. Maybe I'll have that figured out for next year. Scarves might be easier, so that is an option I will keep in mind if the hats prove too aggravating. You'd think little mittens with real working thumbs would be too aggravating, but it wasn't so bad.
Maybe one of these years I will use a picture from my place in Colorado for custom cards. If you didn't receive a card in the mail from me this year, please consider one of these pictures to convey my seasonal greetings to you.
I used to think the above picture was the best I could do, but this next one has replaced it, even though it was taken in October and by Christmas time the river is frozen over, so it's not accurate for the time of year. I think it is more appealing for the fishermen to see open water like that. They don't mind fishing in the snow.
