The Tragedy of Harmony Day 2024

Usually on Harmony Day, I just bust out a yukata or kimono. It's easy, it's beautiful and I love it. This year, I felt I wanted to do something a little different. The school I'm at has a largeish population of students from India, so I thought it would be cool to wear a saree. 

I've got a saree, which I've worn before (see here), but it's very sheer, so not really 100% suitable for a school. Also, I've since learned that red is a very "bride at a wedding" colour and now that's mostly all I hear this saree screaming at me when I take it out. I'm hopeful I'll wear it again, since it is beautiful, but not really right for Harmony Day. Luckily there is someone in Salisbury selling saree and I was able to get a lovely cotton/silk blend one. 

When I bought it, I did ask if it was ok that I would be wearing it, wanting to be respectful to other cultures. The lady I bought it from assured me that anyone seeing me wear it would just think it was beautiful and be happy that I had taken the time to wear it. She did also check that I knew how to put it on properly. 

The most exciting thing about buying the saree, was when I found that the length of fabric actually comes with a section that is designed to be cut off and made into the blouse to match. So cool. My original plan had just been to wear a t-shirt underneath, but I came home more delighted than ever knowing that not only did I have a beautiful new saree, I also had one that allowed me to do some sewing. 

I watched a few tutorials on saree blouse sewing on YouTube and examined the blouse I already had before making up a pattern and giving it a go. I was pretty happy with how it turned out, though I could have cut the neck line at the back slightly lower. 

Then I practiced putting it on. Just like with my yukata and kimono, wearing a saree takes practice. Once you've got the hang of the pleating, most of it is very straight forward. This saree has a beautiful hand painted section on the palla, which if I were wearing it the ordinary drape style, I could have loose on my arm for people to see. Even with it wrapped around, it's beautiful. 

For those still bothering to read this (somewhat long and uninteresting post), I'm wearing this in a reverse mermaid style drape. It had the most coverage and was most practical for a full day of teaching. 

Fun times!

Rachel actually helped me take these photos and she amused herself in between taking photos of me by taking selfies and then photo bombing every chance she could. 

Kids! 

Now that you've read all this way, I bet you are thinking "where is the tragedy?" and getting ready to accuse me of misleading click-bait-esque titles. Stay with me friends, the tragedy is that I did not get to wear this beautiful outfit on Harmony Day this year. Despite my organisation, I was pretty terribly sick come the 21st of March and I spent the day (as I had the previous day) lying around the house in pain. I'm glad I had practiced wearing the saree and thus have these photos, but actually wearing it to an occasion will have to wait for another time. 

Greek Heritage

Harmony Day, celebrated in March each year, is when schools encourage their students to celebrate their heritage. It's about recognising we are different, but that together we can all be a part of the same community. I love it. It's a glimpse of the world that God wants for us - every tribe, every tongue, every nation, coming together. 

Previously, the girls have worn yukata since I have so many on hand, but this year they wanted something a bit more about who they are, rather than just another culture that we also love. Luckily we have Greek heritage, and the girls (particularly Sophie) are super into Greek myths and legends, mostly thanks to the Percy Jackson book series. 

So I offered to make them a Greek costume, and when I stumbled across this post/tutorial on Make it Love it, the girls were on board. I did specify that I was probably only going to make the dress, though they still have dreams they will get a cape, bow and quiver too.

To the cupboard and the plethora of bedsheets I've been given to find what would suit a Greek costume. Turns out I had plenty to choose from and quickly transformed them into some flowing gowns. The girls chose the trim from my stash so no purchasing anything for this project. 

After we were finished though, Sophie told me nervously that she wasn't sure she wanted to wear it after all. Not that she didn't love it, but talking with kids at school, she'd noticed that many of them weren't going to bother dressing up. While I'm sad about it, I know the reality that when kids get to grade 5 and 6, they are somewhat less excited about things that could bring potential embarrassment. I did however, specify that since I'd made this costume, if she wanted something for halloween, or book week in August, that this was likely to be it. Sophie was happy with that and hopefully some of her friends will decide that costumes can be cool so she feels comfortable wearing it then. We shall see. 

These were very straight forward to sew, Rachel's was trimmed with some random satin bias binding in my stash from who knows where, and Sophie was trimmed with self made bias tape left over from my tragic Harmony Day costume. You'll have to come back another day to read about that. I'm not over it yet. 

Majikarp Bag

Sometimes and idea is kicking around for a long time before anything happens with it, and such was the case with this Majikarp Bag. Sophie's birthday was coming up, and I had leftover orange fabric from making my jumpsuit for Steve's office Christmas Party. Perfect timing. 

I'd actually wanted to make Sophie this bag for a while, knowing she'd love it. Additionally, she often needed a bag for jiu-jitsu, but I put off making it, since I didn't have the right fabric on hand. 

All that had changed after the jumpsuit, and so with, I think, two weeks to go before the birthday, I set about making the bag as stealthily as one can. 

The bag itself was just a very simple drawstring situation, though I wanted to line it so the inside looked every bit as beautiful as the outside. I looked at a few reference images of Majikarp Pokémon online and then did a bit of sketching and planning. I used leftover orange fabric (from the aforementioned jumpsuit) some random white which was a bedsheet and yellow fabric that was still remaining from a friend's wedding table cloth set (that they gifted us before 2010 when I used them as impromptu curtains after we first moved into our house and in other places like these Madeline Costumes in 2016!).

I padded the fins to give them a bit of structure and then put all the pieces of the outer bag together. Just had to sew some fin details on in black before sewing the whole thing up. 

I was lucky enough to have the cord for the drawstring in my stash thanks to random donations from people over the years, so I didn't even need to go to Spotlight for anything. Very happy with the end result, which I photographed late at night when I finished while Sophie was asleep. 

Sophie loves her Majikarp bag and now uses it regularly as her jiu-jitsu bag. It's big enough to fit her water bottle, snack and book easily. 

Bean Bags

Teaching Japanese this year, I wanted to promote this relatively new subject with an all grades cultural festival day. I had been planning it for term two, but the deputy organised for a group of Japanese students to visit the school in the last week of term one and asked me to move it forward. 

So I did. With Japanese students here, it made sense to make it a mixed Australian and Japanese cultural day. This worked well, because it meant that for a first time event, teachers weren't being asked to do completely new things all day, but a mix of things they were familiar with and other new things. 

Anyway, one of the activities I have planned is a Japanese game called たまいれ (tamaire) which translates as "ball in". It's a game where you have a basket on a pole and then the kids throw bean bags in. The team with the most bean bags (or the team that does it in the shortest amount of time) is the winner. You need roughly 100 bean bags per team, so I asked the sports teacher how many we had. 

She said we had about 25 without holes in them, so I asked if we could order more. I was relieved that she ordered them early, because I'm an organised person and it makes sense to me to have everything ready to go three weeks in advance. I was less relieved when she told me she'd ordered 50. This was a fair bit short of the minimum of 100 I had said we needed, but unfortunately those 50 bean bags had cost $400, so there was no way to order more and still have any money left for the rest of the year. 

What is one to do, but solve the problem with sewing. 

I looked through the material I had in my stash for something sturdy enough to become bean bags and found two of the blue stripe curtains that I'd made when we first moved into the house. You can read about them here if you are really interested. These were not in use anymore, so I figured they would make great bean bags. 

Cutting them out was incredibly satisfying, because I could snip and rip. I watched/listened to the Emma miniseries while I did it and ended up with 240 squares of fabric to make into 120 bean bags. It took somewhat less time than I anticipated to actually sew the bean bags, and I did bother to snip the corners to make turning them out easier. 

Both girls helped me to turn the bean bags, and I did a huge chunk of them in church listening to the sermon one Sunday morning. Then I came home and filled each one with 80grams of rice which happened to be on special at Coles that week, making it the most cost effective thing to fill them with. 

Ten hours of work and $20 in materials (only the rice, since the material was recycled), and I'd estimate that these would have cost $300, which is considerably cheeper than the 50 we ordered for school. Mine are also environmentally friendly, since both the cotton fabric and rice inside will compost when we are done with them. 

Not a bad effort for one weekend and now, I can rest easy knowing the bean bag toss station on the cultural festival day has more than enough bean bags to function as it should.  

Garden Bed

This post is nearly six months old at this point, but why wait when you can catch up now? When we planted the front gardens, we just had two trees in the front right in the lawn. You can see them pre-fence here. Unfortunately we discovered that having two trees sitting in the lawn (albeit in their neat cubes of garden mulch) were annoying to mow around right next to the fence.

Steve and I kicked around the idea of a garden bed along the front, with the two trees from the sides encased in it. I think we had been talking about it back and forth for at least four months, when suddenly we were kicked into gear last October and decided to build the garden bed out. We had some leftover hard wood fence palings that we figured we would repurpose into garden bed edging. 

Thinking to kill two birds with one stone, we ordered some top soil for the nature strip out the front, thinking that when we dug up the Sir Walter grass to make way for the garden bed, we would be able to replant it out on the nature strip. The whole nature strip was so weedy post-renovation and not at all level, so having a good amount of top soil would help things immensely. Unfortunately, the dirt arrived a whole week ahead of schedule, so we had to do a bit of a rush job with the grass transfer. The girls loved playing in the dirt pile though. 

Anyway, we did manage to get the new garden bed boxed in and ready for some plants. We want to keep it pretty simple out there, but it is prime real estate for growing things, so I have been getting a little carried away. 

Initially I just planted flowers and ground cover (herbs and pig face), but I got a stack of free seeds from school and decided Rachel needed a job one afternoon. It was a very hot October when we planted them, and I honestly thought nothing would grow (way past the recommended planting time), but suddenly we had spinach, beans, chilli and coriander growing in full force. I was so surprised at the coriander, since I've never been able to grow it from seed before. 

We also had a stack of tomato plants pop up from the compost (as well as pumpkins, but I've pulled them out since it's really not the place for them), and a random cucumber plant. It's been a very fruitful garden all up. Always so wonderful to eat your own salad at the end of the day. 

Bright Orange Jumpsuit

Otherwise entitled one of the most re-purpose-able custom-made costumes I've ever made. Let me explain. 

The saga of making costumes for Steve's work Christmas party of 2023 continues here with the final instalment; my costume. I was going as Chell from Portal. Her costume over the two games (Portal and Portal 2) does not change much and is essentially an orange jumpsuit. I had already made her Companion Cube (since that was way easier to sew than a Portal Gun). 

Image from Wikipedia

Given the heat of the Australian summer, I decided I'd be going for more of a Portal 2 look, so then I could have the jumpsuit top tied around my waist, rather than have to wear long sleeves. I grabbed the Heath Jumpsuit Pattern from Mood Fabrics and went to town on it. 

The colour of the orange in the photos varies depending on the light (below is a "sewing at night" shot). It was pretty bright orange, but I actually loved it. 

Aperture Science Logo

I added lots of pockets, all trimmed with some faux white piping to match the reference images. The waistband got a bit of hacking to get the colour change from white at the back to orange at the front. I lengthened the sleeves and added tabs and buttons for when they get rolled up and the legs got tabs and buttons too. The only real "detail" that I left out was the line of white piping around the lower chest. It was just too fiddly and specific to bother putting in. 

I did work hard on the Aperture Science logo which goes on the back, since I figured that was the most recognisable part. And I lined the bodice with white (I think a bedsheet?) because that's what shows when you look at the reference images. I'm nothing if not accurate... or trying to be anyway. Biggest change to the pattern was the buttons down the front to a zip, and an invisible one at that! 

Have to say, I was pretty darn happy with the result, even if the party day was so freaking hot. And, the more I think about it, the more re-wearable this orange jumpsuit is. Naruto anyone? Or any of the "Orange is the New Black" characters (not that I've ever seen it, but you never know). Also the Guardians of the Galaxy all wear orange jumpsuits in prison. 

Honestly though, this jumpsuit is super comfy, so I can see myself using the pattern to make stuff I can wear all the time that's not bright orange. My only take away is that my arms are kinda too buff for the rolled up sleeves. It was hilarious. I can get my arms in fine, but when I went to roll up the sleeves, the extra fabric was quite tight on my biceps. I'm thinking the next jumpsuit will just have short sleeves, to be on the safe side.

Companion Cube

So knowing I was going to go to Steve's work Christmas party (not going to happen every year, but this was year one, so I was keen to at least put some names to faces) I wanted to make a good impression with the costume. Again, I had costumes that would have worked, but they were all TV related. Steve's work literally has "game" in the company name, so I wanted to show my commitment. 

Steve's character, Guybrush Threepwood does have a pretty epic boss girlfriend in the game, who I was interested in being, but in the end, I felt like I would be an imposter to be dressed as someone from a game I haven't played at all. That left me with very few characters I could actually be. The two games I've played the most (aside from Tetris), are Plants Vs Zombies and Portal. I was uninspired by the Plants Vs Zombies idea, but being the main character from Portal seemed like a good choice, and would mean I could make accessories. 

So I made my accessory first. Because why not? Also, I figured that the Companion Cube would be the most recognizable thing I could have to make it obvious as to who I was, or at least, what game I was from. 

This Companion Cube was made from some fleece that I bought from Spotlight for this project. Even though I don't love the thought of just buying fabric for something that might only be single use, I did know that making it out of soft fabric would pretty much guarantee a long and happy life. Spoilers: I was right, but more on that later. 

I read through a couple of blog posts from people who have attempted a Companion Cube in the past, and looked at pictures of the cube for reference, then just drew my own pattern and got to sewing. Pink hearts went onto grey circles and then all the pieces (pink stripes, grey corners and grey/pink heart circle) went onto the dark grey. After each side of the cube was done, I sewed them together and added the grey patches over the edges. Stuffed the whole thing with leftover stuffing and two old pillows. 

It was possibly the most outrageous thing to turn up to the Christmas Party lunch with, but it was a good conversation starter and nice to lean against when I was tired. 

The Companion Cube was fun to have at home for a week after but also kind of impractical, so I took it apart and made three cushions for the lounge room instead. These are going to live long and happy lives.

Guybrush Threepwood

Though I ended last year and started this year with good intentions for regular blogging, I again find myself with a set of posts that are now at least two months out of date. Alas. Still, aside from potentially being hard to find when I need to look back for them, it's not like it's a real problem, so on with the blogging! 

Steve started a new job at the end of last year, and their Christmas party turned out to be a dress up/costume type event. Sounds like they had a pretty hard core group of cos-players/LARP-ers at one stage, so the standard was pretty high, which to me, was just music to my ears. For 2023, the theme was a pretty broad "games and tv" (I guess they were branching out from their usual "games"). 

I did have a fair few already made costumes that we could have chosen from, but given that this was Steve's first Christmas party with the company, I wanted to make a good impression. Steve had just started playing through Secret of Monkey Island and requested to go as Guybrush Threepwood. 

Guybrush Threepwood image from here.

Guybrush Threepwood does journey through Monkey Island to become a pretty swager-full pirate (see here), but for so many reasons (time crunch, money for the costume, knowing this may not be worn again and not wanting to contribute to the growing "single use" problem the world has, not to mention the freaking hot Australian summer that was in full swing), we went with one of the early versions of a Guybrush costume. 

Steve already had a pirate white shirt that I made way back in 2005 or 2006, and a pair of gray pants from his kung fu days. The red sash was in the dress ups from who knows where, so all he needed was a pair of long white socks (thanks Big W) and a brown vest. 

I whipped up the vest out of an old bed sheet one night in an hour and I think he looks pretty great. Too bad we didn't commit to a blonde wig, but even that light cotton costume was so hot on party day. Stay tuned to find out what I did for my costume!

Library Mural: Part 2

The second installment of the school library mural! This was completed with a bunch of parents who had time on the holidays in the first week of January. We had a stack of kids come and just hang out with us too while we completed the next panel. 

The first part we did in the September holidays last year. This second part of the mural continued the lorikeets and native flowers around to another wall. This banksia flower below was done by a student who graduated grade 6 last year! I also let my girls help by allowing them to paint some of the background blue between the leaves (after I cut it in of course). 

We got more creative with the design as we went, and also updated the first part with an upgrade to the wattle blossoms and the grevillea. I think there is more we could add, and the leaves behind our original lorikeet still need to be continued over onto the next wall, but after two solid days of painting, we were all a bit done and just had to call it. Maybe next holidays we will do some additions and finish the final panel (the wall to the left of the original - biggest one yet)

Even though it was fun to paint, I think the best unexpected bonus of this mural is that now it makes it really easy to tell people where P&C meetings are - head to the building with the lorikeets! :D

Housewife 2.0

My very handy housewife has been traveling around with me for all the sewing for over a year now and I honestly love it so much. It's incredibly convenient to throw into a bag with whatever sewing project I have on my way out the door. Often I'm just using the un-picker, but man, is it so great to have the whole lot there. 

It came to my attention sometime in 2023, possibly term 4, as I lost a button on a jumpsuit I was wearing at work, that really, having a housewife is great if you know you are going to sew something. Equally as great to just have on hand if you are out and about and, like me, find yourself in a bit of a fashion emergency. 

I suppose the easy option would be just to pack my existing housewife in my work bag. It would certainly solve the problem, but as I only work part time, I felt for my colleagues who might find them selves in a similarly compromising position on a day that I was not in the office. The only solution I could see was to make a second housewife. (Actually, to be honest, I did consider purchasing a small travel sewing kit pre-made from Spotlight. But I have an abundance of almost everything that would go in it, and fabric to make one, so it seemed to be the more environmentally sustainable option to make my own.)

So I did. I went through my fabric stash for some suitable fabric to use up and found some final scrap of this cool flamingo and cactus print that I had made shorts for Sophie way back in 2020 and then a pillow case cover for one of these Christmas tree cushions. I also had a strip of that bluey-green stuff that felt a little fancy and made me worried about washing and ironing it. The bluey-green strip gave us the dimensions for this housewife as I just used exactly what I had. 

It's a little longer and thinner than my original, but has similar features. I used some very small scraps for the inside features like the Ikea fabric, (featured in this dress for Rachel, skorts for both girls and a skirt for me) and some final remnants of some beautiful animal print fabric (initially Rachel's Nature Bag but also her pencil case and library bag for school). No idea where the little floral scrap was from, but it's a lovely highlight. 

On what works out to be the "flap" part when it's all rolled up, I was inspired by some sashiko style stitching that I saw on the internet and wanted to have a go at. It's a Japanese style of hand stitching patterns into fabric. I think I've got room to grow, but it was a fun to experiment with on this project. 

I bound it all up by hand with some more self-made bias binding from a Lorraine Lea pillow case (which I've used before to bind things here). The housewife folds up in a similar way to the last one, and is all ready to live at work for a just in case emergency. I can already see it getting use patching some friendly classroom soft toys that experience a little too much love from the students (like this Happy Cat from Sophie's school). Hooray! 

Zero Waste

A blogger I've been following for a little while now is Liz Haywood from The Craft of Clothes who lives in South Australia (so amazing to find Australian bloggers/makers to follow). I don't know how I stumbled across her, but she is a big advocate for Zero Waste design and sewing. I'm intrigued by Zero Waste as the general sustainability situation of our lifestyles continues to be at the forefront of my mind, so I borrowed the book Zero Waste Sewing from the library to investigate. 

I read the book and considered the clothes. Some I liked, others were not my style. A couple of things I was keen to try. The biggest thing for me was having the time and brain space to read through all the instructions. I like to be ale to understand what fits where when I look at a pattern and to mentally connect things in my head before I start. Some Zero Waste patterns are straight forward, but others required a few mental gymnastics to see how things would fit. 

The first thing I tried was a top (could also be made into a dress) from the September installment of a Year of Zero Waste Sewing. I really liked the style and it was fairly easy to get my head around how it would work. I made it and liked it, but was honestly not sure I'd wear it because the back was so low. I know that's part of that style and my sisters assured me if I got the right bra it would be fine, but I just wasn't sure I was ready to commit. 

My next attempt was another Zero Waste top this time from the aforementioned book. I was using up some old bedsheets that a friend had donated to me in the name of sewing to make both of these projects. It's the first time I've used old bedsheets (though I have been known to use a table cloth or two to trial things before) and I really loved not having the pressure of "making it work" knowing the fabric had already had a great life before I took to it with scissors. And really, it was giving itself to the great cause of experimentation and the gaining of knowledge that I would go on to use to sew better and thus waste less fabric in the future. Definitely a good cause. 

Excuse the messy bathroom, notice the HUGE sleeves!

Not sure if this top needed smaller fabric before I started, or if the style is just not me, but it worked out to be pretty enormous. I still like the style, so I did take the sleeves off to see if I could make a sleeveless version work (or attempt to make the sleeves shorter in some way), but we were getting to the report card end of term 4 when I was sewing these last year and then the library told me I needed to return the Zero Waste sewing book I'd borrowed, so it got put in a box. 

I really like the neckline of this with the bow -
but the sleeves were enormous and the bodice might also need darts? 

I hope I get it out again this year, because Zero Waste sewing still intrigues me and I would like to give it more of a go. Wish me luck!

Japanese Banner

Here is a little something I worked on in the September holidays of 2023. I didn't know for sure if I would be teaching Japanese in 2024, but I had Japanese fabric and I wanted to sew something. Was I sewing in faith or folly? No idea. I might have just needed a project. 

In any case, I started with a yukata that I loved wearing, but had found on inspection that it had some holes in the fabric from some little bug that had been living in my storage drawer. So much of the fabric was still perfectly fine though, so I took the thing apart and considered how to use it. 

I decided if I were to teach Japanese again, I would need something for my classroom. So this, along with a number of random Japanese fabric samples that I had collected from homestay students over the years, my old sushi dress and a new piece of Japanese fabric mum had given me earlier in the year and I was ready to go.  

I did end up buying some black fabric for the letters, wanting this to be more than just bunting (if there is such a thing as "just bunting"), but also a sign for a potential room that I would be teaching in. Doing the maths, I figured I had enough fabric to make a rather long and big sign to declare Japanese to everyone. 

This did make it super hard to photograph on the floor of my house. I printed/hand drew all the letters on paper first to check size and layout and then went onto the black. Did the fancy interfacing glue stuff to get it stuck down and then zigzagged around each letter with white to make it clearly visible. 

Each of the letters down, I sewed the backing fabric on (right sides together and then flipped out) and bound the top with a long strip of exactly the amount of fabric that I had left. This project was actually a great way to use up all this fabric that would possibly have had no life otherwise. I only ended up using the sleeves of the yukata and a part of the okumi, so I actually still have a stack of that fabric left for something else. Pajamas maybe? 

Anyway, I did end up getting given Japanese to teach for 2024, as well as my own room, so hooray for faithful preparation. Hopefully the kids get excited when they see it too. My classroom as a whole is still coming together, but it is rather exciting to have one! 

Annual Christmas Clothes

Before Christmas gets too far away (like it absolutely  did for me last year, see these very belated posts here and here) I'm just going to do this quick check in and have a record that I did in fact make Christmas outfits for the girls. I already had fabric that I'd used to make Sophie some new shorts for 2022, so I grabbed it out and asked the girls what they wanted. 

Sophie wanted another pair of shorts. No surprises there. Clover Shorts pattern once again MVP. 

Pockets all round! Rachel asked for a skirt with hidden shorts inside. I explained to her what a skort was, and then modified the Clover Shorts pattern to make one for her. 

My only regret is that I forgot with the skort that I wouldn't be adding the cuffs, so it would have been prudent to add a bit of length. The skort fit her beautifully, but it won't grow with her for very long at all as a result. 

She's rockin' that skort though. 

Hebrews 12

Here we are with a new year before us. These holidays have been both long and short, as well as busy and restful. Now they are nearing their end though, and I'm finding I have more things on the list to do than I would like. I've made a bit of progress in these last few days, but many things, not the least of which is "catching up on blogging" are slowing down the usual reflection and planning phases that come with a new year. 2024 has started with speed; I feel like it's already racing to the big events. I can count the weeks to going back to work, school starting, milestone birthdays and suddenly holidays again, knowing these will fly by.

We started post-Christmas, with a bit of a clean up and out of the kitchen, though we haven't fully committed to an official "de-clutter" by any means. Steve has announced that the word of the year for 2024 is "AWAY" (yes, in all caps), and it's really gaining traction for us. Plates meant for the dishwasher - AWAY! Books lying around on the couch - AWAY! In the kitchen for me was 20 cups we never ever use - AWAY! I'm hoping that focusing on what needs to be AWAY can make space for the things we want to have in our lives, and also that we consider the AWAY things carefully before they go, so they are not discarded carelessly.

Another thing I'm looking forward to in 2024 is spending a year going through Bible Project's series on the Sermon on the Mount from Matthew's Gospel. I'm encouraged to be slowing down and letting the core message of Jesus' teaching start resonating and shaping me in new ways.

Before I say goodbye to 2023, my last thoughts on that year that was quite an emotional rollercoaster for me, are the bible verse from Hebrews that I kept coming back to. When I was tired, when I was numb, when I was exhausted or confused, I was reminded that the race is a marathon not a sprint, and that while there is much to go, Jesus has gone ahead.

So take a new grip with your tired hands and strengthen your weak knees," the wisdom of Hebrews tells me. Take that new grip of 2024 and stand up straight Paula. God has not let you go and 2024 is bright. Sure the drafted blog posts count is longer than ever, and not everything is done on the list, but Jesus offers peace and rest. The kingdom of heaven is here and now, ready for us all.