Couching

couching (definition)
In embroidery, decorative stitchwork, and art quilting: couching and laid work are techniques in which yarn or other materials are laid across the surface of the ground fabric and fastened in place with small stitches of the same or a different yarn[1]
couching (origin of word)
French: Coucher, to lay down, to put to bed[2]

They say that a picture is worth a thousand words. I am almost wordless. I am, in fact, almost couched.

After a wonderful, and very happy, very fun Christmas Eve birthday and then, Christmas Day, I am feeling like being couched. The gifts were opened with delight and great appreciation, the wonderful meals eaten and enjoyed, the cookies and candies and other delights created and then rapidly disappeared.

The staging has begun for all that then follows. Boxing Day, which is celebrated on December 26, while celebrated with a different intent, elsewhere.... here in America, is all about flattening out the Christmas boxes and putting them away;)

It is about ribbons and bows and tissue papers....or in my case fabric and twine...being folded up again. And it is about the great Christmas Clean-up Caper, the mystery that leads one down endless pathways of the great put-away campaign.

It is about a few last Christmas visits from family and friends and a few last holiday phone calls that were greatly appreciated. And then the best part of all, I shall lay myself down upon fabric and attach myself with my layer of quilts and I shall be couched with a good Christmas gift book :)

shown above:
a community quilter, previously couched