This giftwrap was for a fellow beadmaker, Augusta S, who as far as I know has not been a victim recipient of my excesses in gift decoration before, so once I had the idea of doing a sort of recursive gift decoration, things soon started spiralling out of control.

Giftwrap, made and photographed 07dec21. Fabric and mylar ribbon, boxes, paper, apple, silver pipecleaner, mylar covered wire, strands of beads (of course)... lumix LX100, lumopro manual flash, half power. Can you spot the covid bead?

More months—or years—than I care to count, we got together for a hollow bead lampworking session, and Augusta's efforts have been waiting in a ziploc, pinned to my corkboard, for me take them over to her. These went into a little brown box the wizard gave me yesterday that he thought I might like for wrapping small gifts.

My sister-in-law, perhaps fondly recalling the teas we used to host—especially at the old house (i.e. 20 years ago) gave me a lovely jar of artisanal lemon curd, we we used to serve with the wizard's scones, the centerpiece of these little parties. Alas, there's no way we could host a tea by the lemon curd's expiration date, but Augusta had recently posted on facebook how much she loved lemon curd, unto eating it out of the jar with a spoon.^[1]

Perfect. She would enjoy it, and it got me off my ass, making a xmas exchange bead for a fellow guild member, not to mention returning the beads she'd practised making with me. More years ago than I care to admit.^[2]

Unless otherwise noted, text, image and objects depicted therein copyright 1996--present sylvus tarn.