What’s “Hot” This Year?

Bow Tie o’ the Day is a glittered creme and gold piece. Ties o’ the Day are examples of a design trend in Christmas ties this year. Apparently, reindeer with neck coverings and holiday-lighted antlers are this year’s clever “in” fashion for necktie wear. Each reindeer in this photo sports a bow tie and/or a scarf. And strings of lights. Although these ties cover the same artistic ground, they are different enough from each other that I had to collect them all. One would not do.

For example, only the tie on the far left, gives us a penguin and candy cane antlers, as well as the bow tie and ugly sweater. The next tie presents us with a Christmas tree-shaped clump of antler lights, complete with a lighted star on top– and a pull switch for turning the lights off and on. Our next deer offers a unique, rounded bow tie. And our deer on the far right shows us a very very very very very very long green scarf– which was most likely crocheted by Suzanne. They– the ties, the reindeer– are the same, but they are also different. As we all are. Whoa! Don’t worry.

No, I’m not going to go into one of my sermons about how we need to recognize that we all have more in common than we have differences, so we need to be nicer to each other. I’m not going to go off on my compassion, peace, and charity rant. I’m not going to pontificate about how nobody ain’t better than nobody else. And I’m certainly not gonna go into anything about how Jesus said to love one another, and how that’s the greatest Commandment. Nope, I’m not going there. And I especially am not going to yammer on about how we’re our brothers’ and sisters’ keepers. It would be so cheesy of me to lay out all that sentiment during this time of year. I will not lecture you about “the reason for the season” bearing some bigly relation to this paragraph’s precepts– which I didn’t bore you with, because I didn’t talk about them.

HOLIDAY TIE TALLY: 24 Bow ties. 64 Neckties.

Suzanne Hacked This Post

Suzanne– who stars in this photo– innocently worked away at a fabric-y project all evening. But when the Ties o’ the Day and I sat down at the laptop this morning to compose this post, we found she had worked on another project as well. We found the following message– written by Suzanne– already typed in on this page. We leave her words exactly as we found them:

“I know the cape tally will never equal the ties, but I hope everyone knows that I make them by hand, carefully spinning the cotton, weaving, dying and printing the fabric, then I have to cut out each pattern piece (there are 393 in total), finally I make each stitch—evenly spaced—painstakingly with a needle and thread. I work far into the night by candlelight, occasionally I use the lantern, then I fashion a specific ribbon for the TIE closure at the neckline. I’m pretty sure the selling price would run well into several tens of thousands of dollars and instead of quitting my day job, I donate each and every cape to the one, the only, tie o’ the day founder, H.E. Wright, who, coincidentally gave me the BEST. SEWING. BOX. EVER.”

We proclaim: All praise to The Ultimate SewingBox Suzanne, Cape-maker to the Wearer o’ Ties!

Note to self: Inactivate Suzanne’s Administrator status for the website, so she can’t hack me with her two-cents’-worth again.

HOLIDAY TIE TALLY: 23 Bow ties. 60 Neckties.