This stunning thing is a ceramic tray. John and our good friend Gary Hootman did a deal so John could get me this.

Gary is a world-renowned wood-fired ceramic artist. (The Japanese consulate has given his work as diplomatic gifts, for example.) I collect his tea bowls for the Japanese Tea Ceremony.

Gary recently rebuilt his wood kiln using a new design and fired it for the first time at the beginning of December. He got into the kiln for the first time on 13 December and prepared work for a private showing at his studio last weekend. I bought three new tea bowls (more about which later…) but I coveted this and didn’t buy it. John obviously made other arrangements.

It’s a large tray encrusted with coarsely crushed minerals (the white circle), glazed, incised in patterns, and imprinted with textures from small shells. This picture does not capture its stunning beauty. It showed up this morning. I am deeply honored to have it.

John’s good friend Kevin Bierman turned these gorgeous cherry bowls. Our friends David and Mary Taylor had a cherry tree felled earlier this year. John and his friend Grant recovered all the wood and had it sawn into planks for future use. John also reserved several burl-like pieces for turning.

Kevin’s a master turner. I knew that John asked Kevin to turn bowls as a thank-you gift for David and Mary. What I didn’t know is that John also asked Kevin to make these for me. As with so much beautiful wood, one can only appreciate in person their silken texture and deep, translucent finish.

Here are two of the crazier things I got. This is a stainless steel Starship Enterprise pizza cutter. The disk in front spins to cut.

Just the thing when Darth Vader comes to dinner: it’s a Lightsaber Candlestick holder, complete with red tapers.

As always, John showered me with all sorts of Christmas goodies. This post is The Useful—as opposed to the fun and the beautiful.

These aren’t torture devices; they’re Japanese gardening tools. The top is a special scythe for ripping out old roots from planting beds. The next is a gorgeous hand-forged gardening hatchet with matching leather case and belt loop.

The next one down doesn’t show well in this picture. It’s a serrated spatula with a twisted handle that’s designed to pop plants out of pots for repotting. Come Spring I’ll be doing lots of repotting and I’m anxious to give this one a whirl.

The bottom one is a folding saw for hacking off small limbs and brush. John took pity on me with this one: I’ve been pruning out excess growth from all the bushes in the front garden. I wasn’t making fast progress last fall and I expect the saw will speed things along.

Our decorations for Yule are just this simple: a wreath with four apples and a candle.

Many years ago I bought a small booklet from my good friend Robert Clark at Minerva Books in Palo Alto, California. It described an old English tradition of a Yule wreath hanging from the ceiling with apples hanging down below. The four apples symbolize the four seasonal points.

For years after that I’d buy a wreath and decorate it with apples. I always place mine on a table; I run into things when they hang down and I’m not looking around carefully. Like last year, I cut greens from our own trees: juniper and yew branches. I don’t worry about binding the boughs into a proper wreath; I place them to form a circle and add the apples. A candle goes in the center.

From John and me: our greetings to you and our hope for a wonderful, healthful, prosperous New Year!