A Crafters Christmas Tree, teehee!

 It's been a bit rushed...if you don't count the four years it's been a project in waiting! lol. But 2013 has finally been it's year. 

What is it? 

Well it's woolly, and it's round. It's tall and it's green. And it won't be to everyone's taste but it suites me down to the ground.

It has sparkly bits,

and big woolly pompoms.

It's my crafters Christmas Tree.

The family have been surprisingly complimentary about it, but then I suppose even a crochet Christmas tree is better than no tree at all. It still needs a few more pompoms but it'll be a lot easier to pack away than the usual type.

I cannibalised a small lampshade for the top so that I could pop it over our standard lamp base as I didn't want to hang it from the ceiling. When I take it off after Christmas it should collapse down nice a flat. Bish-bosh done!

Merry Christmas

love Fi x

Edited to add: I can't take any credit for the idea, it came from a picture I saw on the Internet. You can see the original picture of a much more magnificent crochet tree on my Pinterest board - Yarny Goodness.

Was it good for you?

Seasons Greetings.

I hope it was good for you. This was my applique Christmas card design for those special cards I needed to send.

Preparations finally got underway, oranges studded with cloves. The orange on the right is last years that has been sat on the top of the radiator all year long. It has totally dried out but still faintly smells.

Gifts were wrapped. I luuuurve brown paper. A little bit of ribbon and a home made gift tag makes it all very special.

A little home made baking was accomplished, after all it's not Christmas in our house with out a sausage roll on Christmas Eve.

Our local butchers shop always has a lovely window display but at Christmas time it looks very 'traditional country' with pheasant, rabbits, duck, and partridge. Well I think it was partridge, I'm not very good at poultry with it's feathers still on.
I know it's a bit gruesome but it did actually look quite beautiful.

Wonderful Man and I attended our local auction mart on Christmas Eve morning for the annual auction of 'dressed poultry'. I really wanted to take some photos but I felt a little conspicuous as it was full of 'locals' mostly in wellies and flat caps, with ruddy weathered cheeks. We've only lived here 5 years and still quite often feel like tourists, (they say you have to have 3 generations in the graveyard before you're classed as a local!) lol. There were some real characters there, it was wonderful, I wanted to photograph them all and make sketches but I really felt out of place. There were tables and tables of turkeys and geese of all shapes and sizes, all locally reared and the largest being 36lb 8oz!
That's bigger than sneaky dog.

Talking of sneaky dog, here she is with her gift from Santa.

She's keen to make sure no-one else get their hands on her bone.

Best give it a big lick so no one else wants it!

All the best

Love Fi x

Crinoline Cushions.

Today I am thanking you all on behalf of my Mum and Dad who were very touched at all the lovely comments you left on the previous post. My Mum emailed me and said...

"Please thank all your lovely bloggy friends and let them know how great it was to read all those very lovely comments, it makes you feel really special . They don't know how much that cheered me up after all the formal form filling etc. that has had to be done recently... seems to be no end to it!!!"
(My Gran died a few weeks ago so Mum and Dad have had a lot to sort out.)

There you go ladies, don't underestimate the power of a few kind words here and there. You really made their day, but I know all about that. After all you make my day, most days!
Oh! Nearly forgot...Rachael. I believe the Hardanger pattern that my Dad is embroidering is inspired by a picture but he makes up the pattern himself. (He quite often does his own thing. lol.) The crinoline lady cushions have been made by moi for a
Christmas craft fair.

And lastly I thought I'd share a little bit of the design process for a new project with you. Don't laugh... this is where I scribbled an idea for a cat softie. It's very glamorously squished at the bottom of my shopping list. Well I found myself waiting for an hour in the doctors surgery and you know what it's like, your mind just wanders sometimes. lol.

love fi x

Designing Christmas Danglers

Hello all.

Yes that is Christmas ribbon in the picture and a Christmas tin. Now lets make something clear; I don't do Christmas until December. I don't want to see it or hear about or even think about it until the 1st December. I think it stems from working for Marks and Spencer for half of my life. You certainly see plenty of Christmas if you work there I can tell you. I suppose you could say I have an aversion to it normally but... I have been invited to take part in a couple of craft fairs and although I don't usually make many Christmassy things, I thought it might be a good idea to include something a little bit festive on my stall.

So on went the thinking cap and out came the sketch book. Last year I made some Christmas garlands; some little housey ones and some little hearty ones but I really wanted to make some little robiny ones but I just couldn't get my little robin sketch right! (top picture) Now I'm the kind of girl who secretly likes a challenge and really doesn't like to beaten by said challenge. So I thought I'd have another try this year (picture above) and whip-de-do! I've cracked it! Hoorah!

This little robin is perfect. Just what I wanted, all fat and fluffed up. Feeling I was on a bit of a roll I had a go at a Babushka doll too. Not bad at all if I say so myself.
Out came my felt stash, mostly donated by my best friends mum a couple of years ago, thank you Mrs B.
Hey Presto! One little, fat, fluffed up robin.
Four, little fat, fluffed up robins.

OO! a whole flock of little fat, fluffed up robins.

Ok I'll stop now with all the f's now.

Here's little Miss Babushka.

And her sisters.

I luuuuurve these toadstools. Not necessarily Christmassy I'll grant you but I didn't want to make the usual green felt Christmas tree with buttons stitched on. I thought these would still look good hanging on a Christmas tree but were a bit different. The same with the Babushka dolls.

All in all a nice little distraction from my Christmas wreaths. I'm still having trouble with them...

Till next time.

love Fi x

Todays sewing session

Now I'm not sure I can keep up this posting every day, but at the moment I need to just to make me keep to my New Years Resolution.

Here is todays offering. A little drawstring bag.
I've been wanting to learn how to make one of these for weeks now, but you know me; it has to be a nice drawstring bag.
I didn't want any raw edges showing. (Well if a jobs worth doing...)

This one is lined. See what I mean about it being nice.
After a little searching about on the interwebthingy I settled on this tutorial from
Happy Things.

See how dinky it is.
Yes I'm very pleased, just need to alter the size now and have a play around.

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Yesterday I said I'd show you what had almost kept my fingers out of the choccy tin over Christmas. Well here it is..

It's a small lap quilt kit from Bucilla. I've had it years and years stuffed in a box in the loft, so I decided this year I really ought to have a go at completing it. I don't think you can see from the photo but I've hand quilted around the red circle and around the snowman's scarves. I also did around the banner at the bottom. Then I turned the backing at the edges and hand stitched it all down. To finish off I stitched a tube of fabric on the back so that it can be used as a wall hanging if desired.

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Did you notice the mini me in the bottom left hand corner?

As the quilt was a kit, it had printed instructions on the fabric along with this little mini picture of the quilt. Now I couldn't let that go to waste could I? So I scrabbled all the scrap fabric left over from the quilt and made it into quilted pot holder.

This is the back. I patchworked fabric as there wasn't enough left over of either to fit. Do you know I'm more chuffed with this little pot holder than I am with the big quilt!

Bedtime now. I'm glad it's Friday tomorrow, it's been along week. Hopefully child #2's school bus will be able to get through the snow; she's had a very long Christmas holiday this year!

Till next time

Fi x

Christmas Eve

We're all ready for the big day so I thought I'd just take a moment to say

HAPPY CHRISTMAS

to all of you lovely bloggy people.

Thank you for popping by and taking the time to leave such lovely comments. They make me smile and squeeze my heart.

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We all belong to a fantastic blogging community and I just wanted you all to know how much I appreciate it.

Thank you

love Fi x

It's beginning to look a lot like ...

It's beginning to look a lot like Christmas. Tra-la-laaa.

Hello all. There's no getting away from it. It's well on it's way! Christmas!

This is our local sweet shop window looking fantastically festive. I tried to take a picture inside but it was far too busy. It's a proper old fashioned sweet shop inside. Rows and rows of jars of sweets; and the walls are covered with vintage sweety and chocolate advertising signs.

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Back home there has been a fair amount of this going on...

wrapping and decorating.

It takes me ages to wrap each gift, but that's because I like to faff around choosing pretty ribbons and making my own gift tags.

Gift tags haven't been the only things I've been making....

Yes. The Christmas cake has been made.

Mmmmm. Smells wonderful.

Tastes quite good too!

Well you can't eat every thing on one day can you?

Really we're not that bad; we're visiting my parents for Christmas so it's ok for us to eat some of our cake now - we'll probably have seen enough Christmas cake by the time we come home again. Well that's our excuse anyway.
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Thank you to Anne M. (you know who you are) The fabric has arrived, and it is lovely thank you for thinking of me.

Till next time.

Fi x

Bake or Fake!

Hello Ladies, first things first. I would just like to say thank you to Lyn at Everyday Life for giving me this award.
The 'Lemonade' award is for "seeing blessings where they're not obvious and make lemonade instead if complaining about sour lemons"

Thank you sweetie.

And talking of lemons... This is lemon layer pudding.


This pudding is all mixed together in one bowl but then during baking, separates, leaving sponge on the top and lemon sauce on the bottom!


Pure genius! No need to make custard!
I need to find a chocolate recipe!
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Well that was the real deal and now for a little 'fake baking'

Mince pies!
All made from fabric of course.

A little bit of sticky mince meat oozing from under the lid.

Hmmm..... can you smell them. Tee hee!

I love the little red berries, three different red beads.

It's no good, I'm going to have to make some real ones!

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