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New Years Eve

Christmas was wonderful.  So calm, so relaxed.  It was the best one I can ever remember.  It was just the four of us for most of it but lovely friends dropped by along the way and shared a meal and a glass of wine.  

Christmas Eve is always my favorite and this year we went to the Christingle service at the local Church. We had dropped by in the morning to help make the Christingles - all 120 of them!  It was a lovely morning, everyone finding their place in the production line without any amount of organising and the job was done in no time.  There was coffee and biscuits and all the left over sweets you could eat.  

We returned at 4pm for the service which was very beautiful.   All the lights in the Church were turned off as we lit the Christingles and sang Away in a Manger - it always makes me cry.  We finished with the very jolly 'We Wish You a Merry Christmas' and we were on our way.  It was just getting dark as we left the Church and the streets of our town were all sparkly with Christmas lights.  

Christmas morning was joyful and laid back.  Presents were opened at leisure with cups of tea and warm pastries.  Ron here did not enjoy his Christmas collar and it had to be removed shortly after this was taken!

We eventually ventured out some time after Boxing Day to Stourhead for a bracing walk.  It was freezing and a bit wet but we stopped for a warm by the fire and some mulled wine, hot chocolate and a four finger Kit Kat and were soon restored.

There were signs of Snowdrops along the way.  The promise of something green and new - an unknown adventure ahead for all of us.

We often don't end the year in the same way that we began and we can never foresee what the year ahead will hold.  Each year leaves its mark in some way, sometimes felt deeply, other times barely noticed, but all together they add up to a whole lifetime.

So many hopes and dreams are conjured up for today and tomorrow as we put one year to bed and meet the next with great expectation.  I wish you all a Happy New Year.

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Cranberry Sauce

Well today was the day for the Cranberry Sauce.  I make it every year and it is the most easy thing to make and a million gazillion times better than anything out of a jar from the supermarket.

The smell is everything you know and love about Christmas - sugar and cinnamon and orange and cloves.  Everyone has to stick their head in for a intake of Christmas joy!

All hail to Delia Smith for this 'Christmas in a Pan' recipe.  You don't even need the Port (I never add it).

Every year there are things that I make such as this and my braised red cabbage, and there's always a part of me that doesn't want to do it at first.  I mean, I want it, but I don't want to make it.  There is always so much else to do.  But then something magical always happens, just like birds flying south for the winter, something overcomes me, a primal urge to have to make it and then it just - happens!

Thank goodness.

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Tea Cosy Trio

I've done it again!  I've made another tea cosy.  Well they are such joyful things to make and the colours!  Well the posibilities are endless.  I think this is the best one yet.

This one is a gift but I like it so much I'm going to make another one for myself.  This time last month I'd never owned a tea cosy in my life but always liked the idea of them, now I have three.  I guess that's life.  

You just never know what's around the corner.

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Christmas Tree Fairy

So out came the sequins yesterday afternoon in honour of the Christmas Fairy.  This fairy has been sitting around the house for about a year now in a half completed state, with just her head and eyes - not even a mouth! - no hair, no skirt.  Terrible really.  She has been moved around from here to there but always in the back of my mind I knew I wanted to finish her.  

I have been putting it off because I thought I might ruin her and that while she was incomplete she still had the potential to be perfect.  But my tree needed a Fairy...

So here she is!  After all that time of waiting she has appeared.  I am so pleased with her and I'm calling her Marjorie.  And no, she isn't perfect in the true sense, in some lights she even looks a little bald but I still love her and she makes me very happy.

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She has arrived at last.  I feel a little bit behind with the tree this year.  Mysteriously three of our fake trees have gone missing (we had six in all - is that excessive?).  Obviously I have stored them away somewhere safe, probably never to be found again and one day when I am 92 it will occur to me where I put them.

So here instead is, the most beautiful real tree, all chubby and pine needly and smelling of Christmas.  It is a Norway Spruce, the kind you used to have in the 1970s that drops all its pine needles.  I love this kind.  I know you can get the new fangled fir trees that keep their needles and all that jazz, but to me there's nothing like that smell of the forest and on Christmas morning, lifting your presents from under the tree and having to brush away the needles before you open them!  It is also the same kind of tree that Norway give us as a gift for Trafalgar Square every year.  Obviously mine is a little smaller! But I love the story of this tree which you can read if you click on the link.  The tree is selected sometimes years in advance and is known as 'The Queen of the Forest'.  So beautiful.

Ron is obviously not allowed unsupervised contact with the tree although he has already sneeked in there unattended only to be discovered with his ample furry tummy covered in pine needles.  Needle surfing I'm guessing - that cat will try anything!

These are my beautiful angels which I bought at the Bath Christmas Market several years ago now.  I'm having a little thing about fairies and angels at the moment which is why in a break from tradition I have decided to abandon the usual star at the top of our tree.  We always have a star and I love a star but this year I am thinking a fairy.  So I am making one!  Trying at least.  She is part way there and I am at that stage where I can see how I want her to look but whether I will achieve it I'm not sure, so it's thrilling and nervewracking at the same time.  So for now, until she is complete and takes her position at the top of the tree - here is a frosty snowflake...

Handmade Nativity

We decided to re-do our handmade Nativity scene this year and in keeping with the family tradition out came the dolly pegs and the bag of fabric scraps to see what we could produce.

Obviously pink sparkly deer had to attend the birth of Jesus and the Shepherds were glad of somewhere to rest.

And slightly over-sized donkey was also there giving much needed support to the three Wise Men, along with his good friend Snow Squirrel who kindly came bearing the gift of pine cone.

And of course Mary and Joseph and Baby Jesus in his Manger made of Oxo Cube box and looking very pleased with it too. 

 

Ron

Hiding behind my beautiful Christmas garland that was handmade with love and comes out every year is Ron...

This is Ron back in February when he was just a little ball of fur and love, hanging out with his good friend Unicorn.  

And this is Ron poised to attack ...

Full attack mode.

And then the face, the 'why are you shouting at me?' face.

My poor garland.  This was not the first time and I have now taken the stockings down.  I think him and the dog were forming a tag team.  He'd get the stockings down and the dog would eat the chocolate out of them.  They thought they were awesome together!  I have put a stop to their fun for now but I have to find somewhere else to put them, it is one of our Advent Calendars after all.

Festive Tea Cosy

I realise I am a late comer to the pom pom maker party but at the weekend I purchased the Pompominator 3000 as I am now calling it.  Well it was just so much fun!  I mean who knew?  I remember spending all that time as a child drawing round a glass onto the back of a cereal packet and then trying to cut the hole in the middle which was always tricky because you had to pierce it with a pencil into a piece of plasticine (which we never had), and then the endless winding and threading it through the hole and the whole shebang!  But now!  Well I am impressed.

This was my first attempt which I think turned out pretty good actually.  

And it looks great on my Festive Tea Cosy!  I am very proud of this.  I kind of just made it up as I went along - having been inspired by this.  It was all so enjoyable that I had to make another ...

 

I never ever owned a tea cosy before and now I have 2!  

 

Christmas Tree Festival 2014

On Friday night we visited the Christmas Tree Festival at St Thomas' Church in Salisbury.  This has become something of a tradition with us now. 

There is always an amazing array of knitted Christmas decorations but this year I have to say it reached new heights with a hand knitted duck-billed platypus!

This was my favorite tree - it was 'All Creatures Great and Small' for the Salisbury Almshouse Association.

It did indeed include all creatures!  There's even Angelina Ballerina in there!

When we came out of the Church is was dark and twinkly and frosty cold so we rounded off our trip with some warming hot chocolate - or in my case a peppermint mocha!  My first ever one and it was SO good and made me feel very Christmassy.  Then it was pick up a pizza on the way home and watch Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire with some cheesy popcorn in front of the log burning stove.  I mean does life get any better than this?

 

Snowflake Blanket

I am so very pleased with my Snowflake Blankink!  It took me longer than I thought it would to make it (I was thinking a day!)  This is my first crocheted squares blanket so now I realise they take a lot longer than that!  And there are still some loose ends to tie in (well most of them actually!)

Subsequently it is a bit smaller than I first wanted but I started to run out of wool and didn't want to get any more of those giant dinosaur egg Aran balls to break into just for a little bit more blanket.  

Also I didn't block it because I just couldn't be bothered!  I was so pleased to be at the end and want to use it NOW.  Subsequently it's a little higgeldy piggeldy or unprofessional or even messy - some might say, but I'm calling it 'charmingly rustic' and 'Granny Chic' and other such positive titles because I love it and I am very proud of it.  

Of course now I want one in pink and one in blue - maybe next year...