Our very traditional Christmas

We have had a very nice, and very traditional Christmas this year – this is the first one in 5 years where we have not been away on holiday (first Prague then 4 years in Spain) and Ellie really wanted a traditional family time now she is away at University. 

So we had a very lovely time – helped by the very seasonal weather – the first white Christmas I can remember for at least 35 years. 

There was snowman building on Christmas Eve - 

Jake and his friend Sammy built this

And lots of baking as we decided to make our own Yule Log this year - 

Nigella's Yule Log recipe - very, very sweet frosting but it all got eaten!

The gingerbread house kit I bought had suffered a bit of structural damage but Ellie got very creative with the pieces - 

Ellie's very good at using the writing icing for artworks

And bits of it still look like a house!

I bought myself  Nigella’s Christmas cookery book as a treat – for the last few years when we have been away I have done a pretend Xmas dinner before we go but it has not been much more than a glorified roast but this year I did lots of domestic goddess stuff and thoroughly enjoyed it – even started off Christmas Day with watching Nigella on TV and doing a bit of stitching before sorting out the turkey as I was up ridiculously early (of course the teenagers didn’t surface for presents till after 9!) 

So we had a very nice lunch with some special additions of parsnip and sweet potato bake (not Nigella, think that was Good Food mag), and brussels with pancetta and then the buffets included Nigella’s Chilli jelly (bit liquid rather than solid but very tasty) and some other recipes from my new tapas cook book. 

Lunch part 1 - the pic with the others in !

Lunch part 2 with me in the pic - as you can tell I don't know how to use the timer on my camera

We had lots of lovely pressies and I was very pleased that Jake and Ellie liked their hand knits – they had both asked for money and a few stocking pressies this year and as I have been trying to make a hand crafted gift for most people this year I made them both wrist warmers and Ellie got a matching hat as well. 

Jacob likes his wrist warmers!

Ellie with her hand knit set

 

The patterns for these items are all freebies from Ravelry. 

After Xmas lunch we went sledging which the kids very much enjoyed - 

Ellie - with hat!

A great action shot!

As well as the knitting I have been busy finishing the Xmas stitching. The Noel ornament from Helga Mandl  that I have mentioned before was my ornie of choice for the girls who are my very good friends here in Hudds so this was the collection I finished just before Xmas - 

I love this ornie - have now stitched it 9 times!

I am actually taking the pattern away with me to stitch one of my very own for the tree for next year. 

I have also just finished these which are for my relatives in Spain – this is from the Gift of Stitch Mag – this year’s Xmas ornie edition. 

A very pretty little snowflake design

All of these are once again stitched over my favourite 28 count sparkly evenweave (need my glasses to stitch this these days!) with Silk Mill threads. 

We are off to Spain in the early hours of tomorrow morning (snow permitting!) so am looking forward to some warm weather (it is 21 degrees there rather than -3 in Yorkshire), some cycling, some lovely tapas and the Three Kings festival on Jan 5th. Am taking lots of stitching and my latest knitting project as well. 

Hope that you all have a very happy New Year and let’s hope that 2010 will be filled with plenty of time for textiles! 

Thank you for visiting. 

Happy Christmas everyone!

As this will probably be my last post before the festive season really gets underway I would like to wish you all a very Happy Christmas and a lovely 2010. 

We have just returned from Worcester where we were visiting my sister. We visited the German Market in Birmingham while we were there to have lunch of sausages, pretzel and chocolate dipped fruit and marshmallow skewers. 

The beer and gluhwein stall

 

Some very nice Xmas decs on this stall - bought a lovely bag of pot pourri and a scented star

 

Ellie and Jake at the market sweet stall

 

Ellen is most excited to have returned to snow. They have not had any in Worcester and she was worried that the snow we had last week would have gone by the time she got here but no we got back and the world was even more white than when we left. 

Lots of snow again to complement my carefully placed snowflake decorations!

 

So much snow that we have had to do our Xmas food shopping at the local store rather than go into town as at the moment taxis are not coming up our road. I did go into town for a few special things today (have treated myself to the Nigella Christmas cookbook so needed some more exotic ingredients!) so we are now fully stocked. 

We plan to spend some time baking together tomorrow – making and decorating the yule log, making cranberry and white chocolate cookies, putting together the gingerbread house and decorating the Christmas cake. Ellie and I are going to Christingle service at one of our local churches and hopefully at some point Stefon will arrive (snow and the rail system permitting!) 

I have masses of stitching and knitting to show you after Xmas that cannot be revealed now but I can show you the ornie that I sent to Marlene in the US as part of the ASOE exchange. This is a design called Noel by Helga Mandl - if you look carefully at the tree the word Noel is spelt out (on each half of the tree -you will have to look at the pic sideways for it to make sense). 

The Noel ornament from Helga Mandl

 

We had our Embroiderers’  Guild Xmas meal last week and I was very pleased to see that Barbara, my very talented friend, had made some little trees for table decorations following my instructions on the blog. Here are some pics  of the trees and their maker. 

Barbara's patchwork tree

 

Barbara at the Guild meal with the tree decoration

 

I do hope that you have a very lovely time with good food, good company and lots of time for relaxing and stitching. Jake and I are off to Spain for New Year for some sun and warm fingers! 

Happy Xmas and happy stitching! Thanks for visiting.

Xmas decs go live!

We have had a very lovely and very busy weekend starting with the annual Festival of Light in the town centre on Friday night. This event is always a street theatre of some kind with a grand fireworks finale.  

This year it was a group from France called Trance Express who led a parade round town with a float containing a rock band and two huge drums played by men on swinging trapeze. They were followed by a band of drummers and flares. When they got to the square where the final performance was held there was a very large crane and the singing group appeared suspended from it and performed a couple of numbers while swinging above the crowd.  

Then there was an excellent fireworks display – I do love big fireworks!  

A lot of bright lights from the flares!

The suspended performers in front of the railway station

Fireworks - very near to the performers!

Lots of big bangs and pretty lights!

We then went for a lovely meal on Sat to our friends Taru and Bob’s where Jake and I had excellent food, excellent company and excellent wine (in my case not Jake’s!)  

Sunday I spent most of the day decorating the house for Xmas – a little bit earlier than usual but I do love Xmas decs and the poor things have been in a cold garage for long enough – they need to be out to be admired. I have posted pics of the main decs before and not much has changed in the layout but I do have a few special new bought things to show you.  

Every year I like to buy something special and a couple of years ago at Disneyland in Florida I bought this very cute Minnie and Mickey for the tree.  

Minnie and Mickey from the good old USA

 We are big Disney fans and love visiting Disneyland and you may remember that we went this year in March for Ellie’s 18th where I chose this lovely sparkly decoration … 

  

Golden Minne and Mickey from France

Ellie wanted to buy a decoration and she chose this very cute Tinkerbell inside a bell that rings.  

Tinkerbell for my Disney Princess Ellie

 Last year I also bought these lovely little ornies – they are supposed to hang from a tree but I think they look better on the hearth.  

A trio of Santas

 All my hand-made decs are all over the house now and I think I may have to make some more for next year as there are just never enough baubles in some places! I will leave you with a nice pic of the tree all lit up.  

Thanks to Jake for helping with all the decs - he always reckons I have too many but I do not do minimalism at Xmas!

Hope you have fun preparing for Xmas – now back to the stitching! Thank you for visiting.

More pics from Harrogate Knitting and Stitching Show – Quilting

I still have  a lot more to post about the show from last week so thought I would share some more with you now. The theme for this post is quilting and some of these pics come from my good friend Anita who kindly downloaded all her pics onto my PC when we met up this last weekend. She has a much better camera than me with all sorts of settings - I have a very simple point and click one not being technologically minded and being very prone to drowning cameras! 

These quilts were all winners in  various categories – I forgot to note down what the competition was but there was some wonderful work in both traditional and contemporary styles. 

This was my favourite piece the overall effect was amazing

Detail of the above quilt

A more traditional quilt with applique and patched sections

Detail of the applique section

Amazing quilting on one of the wholecloth background areas

One of the art quilts - a portrait

Detail of the quilting around the face

The level of workmanship in these quilts is amazing and I am sorry that I don’t have details of who made them to give these very talented people credit. If you recognise your work please leave me a comment so that I can credit you. I have only just started doing the most simple patchwork and quilting (you have seen my tree!) and am in awe of the level of skill and dedication in these pieces. 

I also bought a lovely book at the show which I read within a week and have now passed on to Anita. It was called ‘The Quilt that Walked to Golden’  and had been on my Xmas wish list but I bought it as a treat for me. It was a wonderful book with the stories of women who made quilts in Colorado from the time of the pioneers up to the present-day with extracts from their life histories and diaries and lots of pictures of both historic and new quilts. I loved this book (Little House on the Prairie gone live!) and now want to follow it up and read some of the biographies of the women listed in the book and the other books about this topic . 

I have also added another one to the  ’places I want to visit’  on my ever-increasing list with Colorado and in particular the Rocky Mountain Quilt Museum  which is in Golden, Colorado. I have wanted to visit the Rockies for a long time ever since discovering Mary Kathryn’s brilliant blog – every week she posts her Rocky Mountain Wednesdays photos of where she lives – I love Yorkshire and think it is very beautiful but she has some amazing scenery (and lots of quilt shops!)

I have also been very busy working on my Xmas stitching, knitting and quilting - why is that however early you start you have never finished all those projects you wanted to do for people? Oh well at least I have lots of ideas for birthday gifts for next year!

Thanks for visiting – happy stitching!

A walk in the woods and some quilting

I have had a lovely weekend away at Centerparks in Sherwood Forest with my very special friends. There were 8 of us that went away – all women I originally met about 17 years ago at the local toddler group. We left behind 21 children between us (though technically 4 of those have already left us – being already at University!) and headed off for our now annual girlie weekend away.

We started this tradition about 13 years ago with a trip to Filey where we stayed in Belinda’s Auntie Brenda’s caravan. A couple of years later we graduated to Centerparks and have spent many a happy weekend at both the Cumbria and Sherwood ones. This weekend away was a very special one as it was Belinda’s 50th birthday celebration so we treated ourselves to a very nice luxury lodge complete with en-suite bathrooms, games room with pool table and private sauna! Here are a few pics of the luxury.

The lounge with one of the 6 TVs in the lodge - one in each room as well as widescreen with PS2 in the games room!

the other end of the lounge - private patio leading to sauna - this also had a fab bar-b-que which sadly we did not use

Mine and Maggie's luxury bedroom with complimentary towels and ensuite with power shower

The lodge we stayed in is in the middle of this pic

We didn't actually watch any of the 6 tvs - watching these guys and the pigeons feeding on the sunflower seeds we put out was much more entertaining

We did not do loads of activities as we spent lots of time reading magazines. eating lovely food, drinking wine and laughing but we did manage a couple of saunas, walks in the woods, swims, visits to the jacuzzi , feeding the ducks and swans and a little (and quite muddy!) bike ride.  The place was all decorated for Xmas and here are some of the girls visiting Santa’s reindeer.

Julie, Maggie, Val and Therese have all been very good this year so are hoping for lots of presents from these guys

We also had a little celebration of Belinda’s birthday – she also has a party with friends and family planned for next weekend which we will all be at – but here she is blowing out the candles on her cake . I made a chocolate fudge cake with pink icing – only to discover the she does not like chocolate cake! Jacob has kindly volunteered to eat what is left!

Happy 50th birthday Belinda!

I managed to get a bit of knitting and stitching done as well and spent quite a bit of time talking to Anita about quilting. She has recently set up her own business doing quilting of other people’s pieced work as she now owns a long armed quilting machine so we spent all of the journey to Centerparks discussing her flourishing business and ideas for my future one. She had also brought along a project – a very unusual applique tree. You really must go and have a look at the designer’s site - is is fab!

Anita's tree quilt

The pattern - a Lilley Pilley design

These women are very, very important to me - I met them all by chance as I knew few people with a baby when Ellie was little so rang the local council to ask about toddler groups in the area, walked up to the local one and met Belinda and Val. I met Maggie, Anita and Judith a couple of years later as they had babies and joined the group and Julie and Therese as they into moved to the area.

We have supported each other through pregnancy and birth, raising toddlers and teenagers, career breaks and career changes , major illnesses and operations of ourselves and loved ones and relationship woes. It was particularly special that Anita was there as 8 years ago she moved to Australia and we have only seen her a few times since. They are a fantastic bunch of people who enrich my life, make me laugh till I cry and will always be there for me - I am very proud to be able to call them my friends.

I will be back later this week with more pics from the Knitting and Stitching Show – thanks for visiting and happy stitching!

My name is Alison and I’m a Christmas fabric addict!

Well sorry for the lack of posts recently – been very busy with work and have been away the last two weekends so have not been in regular posting routine. Lots of stitchy goodness to catch up with including the wonderful Knitting and Stitching Show last week at Harrogate.

34 of us went from our Embroiderers’ Guild club on a coach and had a wonderful day out. And yes I did succumb to the lure of Christmas stash even though I do have just a little bit of fabric already!

Who could resist - so pretty!

 I also bought some more bits to go on Xmas baubles and some more cute little charms to go on my stitched gifts and exchanges. My justification is that though I have almost finished ornies for this year I have to start next year in about Sept and that is well before the next Harrogate show so I really needed to buy it now!

The two polystyrene cones at the back are a new idea from Sue Schofield of Springwood House designs – the very talented lady who sells the patterns and supplies for the baubles and cones I make. These she turns into Xmas trees using the same ribbon folding technique as for the pine cones. The instructions come from her new book  Fun with Ribbons.  I may just have time to try these for this year – we shall see. I had a very nice chat with her and told her all about the fundraising for Nepal I had been doing.

In the middle of the pic above are 3 very cute little knitted puds which are covering Ferrero Rocher chocs – I thought these would make a lovely table centre for Xmas lunch.

How cute!

It was once again a feast of textiles with some of my favourite designers and suppliers there. I once again really enjoyed looking at Sue Hawkins, Jane Greenoff of the Cross Stitch Guild, The Historical Sampler Company and The Viking Loom to name but a few of the wonderful stalls with kits.

I am adding these people to my blog roll so that there can be permanent links as I know that lots of people access this blog looking for needlework info and these designers offer fabulous products to get started with historical stitching.

Have loads of other pics of the exhibitions at the show so will save those for another post. They were of course brilliant and once again made me want to give up the day job and be creative full time – or go and do a degree in embroidery and textiles like all those lucky students at the show. One day when the kids are through college maybe!

Also was able to give Barbara her blogaversary giveaway goodies – three ornaments with a holly theme and some Silk Mill threads in flower colours as I know she loves stitching bright flowers.

Barbara's ornies

Silk Mill threads in very pretty colours

I really love using Silk Mill  threads and despite having loads of Anchor and DMC in my stash I very rarely use anything else these days. They are so smooth to stitch with and so beautiful when finished and in so many colours – go check out their web site!  Am just about to go there now to stock up on more greens for ornies as have run out of a particular shade.

Enjoy your stitching – thanks for visiting!

Travels round my internet

I just love the internet! When it was first invented I can remember saying that I didn’t really see the point and didn’t think I would use it – how wrong I was! I just love discovering new blogs and interesting sites and thought that I would share a couple of my new treasures with you today.

I found this first one in an old article from the Guardian Online Life and Style section about the rise of new domesticity – how baking cakes and knitting has become trendy amongst the ‘younger generation’. Personally I have always done these things but then I had a traditional girls only grammar school upbringing and could do five kinds of pastry by the time I was 15 so I think it is great that people are enjoying making and creating things whatever their age.

The blog is called Yarnstorm  and is run by a multitalented lady called Jane Brocket who does all manner of household crafts and has some fab pics on the site – lots of lovely garden pics which I really like as well as all the crafts.She has also published a few books and one in particular will have to go on my wish list – Cherry Cake and Ginger Beer - a collection of recipes taken from childrens’  books of the sort I used to love reading . I am currently watching Little House on the Prairie on DVD and am having huge nostalgia moments for all those wonderful books I read – next I will go and find Susannah of the Mounties!

Most of the books I loved as a child were about adventures and people living or visiting  quite remote places and I am sure these very heavily influenced me to want to travel.

It was the description of one of her visits to Kew that led me to look at a link she had to a botanical artist – an amazingly talented woman called Susannah Blaxhill. I hope that Susannah will excuse me using one of her pics but I just had to share with you some of her work. In keeping with the unofficial ‘theme of the month’  this is one of Susannah’s illustrations of some pumpkins from her web site. Go and visit and marvel at the detail. These are amazing works of art and I am going to add a book of her illustrations to my wish list.

Susannah Blaxill's amazing pumpkin picture

I have a busy week coming up with work but hope to have finished all of my Xmas ornaments by the end of it. I have done very little the last few days but stitch as have had the tail end of horrible flu so have got loads finished off.

Thanks for visiting and I will be back soon.

Needlecase finish and a giveaway winner

Have not been very busy the last couple of days textile wise as am still feeling rough from flu so have just been finishing off some items – one of which is an Xmas ornie for my ASOE  partner which I cannot show until I have posted it later this month.

The other finish is a little needlecase for a friend from Knit and Natter. I used the same set of patterns from New Stitches magazine that I used for the card for Stefon’s Mum a couple of weeks ago – just did a different flower this time again in blackwork on some of my sparkly aida fabric. This fabric has a gold fleck woven into it and is part of a stash from one of the Harrogate Knitting and Stitching Shows  a couple of years ago.

Blackwork flower design in black DMC and gold metallic thread with gold seed beads

I finished off the needlecase by lining it with gold silk and putting a thin layer of wadding in between with ribbon to fasten.

Silk lining and gold ribbon

Sorry that I did not post the giveaway winner last night but I did the draw from all the comments and the winner is Barbara. Barbara is a very talented textile artist (no blog unfortunately so that you can see her work) and does the most amazing crazy patchwork tea cosies. So I will be sending a little gift package to Barbara of stitchy things very soon. Thank you very much to everyone else who commented as well and said such nice things about my blog!

Am hoping to get a load of stitched Xmas ornies finished this week – have the backing, stuffing  and ribbons to do on the things that I have been doing bit by bit all year. Then I can start on a couple of new Xmas gifts.

Crazy patchwork Xmas tree ornament

One of the things that I really wanted to do from my Creative Textiles class was to be able to do things without patterns that were just truly creative and I am pleased to say that today I have been doing just that. I have previously done some crazy patchwork when I made a bag for my Mum for her birthday earlier this year but that was still a very planned project where I did buy many of the items rather than just have them to hand.

I have been making Xmas ornies as you know and have been saving all of the small fabric scraps with a view to making something with them.

A selection of left over scraps

Every year I buy some mini poinsettias to decorate the house and so have been left with very pretty little pots when the plants die.

My little golden plant pots

I had seen on someone’s blog a while ago (I forget who) little fabric trees so decided today to combine the idea of crazy patchwork that we have been looking at in the Creative Textiles class with my little pots to make some table decorations for Xmas.

First I made a tree template by drawing round a plate on brown paper then wrapping this on itself to make a cone shape and cutting the excess paper to give me a pattern. I then cut this shape out of some spare red fabric I had.

The tree template cut out in red fabric

I then ironed the same shaped piece of bondaweb onto the fabric.

The bondaweb layer

Once I had peeled off the backing paper I then laid my fabric scraps on top of the bondaweb then when complete ironed the whole thing.

Scraps on top of the bondaweb

This makes them stick to the bondaweb apart from a few bits where they overlap but gives you a robust enough fabric sandwich to cut off the excess.

The trimmed piece

I then machined the pice to cover the joins – I have a very basic sewing machine that jams a lot so the stitching is not perfect and I had to go over each seam a couple of times to even up the stitching. I used the zig zag stitch as it was the best looking stitch for the job. I was tempted to hand embroider these this being my preferred technique but am trying to expand my repertoire so did use the machine though did only get one tree stitched due to jamming! The other one will be finished at a later date!

The zig zag stitching along the seams

Then I folded the right sides together and stitched the seam by hand as the fabric was a bit thick to go through my temperamental machine!

The side seam of the tree

I then turned it right side out and voila!

The completed tree shape

I had originally planned to stuff the tree with wadding and sew a felt circle onto the bottom but once I had sewn it to this stage realised that it was stiff enough with the two layers of fabric and bondaweb to stand on its own so just trimmed the bottom with some gold braid from my stash and then added one of my little brass charms sewn to the top.

The finished tree!

I am very, very pleased with this – I do need to buy some florists’  foam to put in the base of the pot as at the moment this is held up by a pencil stuck in blu tak but this is an orginal idea made by me which has not cost anything at all as it has all come from my stash!

I am going to take it to class tomorrow to show it off.

Happy Halloween (post includes more cake and knitted items!)

I am posting this primarily for my Mum in Spain to show her some pics of lovely granddaughter Ellie celebrating Halloween with her friends at Uni. Thanks to the miracles of Facebook I can see lots of pics of her (these were posted by her friend Danni) and as Mum does not use Facebook I thought I would share them here.

Ellie looking fab as always with a scary looking friend

Ellie with Beccy and Sarah all dressed up

All the girls in Chandler Hall ready to go out and scare the locals!

Ellie will be home this afternoon for a week of Mum’s cooking and being looked after! There is nothing like moving out of home to really make you appreciate it!

We are not really celebrating Halloween here – Jake thinks he is a bit too old for a party and since he is over 6 foot tall now Trick or Treating with the little kids is out but we will be lighting the pumpkin lantern and I have a load of lovely Halloween sweets for any kids who call on us.

We did very well with the fund raising for Breast Cancer Awareness this week at work – all my little pink fairy cakes sold and we had lots of raffle prizes. I won two of them which was very nice – wine and chocs which are waiting for me on my desk at work. Thanks to Tracy and the people in the office for organising this – so far £370 pounds has been raised.

My baking this week - pink fairy buns

Am off to continue some more Xmas knitting now – am getting a bit more adventurous and am making an item  that uses waffle stitch which seems to be working ok. I am starting a Beginners’ Knitting class at the wool shop in a couple of weeks which will be very good as I have never learnt properly and can only do a limited range of things. I have some lovely books but sometimes you need to be shown how to do things rather than see static diagrams. I would love to be able to tackle shaped garments , lace work and more complex patterns such as this lovely scarf.

April Showers Scarf by Whitney van Nes

This scarf is a free pattern from the fabulous Ravelry web site. There are loads of lovely knitting and crochet patterns there as well as people’s pics of the things they have knitted. I have been spending a lot of time browsing and if you register with the site you can save all your favourite patterns and post pics of your own projects.

 So off to the sofa with my kneedles and more episodes of Little House on the Prairie – which of course is very good for spotting knitting, quilting and dressmaking!