The Little Things

Hello everyone. I thought I would squeeze in one last blog post before Christmas. I find the extra work and change of routine involved with the festive season puts extra pressure on my already fragile health which, for someone who has always loved Christmas, is rather sad. The greatest pleasure I get at this time of year is from the quiet times when I don't have to deal with people or, in fact, do anything much so I thought I'd share some of the little things that are helping me at the moment.

I love all the decorations that I've collected over the years, many of them made by my children or myself. My daughter spent a day the other week putting them all up for me and I'm really enjoying them. The tree in the picture above is my 'special' tree which is in the latest room to be decorated. When I say the latest, the rugs arrived a day before the tree went up. It's basically a spare bedroom but, as you can see, I've saved a cosy reading corner complete with my Mum's rocking chair.

One of the most exciting things about finishing this room is that we've finally been able to get all my Mum's quilts out of the bin bags they were languishing in and on to the big set of shelves we bought to house them. I'll start showing them to you in the new year but, in the meantime, I've been able to put some of the Christmas ones up on the wall at last. This one, behind the rocking chair, is my favourite.

Opposite the reading corner, in the alcove by the fireplace, is the little stained glass robin quilt Mum made us years ago which I love.

The dolls house on the table below it is one I've had for many years but have never had time to decorate and furnish. I'm hoping to make a start on it next year now that I've got a space to work on it. For now, Father Christmas is trying to work out how to get down the chimney.

We have always had baskets of Christmas picture books out at Christmas. There are two more baskets of them under the piano downstairs but I have got one basket up in this room.

After a bit of a struggle, we managed to hang my Christmas Bunting above the fireplace and then Rose decorated the mantelpiece with pretty things and gingerbread men lights. I'm not sure what the lace knitted fairy thinks she's up to.

Tolly cat isn't a little thing and he's definitely not just for Christmas but he does make me smile. He loves the patchwork coverlet I've put over the bed (to keep cat hairs off the clean bedding underneath). Here he is in a quiet moment in between hunting all those little hexagons. And yes, he really does do that.

As well as the quilts, I have a lovely collection of Christmas stockings that my Mum made me - a new one every year. We hang these on doors around the house. This one is on the front room door this year.

It was one of the first ones Mum made and, as you can see, it's a collage of photos of the children at Christmas when they were small. I also have this beautiful cross stitch stocking which Rose gave me a while ago - this one's on the airing cupboard door.

There's another tree in the front room and more decorations. It was a bit dark to take good photos this morning (it's gloomy most of the day at this time of year) but here are an assortment of knitted things on the piano.

You might recognise some of them as old patterns of mine. The round candle quilt above the piano is another one of Mum's and the little knitted cone snowman was a present from my friend Pat a few years ago.

The front room mantelpiece is pretty too. It's a mixture of old, treasured things, some new and a bit of knitting.

That's my Christmas Wreath hanging between photos of my much-missed Granny as a toddler and on her wedding day.

I've been enjoying my cross stitch this year and there are two new ornaments on this mantelpiece. Here you can see my pyramid shaped Christmas tree; the tree is different on each of the four sides.

I also cross stitched what was called a Christmas pincushion but decided to use it as an ornament stand instead ...

The village scene continues round all four sides and then there's a big snowflake on the top. Again, my apologies for the bad light in these pictures. You get the general idea though. At the other end of the mantelpiece are my cherished tiny crib, a cross stitch gingerbread house and a very pretty old tin. The tiny quilt propped up by the radio is another one of Mum's. She made them into fabric postcards, complete with a terrible poem on the back.

Something else I'm really enjoying this year (as I do every year) is getting out my Christmas china to use. I've collected so many pretty festive mugs that they don't all fit on the shelves. You can see a few of them in this picture.

Choosing which one to use each time I put the kettle on makes a cup of tea a bit special. The teapots on the dresser have their Christmas cosies on too ...

... and I've knitted new ones for the smallest ones this year. Here they are on the tray I use every day which I've lined with one of Mum's Christmas placemats so it's ready for Christmas too.

As a family we really enjoy our advent calendars and, this year, we've each had three different ones. We share pictures of them every day which is nice as we are all in different places. Firstly, we have paper advent calendars. Mine this year was a Brambly Hedge one. Here it is on my bedroom fireplace.

There's a bit of a competition each day as to which of the three of us has the prettiest picture but with festive mice I think I'm winning this year. While we're in this room my little criss-cross shelves are Christmassy too.

My little beaded Christmas village has grown again this year. I think I need to make some stands though so that the houses and things can stand at different heights. New to it this year are (I think) another building, some trees, a post box and a couple of street lights. Next on the list will be a church I think. I'm also very fond of this book which I read again the other day ...

We always have an advent jigsaw each year too. The pieces are divided between 24 envelopes and put together one day at a time. There was much hilarity when Jack's first day consisted almost entirely of white snow pieces! This is how my puzzle is looking after nineteen days.

The third set of advent calendars is the result of my concentration this year on improving my tatting skills. Over many months I tatted three sets of 24 snowflakes, three in each pattern. We have one set each (they're different sizes) and we add one to our snowflake trees each day. I'll write about this project properly next year but here's how my tree is looking today.

So, I may not be able to do very much or celebrate with friends and family as I would have done before the Long Covid but, when I think about it, there are lots of little things around me that make me smile and give me comfort. I hope that wherever you are and whatever your situation you all have a Happy and peaceful Christmas.

Mass Production

I like to think of craft as a peaceful relaxing activity, preferably accompanied by a pot of tea. In reality though, it often degenerates into something like mass production with me determinedly making lots and lots of the same things and regretting my initial enthusiasm. Luckily, I'm normally re-enthused once I see the finished project but in the meantime it can be a bit of a chore.

Would you like to see some of the projects that are currently filling up my days? This year I'm on a mission to actually make all the cards I send, rather than just think I'll do it right up until about mid December when the penny drops.

In the first three months of 2025 I made all the birthday cards I needed for this year. I can only show you the ones that have been sent so far. These are all cross stitch, a mixture of kits and patterns from magazines.

There are a couple of canvaswork designs in this next batch and the red one is Lagartera embroidery.

Having made the birthday cards I moved on to Christmas preparations last month (Don't laugh, I'll be the smug one later in the year). I started by making lots of Christmas gift tags, some in cross stitch and some blackwork. They're now packed away in a pretty tin with this year's mini stockings that I always design and knit in January. I tie these to the outside of the presents and fill them with little chocolates.

Next I stitched the cards I make for the four people in my immediate family. Which left what we call my mass produced Christmas cards. Every year I work out a design for a handmade Christmas card and then make an awful lot of them.

Last year I sewed together strips of scrap fabrics and then cut them into tree shapes and added a felt pot and a sequin star.

This year I decided on papercraft cards and found some nice cutting dies in the shape of baubles. This is what 50 Christmas cards in kit form looks like.

This was after I'd cut out all the various pieces. Now I'm on to the gluing stage which is fiddly but, by doing one small stage at a time, I'm getting there. 

These are the essentials for this year's cards. Well not Tolly obviously but he does like to join in. First, my Sizzix Big Shot machine. This is so good. As well as making cards I also use it to keep my daughter and I supplied with thread bobbins and to cut aperture cards for our cross stitch. The little bronze shapes are two of the dies I used for my bauble cards. You can cut out the basic bauble shape and then re-cut it with the detailed cutter. I'm using shiny card but I also tried it with felt, thinking it would probably be too thick but it worked perfectly. Think of the possibilities ...

The plastic thing with a snowflake pattern on is an embossing folder. You put a piece of card inside it, run it through the machine and end up with a pattern of snowflakes embossed into the card. You might just be able to see some of the card at the top of the picture with all the pieces in. When it comes to gluing small pieces of card together I find my fine tip glue bottle from Petite Properties is a must. I fill it with ordinary PVA glue. The tweezers were a present from my son; they're reverse action tweezers which means that, once you've got them holding whatever little thing you want, you can relax your hand, only pressing when you want to open them again. As well as holding tiny pieces of card to be glued, I've also used them when painting miniatures.

So, that's one lot of mass production but, obviously, there's always a production line of knitting and crochet going on here too. Out of my many unfinished projects that need working on, I'm currently trying to concentrate on three different lots of crochet. 

This is my box of corner to corner blocks; I need to make 64 of these all together. They'll go together something like this ...

Then there's my box of African Violet hexagons too.

These are fun to make, mostly because of that pretty yarn. I don't know how many of these I'm going to need but I know I've still got lots to make.

Then I had the bright idea of making some crochet flowers on sticks (as you do) and I seem to have got a bit carried away.

I'm producing these at a rate of six a day, mainly in an attempt to get them finished before I go off the idea. I think I might need to give them some leaves too.

The only bit of mass produced knitting I'm working on at the moment is these little pouches.

Last year I decided to work out how to make my own crackers using thin card, wrapping paper and ribbon. I made a dozen, six for here and six for my daughter's house.

The inner tubes and the ribbon can be used again and I made notes on how I made them so this year's set should be a lot easier to make. I wanted to put something nice in the crackers and, after much searching online, came up with the idea of little jigsaw puzzles. The most economical way to get them was to buy one of these.

This is the Christmas Village Advent Calendar, 24 little 50 piece puzzles. It cost about £30 and gave me enough puzzles for two year's worth of crackers which I thought was pretty good.  Also, isn't the box pretty? I'm going to keep it to turn into a special advent calendar one day; there are little pictures in the back of each drawer too. 

The puzzles come in plastic bags but I decided to knit little pouches for them too, just in case those plastic bags split. I used my old Gift Wrap pattern and oddments of plain and variegated yarn left over from knitting socks.

This year I'm knitting plain pouches but, every time the yarn changes colour, I knit a round or so in K1, P1 - stops me getting bored.

Although it's very satisfying to be getting ahead like this, it will be nice to get back to making just one of something. 

Meanwhile, the decorating goes on. Over the past month or more, I've been working on the bedroom on the middle floor. 

Looking good you might think but, if you look at the other half of the room ...

... you can see that it's not finished yet. Once we've moved this lot, I've got to do it all again. Mind you, I'm not varnishing the floor under the bed. I might give it a clean but that's it. The second lot of painting and varnishing might be a bit quicker as there's less wall to paint. The built in cupboard, fireplace and window take up quite a lot of it. Of course, that does mean I've got to paint the window frame. Maybe by the end of the summer I shall be able to show you another finished room. See the bags on the bed? They're my Mum's quilts, waiting for new storage in this room once it's finished. I'm really looking forward to showing them to you once I can get at them properly. There are masses of them and they're all beautiful.

Spring Has Sprung

Spring has arrived early in England this year. After a successions of very wet Aprils, this one is turning out to be lovely. This is good news for gardeners like me who never catch up if they can't get to work in the garden until May. My soil here is a heavy clay which means that it's too hard to dig in the Summer and Winter and mostly muddy in between. Despite that the garden is full of colour at the moment.

This is my Japonica which is sometimes known as the poor man's quince. Like the quince it has hard fruit that takes a long time to cook but makes the most beautiful red preserve.  My plum tree is a mass of blossom too so I'm crossing my fingers that the weather lets the fruit set this year; heavy rain has resulted in very few fruit for several years.

I cut that yellow Berberis right back a couple of years ago as it was trying to grow horizontally across to the other side of my narrow garden. Needless to say, it's on its way again.

It's been a good year for primroses too. Mine are all wild ones that found their way into the garden on their own. There are lots of the normal yellow ones ...

... but also quite a few in various shades of pink too.

And I think this one is very nearly red ...

Another favourite at the moment is my ornamental blackcurrant which has the most beautiful delicate pink flowers. 

The flowers have gone now but the little Magnolia Stellata in my tiny front garden was lovely a few weeks ago too. The only photo I have is this one showing its first flowers. 

My daughter and I were competing to see whose magnolia would flower first. Mine just about won but I have to admit that hers is a tiny bit more impressive.

I've been trying to grow Snake's Head Fritillary in the garden but most of them didn't take. I do get a few every year though, at least until Tolly spots them.

He either bats them down with his paw to stop them moving in the breeze or just bites the stalk until the flowers drop off. So far this year, he hasn't spotted these ...

It's only when you catch them before they open out that you can see why they're called 'snake's head'. The division between the petals looks like a mouth and you can even see spots of darker colouring which could be the eyes. Once they open out there's nothing snake like about them.

What with all this Spring colour outdoors I thought it was time to fish out some decorations to mark the new season. After a morning rooting around in boxes (all in the room I'm decorating at the moment of course) I ended up with this.

A mish mash of new and old things that make me smile every time I see them. These shelves are up in my bedroom on the top floor and are perfect for arrangements like this. I'd like to say I'll do a different arrangement for each season but I probably won't manage it.

In the early evening the low sun creates the most perfect shadows of the ornaments on the wall.

That mottled effect on the wall is because of the old glass in the window. It's not as smooth as modern glass so the light makes patterns like this.

The newest thing on the shelves is the little beaded toadstool house near the bottom which I only finished making just in time.

This is another wonderful pattern from ThreadABead. I really enjoy making their designs; at the moment I'm working on the fourth of the little houses from their Christmas Village series.

This is going to be the Gingerbread Bakery. After this I'm going to bead some little trees to stand among the houses.

Other than that, I've been decorating the first half of what used to be my bedroom. I've started with the worst half which involved doing a fair bit of plastering and filling before I could even start painting.

Then my daughter and I spent several hours scraping old paint off the door lock so that I can paint it black. Doesn't it look a mess?

I've just started painting the door so I'll be able to show you an 'after' picture soon. As you can see, the door doesn't line up with the frame; most of my doors are like that, they've warped quite a bit over the last century or so.

I am still working on my patterns. At the moment I'm writing up my Ten Stitch Rectangle which is taking ages. It took me the best part of a week to get the first three or four pages done and I hadn't even got to the casting on. It's going a bit better now though.

I'll leave you with the dwarf hyacinths in the old sink in the garden. These came from my Dad's garden. He could grow absolutely anything and I often think of him when I'm with my plants.