Suddenly December

 The first of December today, and suddenly Christmas is looming.  We put up some outdoor lights on our porch yesterday, I've hung up my Petite Properties Advent Calendar (of 25 x 1:48 scale lasercut dollhouse furniture kits), got out my Christmas quilt for my bed and hung the first Christmas wall quilt.  The rest of the decorations will probably wait until next weekend.

I thought I would be finished my dollshouse build by now but no, the displaced dollshouses are still in the dining room.  DS is coming home forChristmas so I think I will probably move the houses back downstairs to the dollshouse room and perch them on the end of my building table so they are out of the way.  The house is in the final stages but still lots of finishing touches  I don't need as much room now that the wallpapering is done and all the house assembled.

Speaking of finishing touches, I sewed the binding on my Australian BOM quilt so now I can start sewing on the hard embellishments to finish off several blocks.  I left them off knowing that I would be quilting the quilt on my frame, and I didn't want to crush the embellishments or have them make the quilt roll unbalanced.  Things like a scissors charm, buttons etc.  I sewed the scissors on with invisible thread and found I am officially too old for the invisible thread because it is now completely invisible.  I had to get out the super reader glasses to even thread the needle.  Then when I briefly set down the threaded needle to get the charm ready, it just completely vanished into thin air.  I had to get a torch to shine light onto the shiny thread before I could finally spot the threaded needle on the ironing board.  Yeesh.  These are the first three blocks, there are several more that have additional embellishments to be sewn on.

The American concept of Black Friday sales, previously unknown in the UK, has now become quite a big thing here.  Did you succumb to anything? I ended up ordering several things that I wanted to get anyway, and a few other items that came up in videos - including a cheap set of Forstner drill bits which I hope to use to create a stronger hanging system for my current dollshouse build which is supposed to hang on the wall.  Forstner bits drill holes in wood but the holes have a flat bottom - without the central hole that results from using a spade bit.  I also came across a FB post flagging these hemming clips. It's hard to photograph them but each clip is marked with quarter inch marks to help you turn up an even hem on larger items like a skirt. They looked like they would be useful.

I've made a good start on this year's Christmas cross stitch project which is a free kit to make a hanging bauble that came with CrossStitcher magazine.  I've had to grid the aida because there are so many colours in the design, far too many for my limited counting ability.  This way I only have to stitch a 10x10 grid at a time.

I gave up on the video game my son recommended: Baldur's Gate 3.  It's based on the Dungeons and Dragons methodology and was far too complicated for me.  I just want to run around and explore and bash things with a single button - not have to worry about D20 rolls and skill tables etc.  I've started playing another older game that I bought several years ago, Fable Anniversary, which is able to be played on a much simpler level, more my speed.  I am having one big problem which is that the button used to bash opponents in all the games I've played for the last several years, in this game it unsheathes your weapon or stows the weapon away.  So I spend the first few seconds of each combat sequence taking my weapon out and putting it away while I run around shrieking like a little girl, taking heavy damage as I frantically mash buttons.  Old dog, new tricks.