Merry Christmas and home for the holidays

I'm on holiday!  Not back at work until the new year, it's so nice to be home.  Especially since DH was off all last week so I was the only one heading out into the cold early each morning.  So there has been a fair bit of this:

Baileys

And baking: I've made a batch of gluten free lebkuchen, a batch of christmas cookies, and today we made a gingerbread house.  This meant that we could have a Christmas tea tray for our Harry Potter moviethon.

We've made it up to film six of eight, two more to go.  I'm getting lots of knitting done on my GAA Afghan and Latvian Mitten.

I've also been trying a pattern called 'Parlor Cat' by Sarah E Kellner.  It's been a bit of a tough knit because the pattern calls for worsted weight yarn, a rare commodity in the UK.  I didn't have anything suitable so I am using two strands of DK acrylic held together, which resulted in a very board-like fabric at the pattern tension and thus difficult to knit. Also the pattern is a bit mysterious as the cat is knit all in one piece by holding stitches, increasing/decreasing and knitting in two directions. But I've persevered and have something vaguely cat like. I took it to the in-laws when we paid our Christmas visit on my day off, and was being mocked by my family for how odd it was looking at that point, f-i-l really didn't think it was going to be a cat.

I've been enjoying the time to do some crafts this weekend:  I've been working on both my Bucks Point lace projects, I've done more quilting on the Star Sampler quilt on the quilting frame, some sit-down quilting on the Snowman Quilt, some cross-stitch and I made up the 'Santa letter' Christmas ornament kit by Trim-its that I bought a while ago at a lace fair I think.  I was impressed with this kit, only £2.75 but it had everything in it including stuffing.

I couldn't resist taking a picture of my improvised Christmas village along the top of our coat bench, some of the houses have lights inside.

And I'm still enjoying my sock yarn calendar.  Since I didn't start it until the 13th, I've now reached the 24th and will have a pause before starting again on 1 January with 12 more doors to open.  Something to look forward to in the new year.

Tonight we are going to a carol service in a local church, and then tomorrow is the main event.  We'll be doing the traditional turkey and accoutrements for supper, with a brunch of  hot bacon and egg sandwiches to top up the high-sugar diet in the meantime. And not forgetting the Queen at 3pm. 

I hope you have a lovely Christmas (if you celebrate it) and happy holidays.  Merry Christmas!!!