Are we feeling Christmassy yet?

 This week the Christmasfication of the house has commenced.  DS's girlfriend is staying with us and she was a bit boggled at how many boxes and suitcases of decorations were coming down from the attic.  We went and got the tree this morning and decorated it this afternoon which was fun to do together. However I am struggling a bit to feel seasonal. I think it's partly the rainy autumnal weather, and partly because for the first time Christmas does not equate with  a week or so off of work and cheesy work Christmas cheer - for me at least, DH and DS are still looking forward to that.  

I made up another little Trimmits ornament kit from my advent calendar, another fun one to do. I've hung this and the robin I made previously both on the tree.

I also finished up the set of six wool felt mitten ornaments that I was working on last week.  I think I will try to hang these together somewhere else as they will get lost on the tree.

Right after finishing the mittens, Block seven of the Australian BOM showed up right on time so that is my handwork project now in the evenings.

I took a break from sewing the Tilda quilt pattern to work on my Haori jacket.  Although when I showed the finished jacket to my Japanese teacher online, she called it a 'Happi' which is a short jacket traditionally worn at festivals in Japan.  It's turned out quite well apart from I think it is too wide across for me, and could do with being a little bit longer to be more flattering.  It's comfortable and warm to wear thanks to the printed jersey lining.  When I was calculating the width, I was thinking that I wanted the fronts to almost meet in the middle for warmth. But that does make it rather wide across the back since you are working with rectangles.  The lucky cat heavy cotton fabric  I ordered online but the red collar print I actually bought in Tokyo and brought back with me.

 

Meanwhile the Tilda Wreath Quilt is up to two and a half blocks now.  I'm finding it difficult to sew the very small corner squares on accurately, resulting in some polygon shapes when four of them meet up - when they should form a square.  I will go back and try to fix some of the worst offenders.

I have finally reached the end of my Bucks Point Butterfly Mat and connected the end threads back into the beginning loops which as usual I found quite difficult.  Since taking this photo, I have trimmed off the various cast off threads from the work but the final threads will need to be carefully darned into the work to try to make the join as unobtrusive as possible.  I found when trying to make the final joins, I just didn't have sufficient magnification.  Even my 5x magnification Optivisor wasn't letting me differentiate between tiny fuzzy white loops from when I started the cloth stitch trail. In the end I propped up my phone in a tripod like a War of the Worlds alien craft and turned the camera on to 10x magnification.  Which worked a lot better apart from the camera kept shutting itself off after a minute or two. Ageing eyesight sucks. I started this in October 2019 so it's been two years - mostly because I only worked on it once a week.  I honestly was remembering it as being bigger than it is - when I finally removed the working cloth to reveal the entire mat, I was actually a bit disappointed. But hopefully it is going to look nice once I complete the finishing work.  Once it's completely done, I am going to start trying to learn Bruges lace from some books that I have.

If you are celebrating the holiday, how are your preparations going?