Christmas cheer

 This week seems to have gone by in a flash, I feel like last weekend's blog post was about two days ago. Christmas cheer has arrived. As well as bringing down the decorations from the attic (much slimmed down after my big clear out last year, I am now feeling sad about a few of the things I gave away) and starting to put them up, we had DH's model club christmas do and awards night at a pub.  Nice food and DH came home with four first place awards (in the boxes) as well as some 2nd and 3rd place medals.  These are his award winning models which he builds from kits and paints from scratch.  Well done DH!

I also had my bobbin lace friends around for our annual present exchange - this year I sewed pen holders on elastic that they can use on notebooks, address books etc.  I warmed up the first mince pies of the season: gluten free but still pretty good.

For the rest of my crafting this week, it has been continuing the same projects I have been working on:  the dollshouse, longarm quilting the embroidered blocks quilt, cross stitch on the christmas ornament, sewing binding on the Japanese tea cup wallhanging, knitting on the Christmas kep hat, and I finished sewing embellishments on the Australian BOM quilt.

 The latter is now completely done - I signed up to the BOM with the Australian shop 'Faeries in my Garden' in March 2021 when we were still locked down for COVID here in the UK. It wasn't cheap, but the packets arriving every month were such a treat and kept me very occupied for months during lockdown learning how to embroider and then crafting the intricate applique blocks. So altogether the quilt took three years and nine months.  It may be one of the best things I've ever made. Unfortunately, I'm not sure what to do with it now.  It's too fragile and precious to be used as a bed quilt, but being bedquilt size, it is too big to hang on the wall in this house.  Our last house had a great stairwell where I could hang pretty large quilts, but this house only has a large-wallhanging-sized gap between door openings in the hallway.

We are currently being battered by Storm Darragh - it's not too bad where we live, just strong gusts of wind roaring around the house and lots of leaves and small twigs down in the garden, and a fair bit of rain.  It sounds like many people are having a terrible time though, especially in Wales and along that western coastline.