The other thing I know about myself is that if i left it to the end of the year to put together I’d never do it, so it’s being pieced togther as I go.

the colours are just made up from what I had to hand and what I fancy adding.  i also have done rather random sizes as I don’t tend to take too much notice of what wool should be used for what sized hook or for what gauge.

So the whole thing is a bit of a random, hotch potch of things I have ready to use up and things I like.

The other thing that some people are doing is making special square for special occasions, so having spent a lovely Burns night with friends I decided I’d have a go at my first square with a meaning.   It’s not finished yet but you get the idea.  I also make so diddy diddy squares with the same colours to act as grouting between big square – I think perhaps making all the squares the same size might have been a  better idea!

Watching the amazing  Bloodstone at Jubilee Stores (we even persuaded Jamie to come and watch Morris dancing )

Cookie Exchange:

The Learning Zone Christmas Party:

Family Christmas time:

I loved these easy but beautiful paper Christmas stars:

We had a houseful felting Christmas stockings in all manner of colours and patterns:

We managed a snow-flake Christmas wreath that even Martin contributed to:

Jonathan, Rebekah and I threaded some natural decorations, some we hung outside but Rebekah put hers on her little tree in her bedroom:

I wanted to do so much more but unfortunately haven’t had the energy to do it.

The woodland skills people helped with the grotto and cosy fire area, as did a few other volunteers.

There were decorations to make and lanterns to hang – once I’d set fire to my hair lighting some of them!!!

The grotto was ready – Rebekah was taking photos and Jonathan was being attacked by little girls – people listened to Sue Bailey tell stories and sang songs round the camp fire.

We have a card stable that waits for the inclusion of nativity characters. The characters (in playmobil) are wrapped up (in old newspaper as I am a skinflint) and put in the very tacky Christmas tree advent calendar.  We always start with Mary Joseph and the donkey and they travel around the room on their way to the stable – only arriving on Christmas eve.

We also have playmobil wise men these travel from the east or at least from the top of the shelves in the corner of the room.   They don’t form part of the unwrapping process because they will NOT be at the nativity scene on Christmas day they will arrive later at Epiphany.  So they will travel about after Christmas.

We also have a hand crafted advent calendar that the girls and I made years ago at a little HE workshop – it was very hard work for me as I don’t do machine sewing and it’s not very well finished but I love it.  In this one we all put little messages – they could be a Christmas joke, or a task, or an encouragement, a bible verse to read, a poem, a picture etc.  We all aim to write some of them but Jonathan and I are the only ones keen to do it everyone else (particularly Martin) just sighs at me!   Jonathan has already contributed three items to the calendar – so far he is the only one!

Usually we don’t do chocolate advent calendars – in fact Rebekah said that she’s never had one (but I think long ago my mum might have bought one for her).  I just don’t really think that chocolate advent calendars are what the season of Advent are really all about  and added to that the fact that Jonathan is on a dairy free diet it’s just not for us.  However as another spectacular demonstration of my inconsistency (see a whole blog post on it if you are interested) this year we have chocolate calendars.  At our last Suma social I was tempted by the dairy-free calendars and thought that this year only we would do chocolate calendars (I am also aware that time with Rebekah at home may be running out so it would be good to do them with her).  So with yet more inconsistency we have:

1 dairy-free calendar

1 Divine Fair-trade calendar

3 Thorntons rather excessive calendars.

I like Advent – I would like Advent to celebrated in, well Advent, and then Christmas to be celebrated afterwards.  I like the idea of  a time spent waiting and preparing for a special visitor as Advent in 2 minutes suggests it’s about rather than manically organising Christmas things.  Maybe one year I’ll even live up to that ideal!

I thought we could have a go at creating something similar but it was a bit complicated so looking at some of his other work and looked at No Brainer.

It was more difficult than we expected but we had a go.  It took a lot of thought.

The results were not too bad though.

We thought that it might be easier to achieve a similar result with strips of paper interwoven.  I had a few coloured strips so we had a go at trying this out.

This was much easier but Ruth thought it wasn’t as interesting to do, so she made a silhouette to go ever hers and freya decorated hers.

While Ruth and Freya finished these off the rest of us made spiders as suggested on the kids art projects website – nothing to do with Jonathan Parsons but something I had been thinking about doing for a while.

Freya had a go too and made this really lovely version – Sally the Spider

After all that they all went off and decorated their arms with henna.  Not a bad afternoon really.

I had my first attempt at making a button – not too neat but not too bad and I just did a chain for a button loop but that is a bit stretchy so I may need to replace that with something else.  Also the green part is bigger than the blue part so i’m guessing that the wool acted differently – but for now we’ll just call that a design feature!

This was completed when we listened to How To Cheat A Dragon’s Curse read in the luscious Scottish tones of David Tennant.  Ruth made bead things and I drew pumpkins using these lovely pastel things.

He was unhappy with how some of the pastel Sharpies were showing up and said he’d prefer white card.  A few days later we listened to My Family and Other Animals by Gerald Durrell which I had on my radio downloader and had a go at it again on the white paper.