Christmas Makes

Oh, it's been such a long time since I visited my little bloggy space:  I have actually missed it.  I have not even been around to read all of your lovely posts too; something that I love doing with a cup of tea and something sweet to eat.  I am going to try and catch up with all of you over the Christmas break.  I refuse to let Christmas be over on December 25th, and am planning on much slow-ness and craftiness and happy things over the days after.

So!  Can you believe it's almost here?!  I can't at all.  I am prepared for it all I think:  gifts are bought, the most important cards are sent; cookies have been made.  It will only be the four of us this year in our new house and I am really looking forward to a different feel to the celebrations.

Of course I have been crafting away for the past few months:  I hope you are prepared for a long-ish and picture heavy blog post!
I'm glad that last year I made so many gifts because this year I made none!  Too much upheaval and home improvement in the latter half of the year didn't really make me feel like putting pressure on myself to make gifts.  Or cards for that matter:  I only made two this year :

(The rest were from the store; I didn't actually only send two cards!)  These are stitched on paper with embroidery floss.  There are free patterns and downloads to buy at www.stitchingcards.com.  It was nice to do something different, though I wouldn't say you save a lot of time by doing these over cross stitch.

I got two more ornaments stitched up:

This is a Dimensions kit I ordered as my "payment" for painting the house!  It came with the hanger and jingle bells, though I substituted some evenweave from my stash for the very stiff aida fabric it came with.

Over the course of our house move my rolling pins have gone missing.  We don't understand how just these things can be gone when we don't seem to be missing any other kitchen stuff, yet there you have it.  Whenever we can't find anything we say, "It must be with the rolling pins!"  I am telling you this so you understand why I stitched this as our 2016 ornament!

Here is a little 'line-up' of all the ornaments I stitched/finished in 2016:

Not the twelve I was hoping for, but pretty good I think!

My last little cross stitch Christmas finish is just something fun to display some of the fimo pins I made a few years ago and to use the cute little wicker sleigh:

The floss is called "Peppermint" by Carrie's Creations.

On My Hooks:

Not a lot of crochet has been going on here lately.  I find it bothers my shoulder quite a bit so I can only do this in small doses.  I started on a peppermint stripe tea cosy last year, so this year I added some white Christmas roses and holly leaves to it.  My teapot isn't a typical design so pictures are always a little hard to take of it:

Sewing:

A fun afternoon was spent doing some free motion embroidery on this little picture for my craft room:

This is a combination of two different patterns from Bustle and Sew magazine,

Project bags!  Can I just say I found these pretty addicting to make, and I want to make more! Truthfully though I don't think one should have this many projects on the go...

Six more days until Christmas and I still have plans to make more ornaments and sew more things and I still feel like I can get it All Done; which of course I can't but it's so much fun to think so.

I want to say an enormous THANK-YOU!! to all of you who visit me here in my little crafty space and leave me such lovely messages here, and on Instagram and my little youtube channel.  It's so nice to be able to connect with other crafty minded folk, especially when you don't have any such souls in your immediate area.  I hope you all have a lovely holiday with good things to eat, and pleasant things to do; and snow (if you want it), and pretty lights, and laughter and all the good stuff there is to have.

Merry Christmas!

xo Jenn