Angels at the Airport

This is the favourite tree in the Auckland Airport Shopping Centre Carpark dressed up for Christmas with peg and pipe cleaner angel dolls



 

Amigurumi Christmas Trees

Last year I made the team I work with little amigurumi snowmen.

This year I've made them each a little Christmas Tree with crocheted tinsel and some beads for baubles.

A few months ago I had quite a giggle from this Readers Digest book from the 70's that said to use a tongue depressor to make a lacy crochet stitch well, you'll never guess what I found at my local craft store.......

Guess what I'm going to be trying out this week :-)

Christmas Bunting

I love fabric, and I'd love to be able to do amazing things with it, and after the various failed experiments I really should know that it's really not my thing - and yet I still can't resist....

Bunting. Surely even I can cut out some triangles and sew them on some bias tape?

Things I learned. 

I bough the wrong width bias tape - the fatter stuff would have been easier so I could  fold it over the top of the triangles - in the end I had to sew 2 lots together.

It really does pay to take time cutting out the triangles so they are all the same size (it's not only my sewing skills that need to be improved)

Putting your foot down on the sewing machine and closing your eyes can sometimes make a straighter line than if you look.

And a mere 4 hours and (not too much stress) later we have 10 meters of Christmas bunting to decorate with :-)

Luckily for my mediocre sewing skills, bunting is usually not close enough for anyone to see the mistakes

A Flower Necklace

I hope everyone had a lovely Christmas with their friends and family.

Yesterday I wore my orange frock and needed just a little something to joosh it up a bit. So of course out came the crochet hook, some embroidery thread and a button and voila :-)

An Iconic Kiwi Christmas Tree

The Pohutakawas are all out and blossoming around Auckland. 

They seem extra red this year and there are dozens lining the roads

These pics are from one in the front garden

And in crocheting news, a couple of starfish wash-cloths from a retro pattern. 

I'm celebrating my pattern reading prowess :-)

 

Snowmen for Summer

Childhood in the northern hemisphere means that even 25 years after moving south, Christmas still conjures up images of snow scenes.  

I can't share with you the Christmas pressies I'm making for my friends because some of them read this blog and I'd hate to ruin the surprise. So I thought I'd share the amigurumi snowmen I've made for my co-workers.

I'm fairly happy with the result. As usual, no pattern means they are all different, and I was a little miffed when I realised I had to do the sewing bit (I always end up with more holes in my fingers than in whatever I'm sewing!)

I'm pretty impressed with how organised I am this year with Christmas presents. How are you going?

A Long Weekend

Long weekends are worth going to work for.  Love them!

The spectacles case c'est finis (practising my French for the rugby later tonight)

 

Other things on the crochet front: well I woke up this morning thinking about Christmas Presents and then I started to get flustered.  So it's time to write a list and think about what I can make this year, a little worried that I can't top the slippers from last year, I have a couple of ideas, just not sure how to make them :-D

And being inspired by the beautiful flower pictures that T@Poppy Place takes I thought I'd share a picture of the orchids that we bought in Pukekohe the other day (at $3 a stem - a real bargain!)

What ever you're doing for the Rugby World Cup Final tonight, enjoy it.  And yes it would be nice if the All Blacks won :-)

The Christmas Presents

Since everyone I was busy making presents for have now received them I can show off some of what I made :-)

About half of the slippers

 

Crocheted and felted bags

The feedback was good, hopefully they weren't just being polite :-)

Cones & Crepe

To compliment the lights (which really only look good at night) and so it looks fab for Saturday we have begun Operation Christmas Up The Deck.

Back to our childhoods, we have gathered pine cones and spray painted them silver, and have started to make paper chains with crepe paper.  Andrew has the sewing machine running hot whizzing up this and that.  

It will either look fantastic or crape I doubt there can be an in-between!

Crochet hook is still going strong - all the pressies are made, hurray! I tried to make a little summer cardigan (tried being the important word!)I've also tried crocheting flax. I think it's a great idea, I just need to work on it... quite a lot!  And after cleaning out my yarn stash I'm trying a cotton beach/market bag, this one of the 3 projects looks the most promising :-)

Pegs as Angels

I'm loving the Australian Better Homes and Gardens Mag for stuff to do for Christmas!

I've spent the last 3 nights making peg doll angels - awww

As usual I thought I'd make one for the tree and now miraculously there is a whole family of them just waiting for their hair...

 I've also popped a couple of bags in the Felt shop - Yay for having the computer back and working properly :-) 

Felted bag

samX 4 Xmas

Time to think about decorations for the holiday season at the office, and since George has left I took the chance to make samX (Xmas backwards :-) ) 

samX is a red and green dalek with extra sparkles and a bit of glitter to make him stand out from the rest of the yarn daleks.

A Kind of Kiwi Christmas

One of the badges on our blog is for the etsy bloggers team. I’m just a new member and I’ve found that one of the things we do is a blog carnival where we blog about a certain topic. One of the themes at the moment is “The month of December is filled with many traditions from around the world. Share one with us.” So I thought I’d share some stuff that happens for our Kiwi Christmas

Moving to the summer Christmas of New Zealand from the freezing winter Christmas of north of England 25 years ago was quite a culture shock!

For the first couple of years my mam and dad tried to keep up with the English Christmas day tradition of a big roast turkey lunch with all of the trimmings. After finding that sweating through our lunches in the humidity and mid day heat wasn’t the nicest way to spend the day we started to do what most people do. Barbecue. So now we have pancakes, strawberries and bucks fizz for breakfast, and a late lunch sat outside in the shade eating salads, ham steaks and prawns from the bbq .

Also New Zealand tends to close shop, from December 24th to about January 11th a lot of businesses close and heaps of people take their summer holidays, the cities are quiet and the beach towns swell to 3x their usual size. We also have 2 public holidays for Christmas (the 25th and 26th December. The 26th is Boxing Day, which is an English tradition) and 2 for New Year (the 1st and the 2nd January)

So that’s a bit about our Kiwi Christmas. And talking of bbq’s ours is broken beyond repair and after a very successful couple of hours on our stall at my work we now have enough to go and buy a new one this weekend in preparation for the summer ahead - hurray!