Little Miss Five finished her at Pre-School this week…

I love the inflatable Santa suit, which one of the assistants donned for the Christmas Party.’

We’ve had a fabulous Kinder year. The staff there are so dedicated, and involved with the kids. Little Miss Five adores them all.

I wanted to put an extra little something in with their Christmas Cards… so I made some more of these Jean Greenhowe Stockings

This time I omitted the garter band at the top, instead working a few more rows of stocking stitch, and then working some whip stitch embroidery around the top edge – and added their name.

Not entirely delighted with how the names came out…

I would have prefered something a bit more flowing and graceful, rather than chunky and angular… maybe I can work on that for next time!

Meanwhile…

I need to start preparing myself for the fact that my BABY starts at school next year!!!! ARGHHHHHHH…

I volunteered to be a Swap Angel for the Christmas Swap over at Crochet Lovers Victoria. A Swap Angel takes over when one of the participants isn’t able to follow through on the committment of sending their gift. Otherwise, someone who had sent an item, would miss out on receiving one. And that’s not nice!

Anyway, it meant making a few decorations on fairly short notice. So I decided to stick with a ‘tried and trusted’ pattern… something that I had made successfully before, and knew wouldn’t take too long. It kind of defeats the purpose if I don’t get it made until after Christmas!!!

These Christmas Stockings are a Jean Greenhowe pattern. They’re from her Christmas pattern booklet. Jean also has this free online pattern for a slightly smaller version (you’ll just need to scroll down the page a bit to get to it) I’ve raved enough about Jean in the past… so I’ll keep this one short, and just go on the record as saying… SHE IS A LEGEND.

Instead of just making a generic stocking, I wanted to make them personal. Cristina is the founder of the Crochet Lovers Victoria group, so I wanted it to be special. If it were not for her efforts in setting up the group, I wouldn’t have had the opportunity to meet so many wonderful crochet friends in real life.

So, I know that Cristina loves hand-dyed yarns. In fact, she has just set up her own online shop, selling yarn indulgence packs… click here to take a little peek. Anyway, I decided to hand-dye some reclaimed yarn to make her stockings.

The pink coloured one I dyed using some concentrated raspberry cordial, and the green one was made using leftovers from a food dye experiment I did a while back. I used most of it to make this dragon for my nephew, but there was a small ball left in my stash.

So I had the hand-dyed thing going on, but I wanted to add something else. Something special that would jump out and say I MADE THIS JUST FOR YOU.

At one of our recent crochet meets, Cristina brought along some beads and wire so that she could show us some of the basics of jewellery making. I made the most fabulous pair of earrings – I wear them ALL the time – they are divine with a capital D – recycled beads of course – but that’s a post for another day!

But it gave me the idea of incorporating wire and beads into the stockings…

I wired the beads, shaping them into letters… with the initial of each family member, and then sewed them onto the front of the stocking with a small piece of fabric in between. Four stockings in total, green for the boys and pink for the girls. I had been aiming for red when I dyed them, but the yarn turned out suck a pretty shade of pink instead – that I had to use it anway.

Now I know that Cristina isn’t planning on putting up her Christmas Tree this year, but I’m hoping that she can find somewhere else to hang these stockings – to help with the festive spirit.

Now before you all bombard me with comments about the fact that I KNITTED the gifts for a CROCHET swap… it’s a crochet group, but we could use any craft for our decorations. And Cristina is such an avid NON-KNITTER (we don’t even say the K word around her)… that I couldn’t resist sending her something knitted!

Okay… before you start thinking that we must have some weird Christmas traditions here in Australia… let me just say, that the Christmas Bat is not something you would commonly see here. In fact, I’m pretty sure he is a one-of-a-kind!

I made him for my swap partner. She received him yesterday, and got a wonderful surprise.

Usually when I am participating in a swap, I like to make the gift as personal as possible. Do you remember the crochet hook holder which I made for Daphne? Well… she adores (and I mean ADORES) all things peacock… so, it was very easy to choose a theme for that one. Click here if you haven’t seen it before – I’m really proud of the way he turned out.

Unfortunately, I haven’t ever met Wendy, so I was starting with nothing. I decided to do a bit of a rav-stalk (you know… where you check out someone’s profile on Ravelry, in the hopes of finding some useful personal information). I discovered that she is MAD ABOUT BATS… which I already suspected, since her avatar is a bat, and her rav-name is batwing57.

So now all I had to do was combine the bat theme with the Christmas theme… easy enough to do, right???

Into the planning stages… I had visions of Holly Bats hanging on a Christmas Tree – that’s HOLLY bats, not HOLY bats!

Can you imagine little bats, with their green holly leaf wings and red berry bodies?

Nah.. I was having trouble with that one, too! I couldn’t see them coming together, without looking like mutant holly, assembled by a three-year-old child.

So I decided to make a regular bat, and give him a Santa hat for the Holiday Season. The hat is only pinned in place, so that he doesn’t have to wear it all year ’round.

I remembered that bats can be a bit hairy, so I crocheted the body using a strand of dark grey yarn, and a strand of black eyelash yarn worked together. As you can see, he looks pretty boring at this stage…

Then I assembled some embellishments… I cut some wings and ear pieces from a couple of felted jumpers, and added a few buttons for the nose and eyes.

Everything was hand-stitched in place.

By this stage he was looking very much like a bat… but not very festive… so along came the Santa hat.

And here he is, ready for Wendy…

I’ve really enjoyed my time at Crochet Lovers Victoria (CLV). The group was started on Ravelry by Stramenda, so that local crocheters could meet both online AND in real life. It’s always fascinating to see what other crocheters are working on… admire their finished projects… and share books and magazines with one another. The other bonus of meeting regularly with others, is that when you get stuck with a particular pattern… someone can always help to nut it out! Crochet Lovers Victoria is open to everyone, so come on over to Ravelry and check us out.

But for the moment, let’s get back to the Christmas Swap.

I haven’t been able to share everything I’ve been working on lately, because some of them are swap items – and I don’t want to ruin the surprise before they are received in the mail.

But I can show you what came in the mail for me today…

I loved the card… can you read it? Daphne has used all recycled and second-hand materials for this gift AND packaging… everything except the STAMP! How fabulous is that?

And inside, there were five of these beautiful crocheted decorations…

Now I just need to find somewhere splendid to hang them…

There’s a plastic ring from the neck of a milk bottle inside each of these, isn’t Daphne clever???

Mind you, it’s been a crazy six months or so.

All of our decorations are up, but somehow it all feels a bit fake… like a Christmas in July celebration. I feel as though I am going through the motions, but that my heart just isn’t in it.

I guess there’s lots of factors in play. It’s only just over a year since Mum passed away, which has left a huge void in my life. And then a few months ago, my Father-in-Law passed away… so it’s been a time of great emotional upheaval in the Goldfish household. To top it all off, my eldest child now knows the truth about Santa. And I know it sounds weird, but I feel like a part of me is grieving for the loss of the fantasy of Christmas. Or something like that, anyway.

I thought that working on a Christmas project might help me to boost my holiday enthusiasm…

And it did!

How can you look at this little guy and NOT smile???

Mind you… the pattern nearly did my head in. I couldn’t work out what was going on. I was following the instructions exactly as written, but at the end my crochet piece looked like this, and I couldn’t figure out how it would become a snowman:

The pattern is called Crochet Bird Seed Snowman. The theory is that you fill him with sunflower seeds, and then leave him outdoors on Christmas Day… for the birds to feast on. I’ve never heard of anything like this before. It seems such a bizarre concept to me. Is it just that we don’t have that ‘kind of thing’ here in Australia??? Or does it seem unusual to all of you? Is this bird feeder like anything you have seen before?

I wanted a more permanent decoration (plus, I couldn’t stand the idea of putting him outside to get pecked at by the birds) so I have filled him with a regular polyfill stuffing instead.

As you can see, I have added a couple of green leaves. They were a bit ‘flat’ on their own, so the embroidered stitching around the edges helps lift them a little, and because I have use a golden colour… it helps tie the leaves with the bell.

Now all I need is that hook in the ceiling… and to hang it somewhere that I can play with it easily, but the children can’t!

Started out with some red and green felted jumper pieces and some beads. I made a cardboard template for the petals, and cut out eight pieces from the red felt.

Then started sewing them together, alternating beads and petals, until all eight were on.

I also attached a circle of brownish coloured felt to the centre of the flower… oops… bit of a blurry shot, sorry!

Now I need to think about the leaves, and exactly how I want to use the flower on the bell. It has actually turned out a little larger than I had anticipated.

This old Christmas bell once belonged to Mr Goldfish’s grandmother.

I don’t usually put it up, but I think it’s time to put a hook in the ceiling… so that I can hang it up and everyone can enjoy it. It actually plays a tune. You pull on the… um… glitter ball… I’m sure this part of the bell has a name, but I can’t for the life of me think what to call it! Anyway, you pull on the glitter ball, and away the music plays. There’s the odd ‘ting’ missing from the melody, but that just adds to the character, in my opinion!

Before I hang the bell, I would like to add an embellishment. It just needs ’something’. So I’ll spend some time today thinking about that, and see what I can come up with.

Meanwhile… did you see the cherries on our tree??? Mmmmm… delicious!

You might remember I’ve talked about our plans for a hand made Christmas in the Goldfish household. Basically, instead of buying gifts for one another, we will be making them.

Well… over the weekend, Master Six worked on his gift for Little Miss Four. She is very much a girly girl who loves her jewellery, so he was very keen to create a necklace for her.

I was actually quite surprised at his forethought with this project. Twelve months ago he would have strung on a random handful of beads and the job would have been finished in two minutes flat. But he has matured a great deal this year. There was a long involved process of choosing the beads… then laying them out in the order he wanted… then measuring to check the length of the elastic… all very precise and planned. It was beautiful to watch him putting in so much effort, all because he wanted to make something really special for his little sister.

click here to see the original wreath, and the instructions for how to make one

Well – I’d just like to announce that I’M BACK

My home has been treated to a much more suitable wreath… which better reflects the people inside! It’s a little smaller than the last one, but I love it.

I have to say a big thank you to Mrs S… who I know stops by this blog from time to time. Thanks for thinking of me when you sorted through your fabric stash. Those scraps which were useless to you, have created my wreath. I even used the cardboard box (which you sent them in) to cut the base from. I thank you… and my front door thanks you!

The wreath just needed a little something extra… so ‘borrowed’ a bell from our Christmas tree, to complete the look.