So Here It Is...

... I can hear someone singing "...Merry Christmas, Everybody's having fun".  Hurtling towards Christmas just over a week away!  David and I have been on holiday, a cruise to sunnier climes and came back yesterday and although things seem to be organised this coming week will be busy.

Anywho, its December

For this month I chose a mini quilt, just 12" square which I made back in 2009 as part of a Perpetual Calendar project, run by Kandy Newton who was moderator of BQL Yahoo group, which I wrote about in this blog post .  I edited the photo to include this festive glitter.

Before I went on holiday there were a couple of events to attend - a carol service for the local Townswomen's Guild that I belong too on the Saturday then on Sunday Quarterjack Quilters had their annual Christmas lunch and a speaker.  The speaker this year was Sally Ablett, who has designed quilts for magazines, Lewis and Irene fabrics and has also demonstrated on Sewing Quarter TV channel.  So she had lots (and I mean lots) of quilts to show.  She doesn't appear to have a website to link to but I did manage to take a few photos

She demonstrated that although some patterns look difficult, by breaking down the patterns made the designs easier to achieve.  As you can see from the photos, the quilts were piling up on the stage and we were welcome to come and look and study them.  There were even a few of her quilts for sale, but I resisted the temptation.  It was a good afternoon.

I will do another post about the cruise in another post soon.  However I did take some knitting with me having learnt from the last cruise two years ago that knitting needles are ok to take on board.  I was working on some Christmas socks for myself and finished one.  Having not accurately recorded the eyelet pattern for the first sock I had to wing it and hoped that I did it correctly for the second.  It worked out ok and I am pleased to say that I now have a pair of socks.

Although the colours look Christmassy to me the yarn is called "Summer" - hmmm... It's King Cole ZigZag sock yarn and these colours really turned out well.

I also took my Little Box of Crochet November box with me too.  This is a Christmas themed Mandala pattern.  Having watched the tutorial videos before I went away I felt confident that I could make this and this is my progress so far...

There's still a few more rows to go but I'm really loving this poinsettia themed mandala and it will be a lovely reminder of my holiday and seeing lots of poinsettia plants around the towns in Madeira and the Canary Islands with their Christmas displays.  The vintage feel of the light turquoise really set off the traditional Christmas green and reds and make them look brighter.

On the subject of the Little Box of Crochet, the October box kit of Tunisian crochet has gone quite well and just before I went away I now have a complete rectangle.  This does curl up so I've had to use pins on my display board to photograph it.  I'm wondering if I block this and other components of the pouch if this may behave a bit better?  Any thoughts on this I'd like to hear please

That's my makes so far this month and I'm not sure this is going to be a productive month, as this week before the festivities is shaping up to be a busy one.