24 December 2012

Good Yule, Merry Christmas and Happy Festivus!

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When I was young I thought we were poor because, while my friends' Christmas tree had a variety of toy-like ornaments, ours was decorated (tastefully, hindsight tells me) with red and silver glass balls. Now I have the tree of my childhood dreams and I love it.

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I've been quite busy sewing and crafting, with some success, but it is a little too soon to reveal much of it.

After an 8-month lapse I got back to work on my two-at-a-time toe-up magic-loop socks for DH and actually rounded the (short-row) heel on one of them. But after muscling through a bunch of mistakes I decided it was smarter to unravel back to a pre-heel row and try a second draft. Unraveling socks is harder than it looks--OK, unraveling is easy, but bringing the unraveling to an end short of the cast-on row is hard.

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I'm also working on a dress for my absurdly tiny but beautiful DD, of an italian double knit (so says the FabricMart label) from McCall's 6031, which seems no longer to be available. She's humoring me but that's OK. I need more practice just following patterns. This pattern is somewhat annoying, however. It includes cheery cartoons of the designers offering very basic sewing hints but fails to illustrate or explain somewhat confusing construction details. Here is a not-very-illuminating shot of it waiting for DD to try it on.

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Enjoy your holidays!

4 comments:

  1. Glad you r back! Had been wondering what you were doing.cool tree,dress and socks!

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  2. Sometimes blogging takes up so much time, it's either that or get some sewing done. Looks like you made a good choice.
    As a child, I was often in awe and envy of my friends' stylish Christmas trees, like the silver ones with all-green ornaments and such, while ours was always the homey type with the multitude of mismatched heirloom ornaments. Now, of course, I realize the beauty and value of mismatched heirloom ornaments!!!
    Hope you have a great Christmas and wonderful New Year!

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  3. Merry Christmas to you. I think your tree is wonderful. Christmas trees should be meaningful to the family, not a decorating statement! Good luck with your DD's dress. Have a wonderful New Year!

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  4. Our tree was a mix of things we made, pretty simple balls and my favourite were the more ornate glass ornaments that belonged to my dad's parents. One year, my mom was sure that between the 3 of us and probably 3-6 daycare and friends that would also be in the house at any given time, the (fake) tree was going to be knocked over by someone. She didn't want to lose the pretty memories of my dad's family so none of the breakable ornaments went up and we baked sugar cookies as ornaments. She was not afraid of vacuuming apparently. It was kind of crazy, but it's a good memory for me now.

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