Twelve Days of Christmas: My Day!

I hope you have been following the Twelve Days of Christmas, each day there is a new tutorial or free pattern that you can make, just in time for Christmas. Thank you to Wendy for hosting the hop and all of the ladies who are participating. You can follow along each day by clicking on the banner.

I love to work with wool and I know most of you, love wool as well. I also love doing pieces with inspirational words and I think Joy is one of my favorites. I hope you enjoy my project and make one for yourselves to remember to keep Joy in your hearts, each and every day, this season.

I have given instructions, if anything seems confusing or you have a question, you can email me, anytime. The bells are about 5" long, but you can make them any size by enlarging or reducing the design.

This is  closer photo of the bells, the garland goes across my windows, with more bells and ties.

Have fun with the pattern, instructions are a guideline of how I made mine, but you can change it to suit your likes.

Instructions:

Materials:

Wool

floss

red berries (Beads, buttons or french knot.)

Rusty bell

2” styrofoam ball.

Red and green homespun 1/4” strips

Jute

Clothespins

Bells:

Cut out 3 bells, 3 bell backs, letters, candle, 2 leaves. Sew on the appliques with a blanket stitch.

Attach berries

Sew back and front with a blanket stitch, starting at the bottom and when you come around to the end, attach the bell with the same thread.

Balls:

Cut strips from the green homespun and wrap them around the styrofoam ball, until it is covered. Take a red piece and wrap it around the ball, twist around at the bottom and come around the opposite side, tie into a tight bow, leaving a few inches of the tail, to hang from the clothespin. 

You can buy pre-stained clothespins or soak them in walnut ink to age them. You can also have fun and paint them in christmas colors.

To make the garland, take a piece of homespun and a piece of jute and twist them together. Add  red ties if you like to fill in the spaces, and you can add larger rusty bells, as well. The length depends on how much you add to your garland and the size of your window, or area that you hang from.

Pattern Pieces:

Another fun thing to do for Christmas is baking treats that everyone will love. I have made these for years, they are great for parties and your guests who come to visit. They melt in your mouth and I haven't met anyone who didn't love them.

I hope you enjoyed visiting today and don't forget to follow along each day.

Friday Fun!

I hope everyone had a wonderful Thanksgiving. We kept dinner simple and just enjoyed the day, food and family, no expectations or stress.

Today we had Nicholas, so we decided to take him to The Fantastic Umbrella Factory. It is a group of stores and artisans in a farm like setting. It is a bit like a throw back to the 70's and in the warmer months they have folk musicians playing in the gardens.

Today was beautiful, perfect for walking and browsing the stores and no crowds. They have pathways and a fountain that we stopped to get a photo of Nick. I was unaware of the surroundings, and just took a photo, then noticed what I had missed.

Can you see what put that goofy grin on Nick's face?

We went to the animals first, they have ostriches and a goat, as well as chickens and various birds, running around the grounds. We took him to the bamboo forest, he was a bit apprehensive and then amazed at all the bamboo and how high it went up.

While we walked, we picked up a few buddies who followed us around. We also shopped small and bought Nick a wool hat and some gloves.

After that we went to Ninigret park and walked Nick in the stroller and then let him out to play on the beach. Throwing rocks is still his favorite sport.

Nick needed to eat and there weren't any kid friendly places in the area, so we got him a fresh sandwich and enjoyed eating at Charlestown Beach. The perfect way to end the day and just enjoy the beautiful day.

Four more days and the Christmas Hop begins. My day will be friday. I hope everyone enjoys the rest of the weekend.

Friday Finish!

Well, I would call it another un-finish, but I got the stitchery done, so all I need to do if make it into a mini quilt. I thought it was a fun designs and a fun idea for gifting to quilting friends. I am not sure if the design is free, but the person offers the design on their site, so I assumed it was free?  Now I am not so sure, since some have other designer's names on them, this has her name only. There is so much  on flickr sites and I know a lot of it is scanned from books, so hard to tell what is free anymore.

It seems the months are flying by and before we know it, it will be December and time for The 12 Days of Christmas Blog Hop. I will be doing a post on day 4 and today I have my pieces all cut out and ready to do this weekend. Don't forget to mark your calendars, patterns and recipes for the holidays!

I hope everyone has a wonderful weekend. I will be stitching and keeping Nick occupied, and on Sunday there will be a special memorial mass at church and our son will do the honor of carrying his sister's candle, to be lit.

Friday Finish!

I have been having fun following the spring blog hop, hosted by Buttermilk Basin. This week I finished  a cute bunny mat, designed by Jeni from the Willows. It was an easy project and I love how it came out. The only problem is, I used a soft, thin wool for the border and that was a mistake. The cuts are made to emulate grass and as I ruffled it up, some of the pieces pulled off. So, I put the egg on that section and it is ok for now, next year I can take it apart and put a thicker backing on.

It is a bit white washed from the flash. But I wanted the colors of the other wools to show so the white is glaring and the floss is brighter, than it actually is.

If you haven't seen the Spring Hop, the patterns for each day are still available and well worth a look.

This week I noticed my oven was not working right and I would smell gas, then it took a few minutes for it to start. Then I told Bill to check it and it wasn't working at all, so, no oven this week. We went to the store and picked one out, it would take a month to get so I said no. Then I saw another that was the same except for the looks, but it did the same things and had the fifth burner, so that is coming next week. The bad thing is, I make cookies as a snack food. They are healthy since I don't use sugar but I cannot make them and I need to snack, lol. Today I tried some fried chips. I mixed white and brown flour, along with cornmeal and fried them. They taste really good but a bit greasy, so I need to modify the recipe to make it healthier, but a nice idea for summer snacks too.