No Wings Yet

Last week I showed you the tree-topper angel I have been working on. I didn’t think it was quite done but was looking good. I’ve worked on it a bit since, though it still has no wings.

Tree-topper angel without wings

I added the Jasper snowflake to the front of the skirt, which I think made it look much better. I had been thinking of something different for it, but I had a snowflake that needed a home due to an oopsy on my part.

Jasper snowflake with a problem

Notice the one arm that is different than the others? That is the third arm I made and didn’t notice the mistake until I was done with the last arm. I went ahead and hid the ends and figured I’d hang it on my tree. And then the light came on with a solution to the problem. You can’t even see there is a problem with it once it was attached.

What I didn’t show in the previous post was how I made the head, which is a wine cork.

Tree topper angel cork head

I had the body figured out easily but had been stuck about the head. What is something I had on hand that was the right dimension? I thought of buttons and beads but nothing I had looked right. Then I thought of a wine cork. I cut the back off, the part that fits in the bottleneck, cut a circle of felt, and added a bit of tatting. The tatting is stitched to the felt and the felt is attached to the cork with a thumbtack. That was all great, but I wasn’t sure how to attach that to the angel. My solution is a toothpick. The body is sturdy enough it works.

That looked good from the front, but a little bulky from the side. I did a bit of re-thinking and decided to make the head a bit thinner.

Tree-top angel with modified head

I’m much happier with this. It looks good on the tree.

Our Christmas tree

I did get enough Jasper snowflakes done to give to my family with the Christmas cards this year, but just barely. I keep getting distracted by other things, including trying to come up with wings for the tree-topper. I also made a scissors keeper for my sister. Which I forgot to take a picture of – she had to send me one.

Scissors keeper

I have made several keepers for myself and she liked the idea. This one is made in Lizbeth #122 ‘Caribbean’ in size 10. She embroiders a lot and likes that you can use the scissors without taking them off and without losing them. These scissors have a sheath that covers the points so you don’t get stabbed while wearing them.

We had our last-of-the-season family get-togethers at our house this last weekend. After cleaning up after that I can now relax and enjoy my clean, decorated house for the rest of the holidays. And remember the reason for the season.

Merry Christmas to all!

Joy to the World

Joy to The world! the Lord is come
Let earth receive her King
Let ev’ry heart prepare him room
And heaven and nature sing
And heaven and nature sing
And heaven and nature sing

Joy to the world! the Savior reigns
Let men their songs employ
While fields and floods, rocks, hills and plains
Repeat the sounding joy
Repeat the sounding joy
Repeat the sounding joy

No more let sins and sorrows grow,
Nor thorns infest the ground;
He comes to make His blessings flow
Far as the curse is found,
Far as the curse is found,
Far as, far as, the curse is found.

He rules the world with truth and grace
And makes the nations prove
The glories of His righteousness
And wonders of His love
And wonders of His love
And wonder wonders of His love

Getting Ready for Christmas

I had a plan, one that would have the house ready for guests and get my Christmas tatting done in time for cards and other gifts. I say ‘had’ as I’m not doing a good job of sticking with it.

We are having my side of the family over for Christmas, so some house cleaning is needed and some decorations put up. I’ve been doing a bit of both cleaning and decorating but I keep getting sidetracked, so some things are done, others not so much. But sometimes cleaning one area creates a mess in another area. It would be very helpful if I was better organized. I’ve gotten more of the outside decorations up than the inside. It helps that we’ve been having unseasonably warm weather the last several weeks, which makes it nice to be outside.

I’ve also been working on something for myself, not exactly what I need to be doing right now. Every year at Christmas I think how great it would be to tat an angel for a tree topper, and every year I haven’t done it. This year I’m doing one, but not how I expected to do it.

Tree topper angel

I’ve always envisioned one completely tatted, or maybe white, frilly material edged and decorated with lovely, dainty, white tatted lace. Instead, I’m working on a felt angel with red tatting in size 10 thread. Not exactly dainty or frilly.

I was playing with a piece of white felt the other day while watching TV, not really paying much attention, rolling it up and such. I found it in a cone shape and thought about how it would make a good body for an angel. Then I had to figure how to do the head and arms. I’m still trying to decide how to do the wings, and will probably do more on the skirt. I’m not sure if that will be this year or next. All of the tatting on it is in DMC #816 is size 10. It already looks good on top of the tree.

Felt angel on top of the tree

What I should have been doing instead of working on the angel is working on snowflakes to put in the Christmas cards. I’ve made a few but not enough, and not all of them have the ends sewn in. None of them are stiffened.

Jasper snowflake

This is Jasper, a snowflake that takes less time than the Pinwheel snowflake. I am not sure, but I think I may have seen something like this elsewhere but I don’t know where. I was not looking at anything when I made this except whatever was on TV at the time. I have several finished, most in some shade of red in size 20, one in size 40, and one in size 10 threads. This last one will have to be mine as I didn’t notice a major mistake on one leg until I was on the last leg. It will look good on my tree. But I need more so they can look good in my Christmas cards! I really must get on them before it is too late.

There are less than 15 days until Christmas. Are you ready?

Christmas is coming. Keep calm and Tat on!

Goodies

It’s that time of year when I get really busy, cleaning, baking, and tatting all the things I’ve told myself I would do earlier in the year but didn’t. This year I supposedly have more time to do all this but still find I don’t, I’ve found more things to keep me busy. One thing I have taken more time to do is baking.

Having a gluten intolerance makes baking somewhat challenging. There are flours that say you can use them the same as you would wheat flour, but you don’t always get the same results as you get with wheat flour. This year, with the help of one of my granddaughters, I have already done a lot of baking, and the results have been very good!

Gluten-free Pumpkin pie

This is my first pumpkin pie with a GF flour pie crust. It looks good and it tasted wonderful! And that wasn’t just me saying it, the rest of my family liked it, too.

GF baking

With help from my granddaughter, I made a pudding pie, cut out sugar cookies, and pecan cookies (this is a small sample of the cookies) as well as the pumpkin pie. I took these to a Thanksgiving dinner at my daughter’s house. I had fun baking with my granddaughter, and eating the results!

One of the problems with using GF flours is that it doesn’t have the elasticity(?)of wheat flour, as in, it doesn’t roll out as nicely as wheat flour. I was pleasantly surprised that both the pie crusts and the sugar cookies rolled out nicely, almost like regular flour!

A few days later I tried making cinnamon rolls. This recipe has you make the dough then shape it into a nine by eleven-inch form by pressing it out with your hands, not using a rolling pin. Then you add the butter, cinnamon, and sugar, and (try to) roll it up before cutting it as a normal roll and baking them. No yeast or rising time is needed with this recipe. I couldn’t get the dough to roll up for me, and they came out not looking so pretty.

GF cinnamon rolls

I didn’t think to take a picture until after I sampled them. They just came out of the oven and smelled sooooo good! They tasted good, too. I got all of these recipes off of the Internet, and they all came out well.

One recipe I didn’t get from the Internet is for peppernuts. I used a recipe that my Mom always used but changed the flour to GF. My sister makes several batches every year but she halved it to make it easier. The original recipe called for four pounds of flour, so even a half recipe makes a lot of peppernuts. This is the first time I’ve tried them with GF flour, and I still have several ropes of the dough in the freezer yet to cut and bake. They did come out well.

Peppernuts

When I was a kid, making peppernuts was the start of the Christmas holidays. When Mom made them it meant it was the start of baking goodies, gift shopping, and family get-togethers. When my sister and I were old enough we’d help roll the dough into the ropes and maybe get to cut them. Ours weren’t always the same thickness, so some would be a bit crunchier than others. It was fun for the first several pans, then we’d get tired and come back later as they came out of the oven to sample them. I wish I could do that now – it takes a lot of time to roll them out and cut them up. But at least I can eat some this year!

I did get tatting goodies this week too. I ordered several things from Tatting Corner from her 12 Days of Christmas sale.

Tatting goodies

These are my first Dreamlit shuttles, which I am eager to try. I love the way they come apart to fill the bobbin. I discovered quickly that I didn’t order enough thread when I had the chance. I only ordered a little thread and before they arrived I realized there were several other colors that I needed that I hadn’t ordered! I’ll just have to order again, won’t I?

I’ve got the autumn and Thanksgiving decorations put away now and have started putting out a few things for Christmas. I’ve got a lot of decorations but they are all in different bins and boxes that I only labeled “Christmas”, not actually what is in them. I’ll have to go through them and see if I can decide what I want to put out and what I’ll use another time.

What special things do you do for the Christmas season?

“Baking cookies is comforting, and cookies are the sweetest little bit of comfort food. They are very bite-sized and personal.” Sandra Lee