2nd Day of Christmas

Magi from the east came to Jerusalem. "We saw his star in the east and have come to worship him."



Opening presents is a lot of fun. The headwear has been de rigueur since our daughters were little. C didn't participate this year, because she has a new haircut. She looks so grown up!

Christmas Day!

Christ is Born, God with us.

Advent, Day 24

When the angels had left them and gone into heaven, the shepherds said to one another, "Let's go to Bethlehem and see this thing that has happened, which the Lord has told us about."

Advent, Day 23

Here are a couple more angels. These are also MarBek angels; I used to wait for them to be published every year. They kept getting bigger and more ornate, with more specialty fibers, and I kept getting less and less time to work on them. I have files full of angel patterns that I have not stitched.







Since I bragged about Flickr yesterday, I guess it is only fair to say I just about had to show you my unenhanced pictures today. The editing software didn't want to work at first; I have to tell you, it was ugly!

This is my latest Temari, and I lost sleep over this one. It is a c8 division, which is then divided into 2 overlapping tetrahedrons (there are 2 sets of 4 triangles making a solid shape). I figured it out from a picture, but only after marking it once, beginning to stitch, and then pulling all the stitching off the mari. I think I was on the right track, but the first triangles I stitched were uneven. I was trying to use some DMC d'or thread, and it shredded, so this ball is marked with an inconspicuous pink #8 perle cotton. The finishing stitches are done with DMC #5. I am going to look at this one for a while yet; I think it may still need some bling. I might try to outline the inner and outer edges of each triangle with some metallic.



Jake (the dog) got a hold of it when I was out of the room; my family realized what a disaster that would be and rescued it. Thanks to their quick thinking there were only a couple of threads that needed to be adjusted. Thank you!

Advent, Day 22

More angels! These are the angels from my tree skirt.



This is the Tapestry angel.



This one and the next are by MarBek.





I always planned to fill the 55 inch diameter circle with angels, but these are the only four patterns on there so far (and I haven't added any for at least 10 years).

My friend from Moonsilk Stitches gave me a felted ball to try Temari on. It was very nice and soft, but I was afraid it was too soft to stitch on, so I wet felted it. It felted up very quickly, and got firm after only 5 minutes (or so) of hot water, soap, and agitation; of course then you have to wait for it to dry. I was still afraid of distorting it too much with stitching so I picked a very simple pattern, almost just a c8 marking with DMC #5 perle cotton; what really dressed it up were the additional stitches to secure the bands. It was lovely to stitch on; the needle went through the felt as smooth as silk.



I just wanted to mention how much I love using flickr for my picture account. The pictures I post here do not look anything like the pictures that come out of my camera. They have all been cropped and have had the exposure adjusted; some of them have been straightened, and there are all kinds of fun effects that I've just barely glanced at. I used flickr for free for several years, but now that I've been using it for this blog I upgraded to a "pro" account. There's a lot of fun stuff there to play with too!