1st day of the twelve days of Christmas

We are being twelve-dayed. Each night someone rings our bell and leaves a gift. This is the first day's gift. I will try to post them all as I get them; that way if someone else wants to do this they can.

Today's gift: a note, a basket, and two pears tied with real cute, polka-dot ribbon.

The paper reads as follows:

'Twas the first day of Christmas and all through your house,
Not a creature was stirring, not even a mouse
'Cept suddenly one little soul did appear,
It's your Christmas friends bringing you holiday cheer.

Tonight calls for a partridge for your pear tree,
But partridges are tough to catch, you see.
Now, how ' bout a yummy pear, instead of the bird.
Indeed it tastes good, or so we have heard.

Tonight's the first night, this sign you have been given,
One ring of your doorbell, not six and not seven,
From every night hence you will hear the bell ring
To signal the arrival of a Christmas thing.

Now beware of this warning - your friends will be here,
But you better not look, or they'll disappear,
And then all your gifts that were carefully planned
On some other front porch will surprisingly land.

Corn Starch Dough Ornaments

When I was a little girl my Vova made these one year with all of us (the grand kids). We got to make our own ornaments any way we wanted to. She made very specific ones with hearts to represent each person in the family. Hers looked like little mobiles that hung from her Swedish tree. Over the years they have all become broken which makes sense since there were nine of us children living in that house at the time, and it has been over 30 years since we made them together. But the memory has long out lasted the ornament themselves. So I thought others might like to make some memories with their children or grandchildren this time of year.

Supplies:

• 1 cup corn starch
• 2 cups baking soda
• 1 1/2 cups water

Optional supplies:

• toothpick to poke a hole in ornament
• food coloring
• paint
• cookie cutters ( to cut out if not doing free form)
• wax paper or foil to lay on work surface for children
• cookie sheet to lay them on to dry
• oven not needed but quicker than air drying
  

How to:

1. In a large saucepan, mix corn starch and baking soda. Add water and stir until smooth.
   
2. Cover and cook over medium heat, stirring occasionally, until mixture is the consistency of slightly dry mashed potatoes.
   
3. Remove from heat and cover with a damp cloth.
   
4. When cool enough to handle, coat hands and surface lightly with corn starch and knead until dough is smooth and pliable.
5. Roll out to 1/4 inch thickness and cut with holiday cookie cutters. You can also just form them in your hands for free form shapes (that is what we did as children). You can add food coloring at this time; we left ours white in my youth which I will did today, as well.
   
6. To dry, place on a baking sheet in a 250 degree oven for 20-30 minutes or until hard, or set them on a cookies sheet or wax paper and place in a nice dry place to cool over many days (that is what we did years ago). We placed them on top of the refrigerator 'till dry either way works, one is just quicker than the other.
7. If using oven method, allow to cool and brush loose powder off ornaments before painting. Makes about 16-20 medium size ornaments; if using mini cookie cutters like we did, we got over 70 ornaments.

This is a much smoother dough than salt dough and it is a brighter white, too; it also has a sheen sort of like snow. Hard to explain other than snow sort of has little sparkling spots that reflect light and so does this clay which makes it real nice for snowmen and such because the white is nice and bright.

Thread Play

On my morning and afternoon commutes the last little bit I haven't been crocheting lace edgings. I have been crocheting, and it is with size 10 thread, but I have been playing around with tons of one color and seeing where that gets me. I think this may be an afghan or something of that sort; as for how big, I have no clue. I think 10 rows of one tonal set then a black row is in order, then I will go on to other color sets once I have used up all my yellow. I like the fact that this sort of looks like yoyos. All the thread I am using to make this is vintage, antique and/or discontinued threads except for the black boarder; that was a clearanced thread at a store I frequent, but I do not know if it is dicontinued in anywhere other than that store.

Yes, I am working on more stash-buster things like the cathedral windows. Which, if all goes as planned, I can get photos of this afternoon to post the second and last half of the tutorial, but that doesn't seem to be the way my day is going at the moment.

I don't know about anyone else, but I am having the hardest time getting into the Christmas spirit this year. Usually I have been making gifts since June to give to friends and family, but because I work days now, it just didn't happen, and I just am not in the mood for it this year. My children's letters are very sweet and helped a little, and I have been trying to help the kids make their gifts for each other (got half way through one). I feel like a bah, hum bug this year which isn't normal for me. Usually I would have posted at least a half dozen things for Christmas, and so far I have only posted caramels.

Free Antique pattern library on Internet

Here is the link to a page full of lovely old old patterns in crochet, tatting, and knitting and other things as well. There are thousands of patterns available through this link.