O Christmas Tree, O Christmas Tree ...

There's not a lot that eats up your spare time as much as Christmas does - writing cards, shopping for presents, attending the works do (or babysitting instead in my case), racking your brains for ideas for presents for other people to buy you, going to Christmas parties and so on and so forth.  And while you are doing all these things and worrying about last posting dates, you aren't stitching, or at least I'm not.

However I do have a couple of photos to show you.  One finish finish and one WIP.

 It was Patchwork Group on Thursday night and we exchanged our Secret Santa presents, which must not cost more than £3.  My partner was C, who loves Christmas and everything Christmassy.  So I bought her a Christmas needle minder and stitched together this little bag to hold it.  The little tree is a Mouseloft kit that I stitched in the autumn of 2011, but never made into anything.  The red felt was left over from the Christmas ornaments that I made for my nieces in 2010 and the gold cord was bought for Penguin ABC Christmas gift tags that I stitched in 2009.  So it was really a case of using up ends of stash to create something pretty and useful.  C liked the bag and the needle minder very much.

I received a patchwork needle book done in Cathedral Window pattern and a extendable magnetic stick with an LED light in the end for spotting and retrieving dropped needles.  Very useful and much appreciated.

The only other stitching that I have managed to do was on April.  I have made good progress on the left hand gate post, and hope to be able to crack on with this piece during this next week before the festive season reaches its peak.

In other news, due to Christmas festivities, I have put 2.5lb back on last week so am now back to 11 stone, 10 lb.  However, what goes on will come back off, so I am not particularly concerned about this.

As it is getting late and I didn't get any sleep last night for some reason, I am going to call it a day and hope to have more to show you next time.  With best wishes for whichever festive season you might be celebrating, and may the frog keep away from your stitching.