Season's Greetings

Merry Christmas/Happy Hanukah (ooops - think I am a few days late for that one)/etc

- whatever it is you celebrate at this time of year ... 'tis the season to be jolly ... I guess most of us go to parties/etc have Christmas/end of year celebrations and then when we finish work for the year/get a few days off a heap of us vanish and visit relatives/etc ...

Anyway ... my Christmas present to anyone actually reading this blog is ...

... I am actually posting something to it before I go away on holidays!

do you like my pretty wrapping? :

Actually that was my "Secret Santa" gift for the Canberra Quilters meeting - those of us who wanted to join in the swap had to make a needlebook and wrap it up and put it in the basket on the way in - then later on during the meeting those of us who put one in got to take another one out ... I got a cute black and white striped one with sheep on the fabric that was used for the inside.

The wrapping was actually a rather clever result of my last minute "OMG I wonder what I am going to wrap this thing up in seeing I am still sewing it at the last minute?!" and having some red crepe paper in my desk at work, and "borrowing" a bit of string from the cupboard ... and then noticing that the weedy plant that is taking over the garden outside the staff room does sort of look a bit "Christmassy" ...

- yes - the idea was to finish it in my lunch break at work because I was going straight from work to a Greening Australia seed propogating working bee thingy, then from there to the meeting! ... and of course my lunch break was just a little bit too short, so I finished the last few stitches in the spare half an hour I had between when I finished work and when the seed planting thingy started, then took some photos (on a bit of white paper in a plastic sleeve - think it was my printout of that week's TAST stitch actually!) and then wrapped it up in the bits i had gathered from work and taken with me ... then ended up being 10 minutes late for the working bee thingy because it was a bit more than the 5 minute walk I thought it was down to the back end of the Botanic Gardens where we were doing it ... it was probably a couple of Kilometers - in other words - "a 6 pack and a cut lunch"

And this is the needlebook I made and wrapped up:

yes - that IS an ant at the top of the photo! ... it came to visit ... that happens when you take photos on a sheet of paper/etc on the ground in a grassy area where you have parked your car ... LOL

That was the outside, this is the inside:

the "pages" (where you stick your needles) are red felt (acrylic "felt" actually - the stuff they sell in slightly bigger than A4 sheets in craft/etc shops)

These are the 2 sides of the needlebook when it is closed:

And, because I felt like it ... here is a spider:

It was hanging around in my teenage Daughter's room a week or 3 ago - so she named (him?)"Oscar"! (yes she is as mad as I am and actually likes them ... they are rather cute ;-)

A week ago it turned up on the ceiling in here - so I took this photo.

A few days ago it was hanging around in the doorway next to my sewing room ... I hope it doesn't get squashed in the door ...

btw, it seems the thingy where I type my posts into blogger still has a mind of it's own ... so if the spacing between text/photos/etc is out of whack - it wasn't me being too lazy to try and make them look nice while I typed it - it was me being too lazy to spend half an hour of more digging around in html code to fix what shows up in the preveiw as a missing space above the last photo ... lol

oh ... and it doesn't seem to want to let me put a space between the text about the spider and this "btw ... " bit either ...