This year I noticed that several of the female characters on my children’s book and movie characters tree were redheads (even Madeline seems to be a redhead now). I also realized that the most important redhead was missing and I decided I needed an Anne of Green Gables ornament. I looked to see if there were any available online but then decided to make my own and ordered a package of clothespins instead. None of the ornaments and images of Anne online seemed quite right. Frankly the calico dresses with pinafores said Little House on the Prairie not Anne of Green Gables to me. I thought it was only right to give my Anne ornament the puffed sleeve dress that Matthew had Mrs. Lynde make as a Christmas present for Anne.
Anne took the dress and looked at it in reverent silence. Oh, how pretty it was – a lovely soft brown gloria with all the gloss of silk; a skirt with dainty frills and shirrings; a waist elaborately pin-tucked in the most fashionable way, with a little ruffle of filmy lace at the neck. But the sleeves – they were the crowning glory! Long elbow cuffs and above them two beautiful puffs divided by rows of shirring and bows of brown silk ribbon.
Quite an elaborate dress to recreate for a clothespin doll but I think I got a lot of the elements using brown grosgrain ribbon, some vintage brown seam binding, and a piece of lace I cut from a slip I never wear.
I decided my Anne needed the slippers Diana’s Aunt Josephine gave her that Christmas too.
Anne opened the box and peeped in. First a card with “For the Anne-girl and Merry Christmas” written on it; and then a pair of the daintiest little kid slippers, with beaded toes and satin bows and glistening buckles.
Again quite a lot of embellishments! I used ribbon to make the shoes and some straight pieces from a vintage hook and eye card to make the buckles which I threaded with ribbon to tie bows at the back. I looked up early 20th century “beaded toe slippers” and after trying a few searches found some images of fancy shoes with beaded flowers on the toes. So I made two white beaded flowers with a silver bead in the center. Then with her “carrot red” embroidery thread braids, Anne was ready to join Madeline, Pippi, and Anna on the tree.
That brunette peeking up is Dorothy from one of many illustrated versions of The Wizard of Oz. I also have the movie version of Dorothy otherwise I’d be tempted to make a Dorothy ornament with one of the 99 clothespins I have left!
I made my Chicago grandniblings some felted Christmas gifts but forgot to take pictures of them. My niece sent this picture the next day captioned “The elves are actually construction workers”.
When I told her I’d forgotten to take pictures of the elves or the tree I had actually made to go with the felted playmat I’d made him last year she sent another picture which shows another angle of the elves and the tree
So far I haven’t gotten any photos of the balls and cones I made for the twins. At the online Loose Parts summit I watched this year each segment began with an image of a bowl of felted balls and knowing how loved the felt balls I made last year were, I thought I’d make some felted balls for this year’s gift. Then I wondered if I should make another felted food gift instead to go with the pizza I gave them for their birthdays. Then I thought Aha – I could make some cones and the balls could be ice cream too. I wetfelted eight balls and then made 4 cones out of tan commercial felt. I sewed a waffle pattern on the felt before cutting, stiffening, and glueing the cones. I knew the gift was perfect when my daughter asked her cousin for gift ideas and my niece said, “Balls, all they like is balls.”
We’ve incorporated some of this year’s Christmas gifts into our gallery wall.
I found a wonderful skull painting to gift my husband when I went to the National Museum of Mexican Art to see the Day of the Dead Exhibition. It is unsigned but does have a Hecho in Mexico sticker. It fit perfectly above the masked doll in a space that was a bit too big for what had been there – a face or mask my husband had given me a few years ago. We moved that down to a space between the two gourd masks.
I also found another tin can vehicle for his stocking which meant a relocation of the smaller vehicle from a few years ago.
And I found a raffia giraffe in my stocking which was begging to hang out with the bicycle riding zebra.
The Elvis ornament picked out by my New York niece’s husband didn’t want to be on the gallery wall. He belonged on the side of the large CD shelves.
After we put away the winter decorations we can find homes for a few more Christmas gifts.
Deer have always been one of my favorite Christmas images so when my daughter found a red plaid deer at Target reminiscent of the Pottery Barn deer we got many years ago, she knew we each had to have one.
A lot of the deer got moved around this year to make some room for what has clearly become a new collection – wooden trees. I bought the flat trees on the left which are from India, several years ago from, I think, a TJ Maxx or Marshalls. I bought the tiered natural cone one on the right in the back from Marianos two years ago. Last year I bought the light wooden tree on the right at Target and this year I bought the similar one on the left from the Swedish Museum gift shop. This year I also bought the dark brown one on the right, which is also from India, at a TJ Maxx. The wooden houses from Hearth and Hand at Target have been sitting on the sideboard since I got them for Christmas the first year we moved to Chicago but this winter they moved over to be with the trees and will get put away with them when we put away the winter decorations at the end of January (which will help to make some room for new Christmas gifts on the sideboard)
I was fascinated by some mollinilla whisks when I saw them for the first time on a chocolate booth at a Farmer’s Market this summer. When I saw them again in the book “Loose Parts 4” as a suggestion for an authentic classroom item, I researched them and thought about buying one but didn’t. Then when I saw them at a Mexican import pop up downtown I was tempted again but when I saw they also had a toy version, I knew that that was what I really needed. It came with some other wooden kitchen pieces and since they had a hole in the top I was able to add screw eyes and some ribbon I found in a donated bag at the museum (which was too small to be useful for museum projects) to two of them – the first wooden utensils for my kitchen ornament collection.
My Birmingham niece who coincidentally gave my daughter a mollinillo whisk this year gave me an addition to my nativity collection from FeveCollector. The accompanying information states: “This mini hand-painted nativity imported from France is a merging of two French traditions – miniaturized nativities and feves.” Feves, it goes on to explain, are tiny figurines that are made to put in a King’s Cake for Epiphany or Three King’s Day (January 6). Originally actual beans (feve is French for bean) were put in the cakes and whoever found the bean was declared King for the day. In the 1800’s the beans were replaced with small porcelain figures which started a collecting craze which continues and feves are now made of porcelain, plastic, and metal and come in all kinds of designs “everything from Harry Potter and Disney to high fashion shoes and purses”. I love the tiny nativity and immediately found a place for it on top of the china cabinet fittingly in front of the African gourd nativity we bought at the Birmingham museum one of the times we went to Birmingham to celebrate Christmas at my niece’s.
So I think its official, here in Chicago I make large decorations for the dining/living room windows. This year I made the paper bag snowflakes that I started seeing on Instagram last year. I ordered white bags and found that 8 bags per snowflake was just right. Some people suggest 12 but I think that many would have a tendency to bunch even more at the bottom. And I can’t imagine how they cut through 12 bags at once. I found cutting through 8 difficult enough and made templates so I could cut each one separately and then glue them together.
I don’t really have a kitchen window anymore but I put a garland above the sink and imagine I do. I decorated the garland with snowflakes that were featured in the Sweet Paul magazine last winter. The directions were kind of minimal but I decided to use card stock and figured out how to stitch, with the embroidery thread and baker’s twine, so that they were neat on the back as well as the front. It was fun to come up with so many variations of the designs shown in the magazine.
The snowflakes like the rest of my decorations (except the tree which makes a much shorter appearance) were installed at the beginning of December and will stay up until the end of January.
I got this sign at a Marshalls this year and it seems prophetic since this was a very Gnome Noel. The first new gnome to make an appearance was one we bought on vacation in Sister Bay, Wisconsin this year at a Swedish store next to the Swedish restaurant with goats on the roof! It’s the gray one on the top shelf all the way on the right.
And then we bought the one third from the right at the Swedish museum gift shop here in Andersonville when we went to the Julmarknad at the museum. I bet that means Christmas Market – there were tables with homemade crafts and I bought two gnomes for the tree from one woman.
Then on Christmas I got two more gnomes – the gnome with a heart on his hat that my daughter bought at a Christmas store on the Wisconsin vacation.
And from my Birmingham niece this cute tree gnome she knitted.
There are lots of other gnomes to keep them company here!
I never know what to call that piece of property between the sidewalk and the street. A Google search yields boulevard, berm, median, hellstrip, parkway, verge, swale, and tree belt among others including grassy strip which is what I think I usually default to. They are often controversial since they are usually owned by the municipality but it is the homeowner’s responsibility to maintain them. Some homeowners obviously feel they have a wide latitude – here are a few examples in my neighborhood from a walk I took this Fall.
This memorial bench seems to be a particularily ballsy choice. It comes with instructions.
I first heard of October prompts from Children’s Museum Liz who was participating in an Inktober type drawing challenge. I was intrigued and did some reading about the origin of Inktober the ensuing controversy and the development of other lists. And then I realized there were also Instagram Stitchtober lists and embroidery artists who made 31 different pieces which seemed impossible. It turned out others also had challenges that resulted in one hoop with very small images like pumpkins and ghosts. So I thought maybe I could do that but that I preferred the more openended prompts and when Adam Pritchett created a list of only 13 prompts this year I knew I was in!
When I read through it I immediately thought of Rapunzel and while I realized Rapunzel didn’t work for every prompt I thought other fairy tales would. I realized as I was making a list that I could illustrate six fairy tales so I divided my hoop into six wedges. My list:
Influence – The rampion or rapunzel from Rapunzel
Cursed – The spinning wheel from Sleeping Beauty
Astray- Little Red Riding Hood
Overgrown – Sleeping Beauty again – her castle
Concealed- Rapunzel again – her tower
Lore – Fairy Tales of course. I decided to make a book of Fairy Tales to put in the middle of the hoop
Influence – The Edible Cottage from Hansel and Gretel
Creeping- Handel and Gretel again – the witch
Sorcery- The Evil Queen’s mirror from Snow White
Foresight – The clock from Cinderella
Brewing – Snow White again – the poisoned apple
Crowned – Cinderella again – the glass slipper that ensured she would eventually be crowned
A Dark Power – originally this was just going to be the wolf from Little Red Riding Hood but then I added the Evil Queen to her mirror and some birds (more on those later)
I started by looking for images and adapting them and I transferred some to my fabric with the iron on transfer paper and started stitching and making a lot of changes and additions as I stitched. I wanted to present each day separately and have a final reveal at the end so I came up with the idea of temporary felt frames and since I didn’t like them taking up the whole Instagram post I used PicCollage to combine them with the prompt list. I added a quote from the relevant fairy tale
Adam was a great host. He welcomed me on the first day, liked several of my posts and featured some in his stories.
This was only my third embroidery piece and it was challenging. I pricked my finger more than once and got blood on the fabric which is one of the reasons for the birds. When I was researching Hansel and Gretel for the Influence prompt I found they were influenced even before they found the cottage by a bird who led them there. I considered adding a bird to the roof but didn’t which was lucky because their bird was perfect for covering a blood stain. And I added the birds from the Grimm’s version of Cinderella both to cover a spot and fill in the space which seemed a little empty. I added some other details for the final reveal- extending Rapunzel’s hair and the briars on Sleeping Beauty’s castle and adding some flowers to the Hansel and Gretel panel.
I’m pretty pleased with it although if I do this challenge again next year I think I’ll do it in crossstitch!
It has been a busy Fall so far. In October I started volunteering at the Chicago Children’s Museum again and I also participated in an Instagram #stitchtober challenge so decorating and blogging about it took a back seat. In September I put the leaf pillow I made from a panel Catherine had made on the bench and I filled the vase from Jen that usually sits on the yellow bookcase with an arrangement of feathers. I added the mushroom carving we bought this year at the Lakeview Art Fair.
At the beginning of October I decorated the Halloween trees and put them in the dining room windows as I have been doing and I arranged the Fall and Halloween things on the shelves much as I did last year. I got a real wooden pumpkin at Home Goods so I donated my fake one and some of my other pumpkins.
I had been purchasing small items all year for Day of the Dead offrenda ornaments. I supplemented the purchased items with downloaded images including a stack of John Irving books for Julie, a stack of Sherlock Holmes books for Mummy, a Julia Child cookbook for Catherine, and some Frank Sinatra records for Daddy. Then I assembled a Day of the Dead wreath and hung it between the dining room and living room windows.
For my Halloween treats I used two images I downloaded from Ella Claire Inspired and paired them with bloody bones I found at Target. I wrote B-B-B-Bad on the back. When I gave them to people they usually exclaimed “To the Bone!”
In the beginning of November while most of the Instagram influencers were putting up their Christmas decorations, we hung our Fall branches using the ones we purchased last year again.
No need to hurry Winter!
This official Little Free Library in Ephraim reminded me of an English phone booth. And I found an embroidery themed mystery in it!
This rustic one was at a park at the top of Door County. The book that is standing up was titled “Who Needs Mistletoe?” and since I like Christmas romances I picked it up but it looked more pornographic than romantic so I left it there.
My daughter saw this one in Egg Harbor and snapped a picture for me because she liked that it had a regular sized door knob and plate.
Collections and Other Stuff I Like 