Photos of our Christmas - part II

It turns out that today was all about the games.  I listened to Chopin and sewed all morning with the promise that I would then play games with the children all afternoon.

In between ironing seams, I taught O how to play Patience.  She is the sort of child (as I was) who could quite happily sit and play Patience quietly by herself for hours - even days - on end.  It is a game that makes me think of my Grandpa, who loved it too and who taught it to me when I was about O's age. 

Then when I had finished sewing we all embarked on a raucous game of Settlers of Catan.  This is possibly my favourite board game of all time and over the years I have bought it for pretty much everyone I know, I am so in love with it.  I bought it from this fantastic games shop  which has been a great source of inspiration over the years, but I see you can also now buy it from Amazon.  You need three or more players, but it is very straightforward for anyone about seven or older, so a perfect family game.

This is Cam battling very hard, right before I beat him with one move to spare!

And then when I went off to make well earned cups of tea for everyone, the children got out Pass the Pigs.

I find it very disconcerting that my children love this game so much, becuase I first learnt to play it at university, where it was the ultimate drinking game.  Different piggy combinations resulted in different swigs of drinks being knocked back.  Am I sharing too much?  The children just think the pigs are cute and like the idea of throwing them about and filling in the scorepad.

Other favourite games around here at the moment are:

• Scrabble - C was given it for his birthday, and he and O love it as much as I love Settlers of Catan.
• Carcassonne - O's favourite and another great discovery from Green Knight Games.
• Magic The Gathering - G and I have loved this for years.  We taught C when he was about seven, and I really need to teach O as well now.  It is a staple of camping trips and long train journeys, as it is so transportable.
• Uno and Happy Families - these were hot favourites while we were in France over the summer, but I am sure they will be putting in an appearance over Christmas as well.

What are your favourite board and card games?  Do you love playing games over the holidays, or do they fill you with festive dread?

Photos of our Christmas - part I

To mark the darkest day of the year, I cut some evergreens when I went outside to feed the chickens this morning.

Now we have ivy on the mantelpiece.

And vividly scented, vividly coloured stems from the mock-orange bush (Philadelphus) on the table.

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From now until Christmas Eve I will be sharing, each day, a few photos of what Christmas is like in our house.  Cake and board games may feature quite heavily.

Busy-ness

So sad not to be eating up his Granny's mince pies, but more than ever in need of one to lift his spirits, he decided to make his own.

He made 24, but needed to make sure they were of a standard worthy of his Granny, so he subjected one to Quality Control.  Chef's privelege.

O busied herself with Hama beads.

And I wrapped presents and then ventured out in the snow to put more straw in the eglu.  Although I've had them so many years, I still can't quite believe that the chickens will be okay in these icy temperatures.  But they are absolutely fine. Beatrice is even still laying me an egg most days.

And I stopped to admire the ivy hedge, weighed down with snow, glittering in the sunshine.

Snowed in

We're ending the weekend in the wrong house.  We should be with my family in Oxford, but the snow has kept us in East London, and here we are staying.  We hope to be able to try again next week, after Christmas, but we are all bitterly disappointed.  C's eyes welled up when he heard that my mother had been baking mince pies especially for him, and O is desperately sad to be missing her cousin's 7th birthday party.

But these things happen.  We are all safe and warm and there is an undeniable romance to being snow-bound.  Particularly in London where snow is more usually grey and slushy than thick, white and crunchy.

We have been consoling ourselves in some very good ways.

• We made a batch of snow toffee.  O remembered it from reading Little House in the Big Woods, and I remembered that Jane Brocket wrote more detailed instructions in Cherry Cake and Ginger Beer.  It was a roaring success, and we learnt that enamel pie tins were the best dishes to make it in, and that it works really well with golden syrup, as well as with maple syrup.

• I soothed myself by cooking - banana bread, a roast chicken, cheese scones, two loaves of bread, and a very large pan of minestrone soup.
• I am not a fan of the Christmas tree.  The principal benefit as far as I can see, is to make the house seem gloriously spacious and airy once it is taken down and packed away (of course I have a fake one - the only thing worse than a Christmas tree cluttering up the house for days on end, is one that I have to hoover up after as well).  But we put it up on Saturday, and I just could not remain unmoved when the children unwrapped the decorations with such excitement and cries of "oh, I love this one!" and "this is the one Granny knit for us!".  I concede it does look rather pretty now it is up.

• In between episodes of cooking, I've curled up on the sofa, under my quilt, with a good book and a cup of tea.  I am working my way through the Barbara Vine novels, and loving every minute of them.  I have a couple of Penelope Lively books lined up next, which are also good for gobbling up greedily over a summer or winter holiday when there is idling to be done.
• Inspired by Calvin and Hobbes, the children built a murdered snowman and his killer - a long and fearsome snow crocodile - in the garden.  The chickens are peering at it rather warily from their run.

Sock woes

I have just finished knitting the first of what I am sure will be  - what I hope will be - my most troublesome pair of socks ever.

Last month I thought how lovely it would be to knit a pair of socks for G for Christmas.  He has enough lycra in his life, and could do with more 100% pure wool.  And as a particularly loving gesture, I thought I'd make them with some of the deliciously mad, self-striping, German sock yarn I bought in Switzerland over the summer.

The first problem was that I kept dropping stitches.  I've only been knitting a few years, but I have never ever dropped a stitch before, and so it seemed a particularly scary thing to have to rectify.  And then I discovered that the way to recover dropped stitches was to pick them up with a crochet hook and thread them back up to the row where they should be.  With super-fine sock yarn and teeny-tiny needles, this just made my eyes ache.  I dropped a stitch on three separate occasions and ended up buying a very small gauge crochet hook, especially for the job.

Then I came to shape the heel - a tricky part of knitting a sock admittedly, but one which I've done successfully four times before.  This time I had to rip back my knitting three times before I got it right.  Another first for me, and another scary knitting manouevre, as you have a row of microscopic, live stitches, hanging free and unanchored, which all need to be picked back up correctly and put back on the needle the right way round, before knitting can be resumed.

Finally all the dropped stitches were back in place, the heel was nicely shaped and turned, and I was on the final section - knitting down the foot.  I began to like these socks again.

Last night I asked G to put the nearly complete sock on, so I could see how much more I had to knit before shaping for the toes.  And you can see what's coming can't you?  Yes, of course.  He couldn't even get them on past his instep.  They have come out about four sizes too small, even for someone with small feet.

I very nearly wept with frustration and disappointment. 

I told C he would be getting Dad's Christmas present, and asked him to try them on so that I could work out the length on him instead.  But they didn't remotely fit either.  At this point I really did let out a shriek of outrage, and asked O to come and try them on, in what was rapidly becoming a woollen sock version of Cinderella.

To my relief, O did turn out to be Cinders.  The sock fitted, and I will now try and crack on and finish the other one for her before Christmas. 

However, I am not really in the mood for sock knitting now, and I need to find G a replacement present.  Maybe he could do with a new pair of swimming trunks - I'm thinking lycra's not so bad after all.

Splash of colour - December

For this month's Splash of Colour there could only be one photo - my newly re-arranged shelves of tea.

Instead of a meddly of boxes shoved higgeldy-piggeldy at the back of one of our deep shelves - behind egg cups, water bottles, flasks, teaspoons, jars of hot chocolate and packets of yeast - we now have two tea and coffee shelves, right above the kettle and the coffee machine.

I just love how all these boxes look together - matching and yet not.  If you'd like to see more clearly what's in each box, go and look at this photo over on Flickr, where I have added a whole pile of explanatory notes.

10 things

My mind is addled this week. I have a cold, which has left me feeling slightly delirious and other-worldly.  This is therefore the perfect moment to share with you a collection of random thoughts that are skitting through my head this morning.

• This Clara doll, from the Nutcracker, is utterly amazing.  I am itching more than ever to make a doll from Hillary's book.
• My new-found tea obsession continues.  I went to the Twinings Shop, right opposite the Royal Courts of Justice at 216 Strand, at the weekend and stocked up on the Rose Garden tea and various other enticing flavours.  Twinings also have a lovely online shop, and at both shops you can buy individual teabags to try out different flavours.  C reports that the apple, cinnamon and raisin one is wonderful, G likes the Blossom Earl Grey, and my friend J just sent me some bags of Twinings Chai tea which is like drinking a hug, it is so lovely ( I thought that the chai might be too sweet, and I really don't like sugary tea, but happily it is unsweetened for you to add your own sugar - or not).
• I've bought the new Carol Ann Duffy book for O for Christmas.  There is a beautiful window display to promote it at Foyles in Charing Cross Road, which if you are nearby is well worth a detour to go and admire.

• Tyrozets are the best sore throat sweets around.  They have anaesthetic in them so they actually work.
• I am yearning to go back to Switzerland.
• I have had to adjust the quantity of pasta I cook.  After years of cooking pasta for the family, I know precisely how much pasta would feed all four of us, and leave a box of leftovers for somebody's lunch the next day.  But G's ironman training and C's new and enlarged pre-teen appetite have thrown everything into disarray.  For a while there were no leftovers on pasta days, then there were no leftovers and people complained they were still hungry.  So I started cooking 50g and then 100g more at each meal. There are still no leftovers though, and C is still growing and G is still training, so I may have to cook even more soon.
• C and I are watching Sherlock on a Sunday evening on BBC3.  It is a series of just three programmes, which were first shown over the summer, but so very good.  The final installment is this coming Sunday but the previous episodes are still available on iPlayer.
• For the first time ever I had to rip back some knitting.  I feel more like a proper knitter now.
• The Archers has a new website, which is perfect for losing hours of your precious time at.  I particularly love the three minute explanation of The Archers by Stephen Fry and the build up to the 60th birthday celebrations in January.
• To ease my longing for Switzerland, I bought this tin of Swiss chocolate biscuits from M&S.  They are very good.  And because I bought them, I get to keep the tin afterwards.

A quietly satisfying Sunday

Yesterday O and I went Christmas shopping and then on to meet Auntie Alison at the Diaghilev exhibition at the V&A, which was excellent.  I would highly recommend it to anyone interested in ballet, theatre or early 20th Century music and art.  O enjoyed it too, although it was a HUGE exhibition and she flagged towards the end.

The family calendar is looking rather full for the next few weeks too.  That'll be Christmas.  Between the four of us we have this ballet, this Christmas market, a school Christmas play, visits to grandparents and cousins, meeting up with friends, celebratory meals and this half-marathon all lined up before Christmas Eve.

So today seemed precious.  An ordinary, quiet Sunday with nothing planned beyond a few household chores and some relaxation.

This morning I raked up the last of the leaves from our poor, mangled, snow-sodden lawn, and I cleaned out the eglu.  As is always the way with garden chores, I put them off for far too long, thinking how cold and boring they will be, and then end up thrilled and energised after I've done them.

This morning as I pulled leaves out of the flower-bed I discovered vivid, green bulb shoots amongst the mess and mud, which were certainly worthy of a photo.

The tangle of bare branches, the wintry pale-blue sky, and my favourite yucca trees had me reaching for the camera too.  It feels so good to see blue sky again after the grey and white of the snow days last week.

Back indoors, there were the delights of a simple, warming stew and freshly baked bread. And then suitably warmed and filled, I could pore over a new, very exciting book.

This is such an achingly beautiful book, crammed full of projects I really want to make right now.  Over the last few years I've made several Clothkits dolls and their clothes for O, and the monsters for my nephew, but that's the limit of my toy-making.  Now I have this book I can see myself expanding my horizons.  The fact that all of these dolls only need small pieces of scrap fabric, and can be assembled so quickly is very appealing.  I love the boy doll on the cover best of all, and the little pink mermaid runs a close second.

And as the afternoon drew to a close, there was a sudden blaze of sunset-sunshine on my quilt, folded up on the back of the sofa.

I ran for my camera, and barely ten seconds after I'd taken the picture the sun dropped behind the houses at the end of the street and the sunshine disappeared for another day.

But there's still the sofa, and the Wee Wonderfuls book, and even a little bit of leftover stew.  So my quiet, satisfying Sunday is not quite over yet.

What IS this strange light?

I was sitting at my desk, counting my remaining teabags (8, since you ask - yes, an unnervingly small number), and I thought to myself 'the room feels strange'.  There was a very odd sensation hovvering around - a peculiar light.

And then I looked up and realised what it was.

Sunshine.

And goodness me, the ability of a bit of sunshine to uplift the spirits and make me smile is extraordinary.  I had no idea how grey I was feeling until I saw the sun.

I hope it is shining with you too this weekend, wherever you are.

Splash of colour - December

We've finally caught up with the rest of the country and had some snow here.  But not very much at all - just enough to dust the pavements, sprinkle the roads and leave us with unexpected patches of ice.

Walking with the children to school this morning I thought how there had been just enough snow to suck the colour away from the world, and leave everything with an air of monochrome.

Watching where I walked and stepping carefully along the icy pavements, I found the pattern of everyone else's footprints rather hypnotic after a while.

But even with the sun not-quite-properly risen, all the colour had not completely vanished.  There were still C's neon yellow running gloves - paler than usual under a snowy crust, but still bright.

And O's mad, pink, puffy coat and pink wellies.

Looking warily sideways, as her brother saw the opportunity to approach with two (neon yellow) fistfuls of snow.

And at home there are more vibrant splashes of colour.  I've been sewing Christmas presents for my family all week, and my absolute favourite thing I've made, is this bag of felt monsters for one of my small nephews.

I didn't use a pattern for any of this, just rummaged around on Flickr for some felt monster inspiration and dived right in.  There are so many good felt monsters out there!  I particularly love this sweet one and these small felt monster wallets.  The felt I've used is pure wool felt from Myriad, and it is by far the nicest felt I have ever bought or worked with.  So soft and thick, and doesn't set my teeth on edge in the way that squeaky acrylic-blend felt does.

The monster case is a simple, lined, zipped bag, made with my very last piece of Very Hungry Caterpillar fabric.  You can still find this fabric online if you rummage around.  The spotty end pages of the book were always my favourite when I was small.

You can see other people's splashes of colour in the Flickr group here.  I'm off to get warm with a cup of rose-scented tea, and finish off my pile of hand-sewing.