Christmas 2015: Present for my dad

My dad is a garage dad. He spends most of his time there, tinkering with that toy and this. Over the years he's collected a googly number of complicated looking machines. He often asks me to make covers for these machines to keep the dust off them when he's doing woodwork. I've been making various covers for him for Christmas and his birthday. Here's the one I made last year for Christmas: a cover for his Myford ML10 lathe.

My husband kindly drew up the pattern for me. And I'm sharing it here for all the daughters (or wives?) who might know someone with a Myford ML10 lathe.

Merry Christmas!

Table decorations

CC-BY-SA

After spending a goodly amount of time on Pinterest, I've decided that a Christmas table needs the following:

1. A runner
2. A centre-piece
3. Place names
4. Colour scheme (red, green, white OR blue, silver white)

Items that frequently appear on the table:

1. Candles
2. Plants

I'm going to go with the red, green, white colour scheme, just to stay traditional. (I don't know what I'm going to do about my blue plates, but that's a story for another time.) With a white table cloth, I'm going to look for a green/red runner. I'm not brave enough to quilt one (gosh, there are some amazing quilted runners on Pinterest!), but I think I could just hem a long enough bit of fabric and call that quits.

For the centre-piece, I'm going to make an advent wreath and that will take care of candles too. Look out for a future post about that. I like this place name that I found on Pinterest. It should be simple enough to make, and it comes with a bit of a religious sentiment. Plants...that I'm not too sure about, I'll have to see how the table looks before I can decide what it needs.

Merry Christmas!

Nativity scene: Mary

CC-BY Lara H

Two weeks ago I posted about making a nativity scene. Well, I tried making the pattern I found, but it didn't work. I should have read it before - the increases were so not normal. I scratched around a bit more before I decided to take the plunge and make my own one.

I'm pleased to share with you my very first crochet pattern - Mary of the Nativity Scene! Please do send any corrections through, it needs to be beta-tested.

Uploading it on Ravelry was harder than I thought. I had to figure out all sorts of things. Hopefully now that I've set up my store it will be easier.

Merry Christmas!