It's beginning to feel a lot like Christmas

Which I suppose is good as it's Christmas Eve. It took me a while to get in the mood of Christmas this year. To be honest it always does when we have Christmas in England. Norway feels a lot more Christmassy to me, don't know why. it's not the snow as we don't always have snow for Christmas. I think it's more to do with childhood traditions and familiarity.

We always decorate late for Christmas. I don't like the idea of decorating in early December. We always have a real tree and if we get it in too early all the needles will have dropped off before the big day. This year we got a slightly smaller christmas tree than normal but I think it's still pretty.

We don't have a huge amount of Christmas decorations. I'm very fussy about decorations. I don't like tacky decorations and I think a lot of Christmas decorations are tacky. Most of ours are from Norway apart form a few from Avon. I got those a few years ago when I was an 'Avon lady'. The shelsitters and the santa on the left in the photos below are Avon decorations.

 I love my plant decorations. And the little santa on the window sill next to it is from Norway.

 Another decoration from Norway.

 And my favourite Christmas decoration is this santa that a friend of my Grandparents made for us many years ago.

 This wall hanging is another Norwegian decoration. I thin it's supposed to hang on your front door but I'm worried about getting it ruined so always hang it inside.

 This is our dining room window sill with a crochet runner my Grandma made a long, long time ago. The red candle stick holders are old ones my Mum gave me when I first got married. I've no idea how long she'd had them for. The fat little santas are from Norway too.

Here's a close up of part of the crochet runner. It's filet crochet which I've not done much of but I do have a couple of ideas for filet crochet shawls which I may play with over christmas. My Grandma was amazing at crochet and did lots of very intricate lacy table cloths, runners and doilies and I've got several of them. I hope that one day I'll be as good at crochet as she was. My grandma taught me to crochet when I was a child but I preferred knitting and only made some simple pot holders. I'm glad i've re-learnt it and I'm sure my Grandma would be proud to see my latest crochet designs.

I had a lot of work to finish this week, several patterns to finish writing and a couple of samples to post. I got it all done in the end. I had planned a Christmas of non-work knitting but it hasn't quite worked out like that. I said yes to a commission I need to get in the post before new year's eve but it's a fairly easy and should be a quick thing to knit. I'm planning to cast on tonight, so I can knit on it over the weekend.

We're having Christmas at home this year. Simon's dad is joining us for lunch tomorrow. Simon's Mum was admitted to hospital again a week ago as her broken leg wasn't healing and they've decided they needed to pin it. The firs time they tried to do the op, a week ago, her leg was too swollen. She had to wait for a few days. And had to stay in hospital and wasn't even allowed out of bed. By the time they were going to try again she had a tummy bug. Then the whole ward was closed due to the tummy bug virus. She's hardly had any visitors this week, only Simon's dad been allowed in for short periods. They were hoping to operate today but they postponed it again. No idea when they'll do it now. We're just hoping we'll all be allowed to visit her tomorrow or that they'll at least let Simon visit.

Yesterday I sent out a Christmas newsletter with a special offer. If you didn't get it, you can read it here. Sign up to the newsletter in the side bar so you don't miss out in the future.

At the time of writing there is only one shawl pin left. I'm amazed at how quickly the shawl pins sold. Thank you to all who've purchased them. I'll be ordering more in January. These are definitely the best shawl pins i've ever found. Light enough to use with delicate lace and no sharp edges.

I'll be back in a couple of days with pictures from the Boxing Day hunt on Monday and my Christmas knitting. I'm working on some cabled mittens, a stripey shawlette and a secret accessory. All using Quince & Co yarn. It's pretty gorgeous and available from Loop in London in the UK. If you know of any other UK stockists please let me know.

I'd like to wish you all a wonderful, happy Christmas. Thank you for all your support in the last year. 2011 has been very exciting and 2012 is hopefully going to be even better.

God Jul x

By the way, you can see the offical photos from the Debbie Bliss Fashion Show (including my designs) here.  It's a Facebook link so I hope you can all see it. It's not my album so not sure if it's a public link or not.