Twixmas

 Merry Christmas everyone! I hope you've all had a lovely few days.

Here we are in Twixmas - that strange in-limbo week between Christmas Day and New Year, when noone knows what day it is , what to eat when, what to wear or who they even are! Its Monday (though I had to double check that !!) the 28th, so 3 days after the Big Day. How was yours ???? Ours was pretty fabulously relaxing I have to say. I was awake with excitement (I'm such a big kid) at about 5am but held off actually getting up until about 8am, and then I had to waken the Not So Little People at 9. This was the first year that we didn't leave out a mince pie for Santa (sob!) but he came all the same and left a stocking for each of them, each of which was opened with gusto. We then exchanged our other presents and everyone seemed very happy with their little haul. I didn't take many photos at all on Christmas Day - just didn't think - but oh well, I've taken lots since.

Mr EC and the Little Peeps gave me lots of sausage dog gifts - including a hat and scarf - which I wore on Christmas morning on a beautifully crisp and festive dog walk. 

They also gave me an oven-glove, tea towel and apron - the latter of which I wore to cook Christmas lunch - with a glass of bubby of course - cheers!

I also got some new slippers from my mother-in-law, they have barely left my feet since, they are so cosy ...

 ..... and a lovely new vanilla candle, here it is next to the card she gave us - isn't it brilliant :)

One of my other favourite gifts was this little heart from my friend - I had assumed she'd made it, but she 'fessed up that she didn't - she did make me something but apparently it went wrong so she didn't want to give it to me, I'm dying to know what it was though! Anyway the heart has pride of place above the fireplace.

Another dear friend gave me this wonderfully personalised picture frame ....

All the little peg-words are things that are meaningful to us both and have kept us going and connected through lockdown and its various forms.... zoom calls, drinks in the garden, coffees, walking and so on. Such a thoughtful gift. :)

Speaking of walking, I am nearing the end of  my 200km North Pole Virtual Challenge, I've currently got 12 km to go! In my last post I mentioned I was going to walk the 9 mile round trip for a new crochet hook - well I did it - 16km in total, took me nearly 3 and a half hours and I was dead on my feet when I got home, but such a sense of achievement. Here are some pictures I took along the way ....

.... and I've since done a few more massive dog walks as well. Poor little Pixie doesn't know what to think ...

We saw Santa and Mrs Claus walking their dog ....

And sometimes we ended up at Costa for a cheeky takeaway ....

I saw a penny, picked it up and all day long I had good luck ....

So as I say, only 12km to go, and I'm hoping at most two more walks should do it :)

In crafty news I am still working on a Christmas sampler I started earlier in December ....

I'd like to try and finish it this week whilst its technically still Christmas time, but I fear it may be a bit of a tall order. I'm also doing a winter stitch-along with Stitchonomy. Free sign-ups are closed but you can join Alyssa's Pattern Club if you want to take part. She releases a new piece of the pattern every 3 days. Here's what I've done so far ...

As you can see it's stitched on turquoise aida. I've been cross-stitching for about 35 years but this is the first time I've ever used non-white aida. I love how it looks!

I'm also soooooo neeeeeearly finished my Attic24 cottage blanket ...... I've been working away every evening on it ....

... and have finished the main body and sewn in the ends .Oh the ends. There were sooooo many. Why don't I learn and do them as I go along ??

So now I'm working on the border ....

I can't wait to get it done, I think its going to be used to snuggle under on the sofa, its been years in the making as I've fallen in and out of love with it a few times. The man reason I want it done is that I have a new blanket kit all ready to begin - more on that in my next post :) 

And in between crochet and cross -stitch I've been reading "Little Fires Everywhere" by Celeste Ng, it was a great read, very interesting exploring all the different mother-child relationships. It's also been made into a TV series which I then obviously had to watch too!

And so I've been putting in these days with lots of gentle crocheting, cross-stitching and reading ... and thoroughly enjoying every minute of it. It's so lovely to slow down and not have the usual frenzy of the school days and the bazilion emails that I seem to get every day. And we still have another week to go - hurrah!

Hope you are all having a lovely Twixmas week, see you next time, 

Jillxxxxx