Christmas tree pattern

Not new by any means BUT a new way of working it.  This method means no ends until you get to the end - if you see what I mean.  

In the original it meant ends to sew in on every row but you know I'm lazy and  I worked out a way of doing this little earring with only the ends at the end to sew in.

I've agonised over this pattern for ages wondering if I should or shouldn't share it but in the end I've decided to go ahead and hope it doesn't cause any worries  or upsets to anybody.

This was done in 1993 in it's original form and then I found at least one other person had come up with the same idea. Anyway I've gone ahead and rewritten and redrawn the pattern and you can find it here.

An anniversary card

A lovely couple who live almost opposite us celebrated their 60th wedding anniversary last Friday. 

The people in this road are amazing as if anybody is in trouble we all pitch in to help. I was one of a team who was privileged to being allowed to help them over the past year or so while they both recovered from operations. 

I was invited to help them celebrate their anniversary so set out to find a suitable card. A diamond wedding card was what I was looking for. There were a few in town but they were far too 'soppy' for me so I was stuck.  I'm hopeless at making cards and have no imagination for them.  

Then I spotted this card which I thought was cute - specially as the manufacturer had left a space at the bottom for a '60' and a diamond!!!!

Simply a cute hedgehog

Teresa has sent in this bauble hedgehog. He's now living in the Exclusive Club which you can find here.

I'm wondering if anybody doesn't know where to find the patterns for these wonderful critters? If you don't know then here's the link to the book by the fabulous Houtz brothers. You can also order from your favourite tatting supply sellers. 

I'm going to tease you now by not telling you what Teresa said. You'll have to go to the Exclusive page to find out!!! I'm a rotten person, I know. You can tell me how horrid I am in the comments.

Problem solved

Well the origami boxes turned out pretty well, I think. 

I always make my own stickers/labels for things as I have a trusty label print software program. Well I thought I did until I went to use it the other day. It crashed, crashed and crashed again.

So I consulted my guru (aka Nick) who said no wonder it did as it was so old it couldn't cope with the latest IOS. 

Off I went to the App Store and found one for the total price of - wait for it. Ninety nine PENCE. Well it was worth the risk so I bought it. A bit of a learning curve but once I'd 'got it' it works well. It's the Orion one (red arrow) below.

So I've begun to make labels for my sales items. First the Christmas trees in the new boxes.

Next problem!

Having started on the Christmas tree earrings the next problem that occurred to me was again - how do I package and present them. 

I was wandering round the town the other day trying to find ideas for this conundrum when I had one of those 'not quite so senior' moments. I suddenly thought 'I can make some boxes'. 

Great idea but how. When I was little I was given a book of Origami by Robert Harbin which I loved and spent many, many happy hours studying and making origami animals etc. When the light bulb when on I thought I'd be able to make some folded boxes. 

So, I came home and then went to visit Mr Google and researched making little boxes. It didn't look too hard but getting the right size proved a little challenging. I tried several ideas out using printer paper and then went shopping for pretty origami paper. 

Where did I find EXACTLY the right stuff? Why, in The Works where I got the boxes for the other brooches. These are some of the colours below and you can see what a big book of papers it turned out to be.  You can also see a practice box I made with printer paper!!!  Not a good effort but I hope to improve!