my other christmas treasure

As I said last week, Mum and Dad weren't particularly flush with cash when I was growing up and the decorations/presents were a bit on the sparse side ... which is probably why she saved the very first Christmas card that anyone sent me.
It's a fold out one of "The Night Before Christmas"with typical '50s graphics.
I was all of three days old when it arrived and the card was 'signed' by Allan-John, Mum's Godson, who is 18 months older than I, so I think it's safe to say that it came from his mum, my gorgeous Godmother Gwen [ currently living in Queensland and a fairly feisty 86 ]
Every year it was sticky-taped up and the poem read on Christmas Eve.
When I married, it came with me, the traditional sticky tape was eventually replaced by Blu-tac, and when it eventually became too fragile, and started to tear, I had it laminated.
The reading of "the Night Before Christmas" continued until Nadie was about five or six, and somehow after that, we got out of the habit, although the sitting on the couch and warbling along to Carols By Candlelight [ complete with the eponymous candles ] was still going strong until a few years ago.

Christmas Quilty Conviviality Chez Catsmum

and bugger the complainers!!!!
... those few who decided to 'boycott' the occasion because they had been asked by the Committee to contribute a small plate of food? - well, it was their loss.
I enjoyed myself.
Last year we had it where we normally have our meetings, and some whinged because they felt that the catered sandwiches and savouries didn't represent enough value for the club's money and that the venue was too small for the numbers... an element of truth to that which is why we tried my place this year - more room.
The year before some of them felt that the newly opened Empyre Hotel was too expensive and there wasn't enough food.
Whatever happened to "if you can't say something nice, don't say anything at all"??
I guess the Committee just can't win this one.
One of the chief complainers actually rang me tonight to make sure that I understood her position - which was that she'd said her piece and then turned up anyway!!
I'm not at all sure I really needed to know that.
I was and still am under the impression that we'd had a wonderful time so pffft to the rest of them.
Bugger 'em.
btw this is my 300th post.

Hallelujah!

The Messiah was really lovely. Thank you for asking.
[ skip down for the last decorating installment if you don't feel like reading about Handel ]
It was interesting hearing it sung in an ecclesiastical setting rather than the Concert Hall. We were further back than I'm used to, but the acoustics were close to perfect so it didn't
matter, except that every time gorgeous David Hobson got up to sing, the very, very large woman in front of me craned her head out over the aisle blocking my view. GRRRR. I wanted to see His Gorgeousness just as much as she evidently did. She also spent most of the first half fidgeting around on her very very squeaky plastic cushion ... forward, back, side to side, squeak, squeak, squeak ... and talking / giggling with her friends until we were all just about ready to strangle her.
In her defense, she may well have had a spinal or arthritic pain-management problem that was causing the fidgets because she wasn't there for the second half. Her rather rude companions have no such defense: they were the only ones in the Cathedral who didn't stand for the Hallelujiah Chorus. They also found something very amusing at several points in the proceedings judging by the giggles.
Anyway, despite this, it was memorable. In the past I've seen/heard The Messiah many times and often one of the soloists lets the side down - a Bass who should've hung up his tonsils long since or a strident, metallic soprano, but this quartet: David Hobson [ have I mentioned yet how gorgeous he is? ] Joshua Bloom, Rose Nolan and Natalie Jones - were all wonderful. Young Mr Bloom is a real treasure and as he's about 10-15 years short of his prime years as a Bass, well, let's just say, I want to still have my hearing in the early 2020s !! Australia has a real lack of decent bass voices. David H looked marvelous and was in far better voice than I've heard him for at least the last ten years - both for pitch and for volume - although he did seem to have an alarming facial tic at times so I hope he's ok. Probably just extreme tiredness with the schedule he's had lately.


Okay enough music talk - on to the decorating:
We've been right round the house:
Rumpus room - Santas and reindeer, occasional angels,rustic country style trees
Missy's room and bathroom - bears
My room and the Big Room - Edwardian/Victorian with silver/crystal trees
so now we're in the kitchen





which is where the snowmen reside:




greenery and crochet stars/snowflakes on the ladder over the bench -
there are more crochet flakes at the window but it's hard to get a decent photo of them




the tree in here is mainly decorated with kitchenalia - miniature sugar sifter, egg whisk and colander, brass teaspoons, gingerbread men candles, candy canes and cookie cutters






The kitchen is the only place in the house where blue is allowed at Christmas ... which always surprises people who know how I love blue. It really can be traced back to the last house which was blue, blue, blue, blue, blue top to bottom including paintwork and carpets. If I decorated blue at Christmas you just couldn't see it :]
That nine foot swag is home to my collection of feline decorations - and it's not easy to find well designed ones that aren't too twee either.





Luckily for me, Maz painted these ones [ and the cross stitch was a present from sadly blogless Tracey]





...and given the prevailing colour scheme, I thought that these knitting art cards by Jejeune were too nice to put away... and btw: the two china elves and the drowsy child are from my early childhood

Big Room part deux

The comments this week have been dwindling but the site figures say you're still all out there and you brought some friends with you. I'm guessing that there's a natural limit to the number of times the same people can be expected to enthuse over the same house full of Christmas cheer... but I'm getting several hundred visitors a day so delurk dammit ... oops... gotta live up to my 'nice' award - umm - delurk pretty please ?
It's been yet another hot and muggy day with all of about six drops of rain at 6.30am ... all THAT did was raise the humidity level a touch. Woo...pee...do!
Anyway
Ms BJC is flying over from Tassie at lunchtime tomorrow and will be collected on the drive-thru by Corrie and Ian. The four of us are going to hear Handel's Messiah sung at Bendigo's Catholic Cathedral tomorrow evening. It used to be an annual Melbourne ritual before I moved up here and I can't tell you how much I'm looking forward to it. Especially because it's my [early] berfday treat from Corrie and yummy David Hobson is singing the tenor part again... and speaking of the anniversary of one's Natal day as I believe we just were: Happy berfday to Nadie's BF Chris, aka The Boy. His day was actually Thursday.
Now all I have to do before Messiah, is to survive the Goldfield's Quilters Annual Chrissie luncheon here tomorrow afternoon... which I AM also looking forward to but these things are always a bit on the hectic side ... just wish that they weren't both on the same day... and to top it off friends from Melbourne rang to say they'd be in the area for a party and would be dropping in... yes ... tomorrow afternoon. Had to ask them to make it Sunday morning instead.

most of this lot is pretty self explanatory with two possible exceptions:
You probably need to know that this quilt measures all of about 8 inches square
and

that the shabby little paper nativity is priceless, at least to me.
According to my late mother's neat little notation on the back, it was bought for 1/3 [ 12 cents ] in 1950 ... which was my parents' first Christmas as a married couple and they were stony broke. Mum had to make do with what she had... pages from the Reader's Digest cut out and framed, paper chains, etc. If they'd been a little better off, things would've been thrown away and I probably wouldn't still have this little treasure or another that I'm going to blog about when we reach the kitchen which is all that's left

Big Room part 1 and a noice award

I've been nominated for the "Nice matters Award", this time by veryniceherselfAlwen
and now that I'm on a newer version of blogger, I've actually been able to figure out how to put it up, along with the other one.
... and those persons who just said 'bout bloody time', can shush up.
Thank you Alwen.
"Nice" is generally a very undervalued thing to be... and I am trying
although certain members of my family might say that I'm VERY trying
- anyway the award is appreciated. I'll have to have a think about who else to nominate but it won't be too difficult because there were several people that I had to miss last time.
anyway
moving along , it's time for today's Christmas Tour installment #693

so:
my front door opens straight into a single large room which would be the Lounge Room [ livingroom] and Dining Room for most people. Because I'm don't have to be most people, the larger half [ is it still half if it's larger??] is the studio/workroom... essentially it's my 'workspace for quilting arts related stuff' but that just takes too long to say.
Until recently the other end of the space sported a sideboard, a dining table, a couch [sofa] , a corner unit and a coffee table that was totally in the way. In three years here, I hadn't had a single meal at that table, so now it's up in the shed and the space contains all the aforementioned stuff plus another couch, all rearranged and functioning in a much friendlier way. The couch probably takes up nearly as much space as the table did but it all feels much larger and more open. We will not speak of the effort involved in hoisting a solid oak table onto shelving six feet off the ground!!!
This is the view looking towards my workspace. Christmas decorating is fairly minimal: a couple of small wall hangings and a child's red kimono, and some swags and bows
Turn around at look at the other end of the room and it's a bit different: santas, swags, cushions, angels, table runners, quilts, stitcheries and mini quilts, BIG tree.
I made the big Father Christmas about 5 or six years ago from a commercial pattern - essentially a head-and-shoulders on a broomstick base with a felt robe trimmed with batting. He used to stand at the foot of the stairs in the last house and absolutely EVERYONE would fondle his batting beard and hair - to the point where it needed replacing with felt after only one Christmas. Don't really know why but since I redid the beard in felt, no one seems to do that to him any more. Maybe the wool batting version looked more pettable. In line with my theories on maximum effect decorating some of the boxes that contained decorations are piled at his side until the real presents are wrapped... plus it saves putting them away and I can hide my 'elf kit' in there: spare bulbs for fairy lights, pliers, tape, scissors and batteries



This quilt is made from squares cut from the same print as the border except on a cream background, quilted in spirals and swirls and embellished with seed beads and sequins...
very very simple but effective I think. If you click for bigger you'll be able to see that the 'star' on the tree is actually a snowflake brooch snagged for $1 in Crazy Clint' s After-Chrissie Sale.
Blogger is being very unco-operative with the photos so you can see the rest of this room tomorrow. I was going to split the post anyway but this just means there are a couple less than there would've been. I'm sure you'll all survive!
eta it's several days later and Blogger has eaten the posts AGAIN... grump grump grump.... reloading them is a pain in the patootie and I'm not 100% sure which ones I had here. and which ones were elsewhere. Apologies if I double up.

girls, goats, good times and a gratuitous cute cat

Yesterday was the Christmas break-up luncheon for our monthly SnB-type group "Purl's Princesses", so instead of having our usual knitting session at Purl's in Daylesford, Jeanette and I [clad in my best tiara as befits a princess in celebration mode] headed on down the road a little more to Robyne and Paul's unique, quirky, wonderful house at Eganstown.
First order of business was a visit to the goats...
That's 'ccino with Rob, Ms. Latte is behind him and you can just see a bit of Presto's nose. Somehow I missed getting a photo of my favourite, little Milo :[

Unlike moi, Robyne is a real foodie and all stops had been pulled out. Naturally we'd all brought something as well: dips, turkish bread,organic juice, etc but CERTAIN PERSONS were rendered ALMOST speechless by the salmon roulade, prawns, salade nicoise, fruit flan, and other goodies. They would've gotten a greek salad and a bought quiche at my place!
Actually, now that I think about it further, it may have been the freely flowing champers that rendered them incapable of speech :]

Later:
We all exchanged KrisKringle gifts and I was happy that our hostess was the one to score my contribution:

and because you can't have a GTG without the obligatory Chantelle [ Central Victorian speak for Show 'n' Tell ] here's the crossstitched quilt that Robyne's making for her son's Japanese mother-in-law.


and finally:


we'll return to the chrissy pics tomorrow ... nearly finished ... only a couple more rooms to go and then I'll take pity on you and stop ... maybe ... if you're lucky

As it's only early in the season, the count of tree ornaments that the cats have 'redecorated' onto the floor stands at three [ plus the one I knocked off trying to put them back, that's rolled in behind the main tree where I can't reach it ]

a very girlie Christmas room

I'm skipping David's room [ he's entitled to a bit of privacy and it's not as though he can tell me if he minds me splashing his space all over the net]
which brings us to MY room
which generally comes as a total surprise to anyone who really knows me IRL. I am most emphatically not a girlie/ cutsie type ... but for the very first time in my entire life I have a pretty room and I love it.
I finally have the Edwardian cast iron bed and froufrou mosquito netting of my dreams

This is my tree... obviously ...

so it has things that speak to and of me:

silver scissors

knitting gauges

bellydance coins

vintage silver sugar tongs

everything in silver and pearl and crystal



and a faux-Victorian Saint Nick in patchwork cloak, from a kit by Judy Golder, sitting on that little piece of not-at-all-faux crazy patchwork that I found at the Historical Society Garage Sale last month. It just fits the top of the DVD player perfectly, making that particular anachronism less obvious.

Shabby chic-ish angels hang from the mosquito netting and great grannie's tallboy [ armoire ]

A delicate crystal-like [ ie plastic] swag sits on the tallboy in company with a Victorian angel, and another 'crystal' swag is wrapped around the foot of the bed.





and now is probably a good time to revisit catsmum christmas decorating hint # 306:

If it sits still, tie a bow on it.

oh and a postscript from yesterday's seniors' visit: the one thing they couldn't get over was that I had a tree in my bedroom!
Doesn't everyone?