Mildly Chilled Xmas

Don’t get me wrong - I do actually enjoy the ritual of making braised cabbage and bread sauce plus other trimmings on Christmas Eve but I think I will try to get more ready made stuff next year so I can just eat mince-pies and watch films all day. The idea is meant to be that there are plenty of leftovers for the next few days but with a vegan roast instead of turkey and having to go traipsing to and from the garage because my fridge is not very big, I don’t tend to over cater. 

Christmas itself was low key and minimal - we hardly even watched any telly. Despite the dreich weather we had a couple of short walks down by the river. I received some lovely gifts from my girls such as a felted Bumble (made by Mo) and an Indian cushion. I am glad to report that I was not given any chilli sauce, bath salts or toffees and I treated myself to a huge reel of macrame cord.

So far I have managed to make a couple of star decorations and 3 successful plant hangers. I have no idea how I can work out how to tie specific knots into a pattern yet I cannot conquer simple crochet. 

I pulled out my Rainbow Warli quilt blocks to see if I can work out what to do next. I think I need to put it together spontaneously like the red, black and white version with filler strips where the blocks don’t match up perfectly in size. I examined some antique textile scraps that I got in Jaipur and decided that I will piece skinny strips to punctuate the larger blocks.  

Since I may want to add borders using some sort of bunting/flaps I will not have enough of the original fabrics from the bazaar. I wasted time online looking for Rubia/Running-Cloth/plain fabrics but cannot find exactly what I am looking for in such vibrant colours and at a sensible price. There is one colour which I think of as Jaipur pink that I can’t see online so I will attempt to mix up some Hungarian dyes to see if I can make something close. I realised that I have no idea what strength and type the powder dye that bought in India actually is and the one that was labelled blue turned out purple!

One of the things that I intend to do before the New Year comes and goes is to have a  mini-sort-out in my workshop. I just want to go through all of the drawers and boxes to see what I actually have before I think I have lost things and feel the need to repurchase duplicates;)