St Nikolaus Christmas card workshop

For the first time in 23 years, I didn't make Edward a gingerbread house for St Nikolaus, but supplied it in kit form instead.  When we met him for supper last week, we passed him a box containing all the ingredients: chocolate "cement", chocolate button roof tiles, smarties gravel for the garden, curly wurly fences and the gingerbread house structure itself.  We await a photo of the finished results.

I've spent the day making our Christmas cards.

I gathered a few bits and pieces together, got out my trusty Embellisher and applied it all to a bottle green background - Mark's old NZ wool sweater which I felted in the washing machine.

I cut out small christmas tree shapes from the embellished felt and experimented a bit with sewing them to a card.

Mark One not only took me ages to stitch, it resulted in a rather wonky tree!

Something simpler was called for.  Even so, the challenge of some glittery thread in my sewing machine needed all my resources for dealing with tricky situations like this.

Changing the sewing machine needle for a "Metallica" one with a large eye and longer "scarf" at the back made things rather easier.

Which reminded me: Did you know that the top part of a Schmetz needle box is a small magnifying lens to enable you to read the size and details of a sewing machine needle more easily?

Anyway, here we are at the end of a busy day with just over 100 cards done.  Now we have just to sit and write them...