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...

Reduced

Checking in for our flight just half an hour ago, we noticed how everyone seemed to have rather more bags than they'd brought.  The topic of conversation is how much has been saved rather than spent!  When we arrived on Friday, everything in my favourite shop was reduced by 25%.  In spite of such temptation, there wasn't much there to my fancy and I left with just a single pair of jeans.  But browsing in there yesterday, I spotted a jacket I'd not seen before and asked the assistant if the reductions were still in place.  Sadly not, she said, the ticket price applied - not megabucks, but nevertheless, more than I wanted to pay.

This morning, we dropped in again, spotting a new notice by the door "Up to 50% off".  Sure enough, there was the jacket, now on the rail with "take an extra 30% off" above it - and a red line through the price reducing it by almost half before that.  Just 24 hours and the jacket I fancied had been reduced by more than 60% - and because I have a frequent shopper card there (!) I got an additional 5%.

Crazy.

I especially love the Starbucks holiday theme this year.

 Though I haven't noticed a knitting theme going on in the UK yet?

Perhaps it started on the 1 December?

 

The Art Club

As we got off the train in Providence, RI, it started to rain, but being the indomitable English tourists we are, we put up our umbrellas and soldiered on regardless and headed for Benefit Street, in the historic part of the city.  In the gloom, two buildings stood out as a beacon, tempting us up a hill towards them.  The tudor house sits at the bottom of Thomas Street and just across the road was the most beautiful church - a very special one too, as it turned out.

As I puttered about taking photographs, a gentleman came out of one of the houses on the street and greeted me with a friendly "good morning".  Hearing my English accent, he stopped and inquired about our visit - what had brought us here, what did we plan to see and so on, introducing himself as the chairman of the Providence Art Club, one of the oldest art clubs in America, whose Club House lay behind the most lovely door I had just photographed.

I've written before about how these chance meetings with complete strangers turn an ordinary day into the most memorable.  This was one of those remarkable occasions and a rainy Sunday in Providence, RI, suddenly transformed into something far more interesting.

For the Providence Art Club House is a very special place indeed and our chance meeting with the chairman allowed us a privileged peek behind the scenes, where some considerable renovation was taking place.  We were invited through that lovely green door into a beautiful late 18th century house, complete with original furnishings and of course, pretty amazing artwork.  Hard to know where to look first!

We loved the silhouettes of members, painted on the walls of one of the club rooms and admired the very special painting hung in the upstairs lounge area, of a gentleman surveying some casts of classical sculptures, which captured our attention immediately.

The annual "Little Picture Show" was currently showing, but before we took a look at that, we were treated to a glimpse of the future for the lucky members of the Art Club, for extensive building works are going on and there is to be a new studio, print room and further club facilities here before long. 

My goodness, what vision, what commitment and foresight is here.  How fortunate the members of this club are and how I envy them their facilities!

 

It was quite hard to draw ourselves away from this fascinating place and charming gentleman, but the historic streets of Providence called us and armed with newly learned background to the city and the buildings nearby, we set off again through the rain.

 In spite of the weather, we enjoyed walking along an historic street and really enjoyed seeing so many buildings which were, to our untutored eyes, typically "New England" in character.

But Providence, for us, will always be a charming gentleman and his amazing Art Club.  Thank you, Dan, for being such a generous ambassador!

Providence

Anyone who knows us will understand when we say "Ker-ching!  Rhode Island!!"

Which makes a total of 33 states for me and 32 for Mark - because of Wisconsin!