Day fourty three: hearts and strings

As my birthday celebrations got postponed for a week, I ended up hosting a cosy get-together on St.Valentine's Day. So I thought it would be great to come up with an idea for some sort of hearty decoration for our living room. However, it had to be something simple and straight-forward: like hearts on strings! I knew how to make the hearts, but I still had to figure out the stringing part. After a messy attempt to make a garland, I finally opted for individual strings and I am indeed glad I did this, because now the same hearts can be easily used to decorate a Christmas tree. How cool is that? :) 

If you would like to learn how to make them, give me a sign in  comments and I will prepare a short tutorial.

Day thirty seven: underneath the Christmas tree

Here we are. Welcome to 2015 - a year of blue goats, changing winds, and huge potential. I've been away for a while travelling and celebrating, and visiting people and places I missed to pieces. Now I'm back all refreshed and inspired and my creative spirit is getting restless after spending three weeks in glorious standby mode.
 However, before jumping into the unknown I still have a couple of projects left undocumented from last year. For instance, these simple and handy linen totes I gave as gifts to my friends and relatives. By now all the bags have reached their new owners and I hope they will find them useful. The only one left is the dwarf bag which I ended up using myself throughout Christmas and liked very much. There is something about these totes that makes them immensely comforting and reassuring: I guess it's the size and simplicity. I'll certainly make more for summer season :) We'll get there sooner or later.

Christmas market: two days in Dragontown

After a whole month of intensive sewing, stitching, baking and planning I finally made my debut as an elf in the Christmas market in a nearby town guarded by the loveliest dragon I've ever seen. The market itself was a two-day event that took place outdoors (yep, long hours in freezing temperatures certainly calls for more than one glass of Glühwein if you plan to survive :)) and it was a fantastic experience for a newbie like myself. The choice of the event could have been better though, since two thirds of the stands were filled with foods and drinks and people were clearly in party mood, meeting friends and having good time, not thinking much about shopping. Also the tradition of gift-giving for Christmas apparently is not very popular in Luxembourg. From what I've seen, people don't exaggerate with these things and don't regard this custom as a must. Being aware of all the above-mentioned, I kept an open mind and did a great deal of observing and learning. It's only fair to admit that not all of the conclusions I made were the most flattering ones, but I really see no reason to dwell on those, because there were far too many beautiful and special moments I experienced and those are the ones I will be carrying in my heart. 

  

While watching my work through eyes of my friends and loved ones, all the grannies who smiled the warmest smiles and children who dragged their parents to my stand to show them the colourful Christmas stockings, this event quickly transformed into my personal thanksgiving. And I do have so many things to be thankful for: this time in life I am given to explore sewing, the chance to work well with my hands, my mum who has taught me so much, my wonderful and supportive husband who was out with me in the cold for most of the time and helped with all the logistics and spoke German with customers and for my fantastic friends who lent me tables and baskets and showed up just in time to cheer me up and did some Christmas shopping themselves :) 

Finally, despite the cold and all the Glühwein (and the fact that all my things smell of smoke from fireplaces) I am glad I gave this a try. Sure, the overall sales could have been better, but as far as the first attempts go, I'm happy with my trading experience and I might actually try this again.