Yep, in a month’s time Chrimbo will be over!  I do have to confess to a touch of the Scrooges with regards the coming festivities, it’s the idea of all the work involved that I find a little overwhelming.  That and the enforced jollity.   No person is gonna tell me when to enjoy myself.  Rant rant, goodness, don’t you feel for my poor children?  Anyways, there are some aspects of the festive season to which I can relate.  The whole Winter Solstice/keeping a Yule Log burning, that’s a fab idea.  Very reassuring for those days where the Sun seems to be a fleeting and feeble presence and invigorating daylight is a scare commodity.  Like today, in fact, where despite it being lunchtime I have the house lights on and I’ve just had to rescue the washing from yet another devious downpour.

What to do?  Well, I of course inflict these upon my nearest and dearest:

Paperwhite daffs, potted up today. Pint-sized promises of Spring.

And then there’s the crafting, that can and does help.  Let’s blame it on the weather, I’ve been completely off the Crafty Queue piste.  Here are my ‘shouldn’t-those-stripes-match? Hmm,-maybe-I-hadn’t-lined-up-my-selvedges’ trousers.  Or, if you’d prefer,  Simplicity 3850, Built by the eponymous Wendy, in about a size 12.

There was a teensy disaster at the end of the make.  A dash of  ill-judged hem folding and a smidge of enthusiastic scissor wielding has led to some hasty patching …  pretty easy to spot I suspect. *Adopts whisper* Bottom inside of the right leg.

Not to worry, they are a little on the long side so that may end up tidied into a new hem line.  Do you like me belt?  Made that I did.  The vibrant Strawberry Thief reverse matches the pocket linings and the facings, but only I know that.  Well, and now you guys.  Shhhh!

Would I recommend the pattern?  Yep.  You might want to watch the zip/fly area.  I’m not sure the instructions are correct and I very much had to go my own way here, leaving out both the ‘underlap’ and the buttons and not shortening the zip.  I mean why suggest a 7 inch zip when you actually need a 5 inch one?  Are 5 inch zip imposs. to source?  For my first fly, it’s ‘pretty fly’ even if I say so myself.

And for a petit digestif mon petits choux, a Coif (nope, me either) what I fashioned for my youngest’s Tudor Day last week.

Now, if she’d been wearing that this morning she would not have been able to catch her hair on the hob flame when she theatrically declared her love of kiwi fruit.  Scarey and smelly as it was at the time – she’s fine.  Hopefully with a better developed sense of why Mum bangs on about not skylarking in the kitchen.

Keeep Crafting!