A White Christmas!

A very quick post, just to wish you all a merry Christmas! This is the first time that I have a real white Christmas, and I have to admit, it really helps to give me the real postcard feeling.

Winter in Paris

Back from Paris, since almost a week now.
It was very, very cold and we even had a little snow on the first day of our stay. We escaped the snow blizzard Paris was having this week.
Our main goal was the Monet exhibition in the Grand Palais. It was crowded, but every painting was worth the waiting!


There was also the exhibition in Musée d'Orsay of the painter Gérôme. The detail in his paintings is really stunning, you have to see it to believe it.

Our hotel was situated in the neighbourhood of the grands boulevards and the grands magasins, like "Printemps" and "Galeries Lafayette", and near to the Opera, and a 15 minutes walk from the musea.

This close to Christmas, all the shops were lavishly decorated, I took some pictures at the Printemps.

Finished!

Yes, I did it! My Christmas sampler is finally finished. I'm really proud of myself.
It really needed some freshening up, so I washed it in a mild dishwashing liquid (I used Ecover) and rinsed it with cold water.

So now it is ready to be framed.

This week, another two (almost) finished projects: a knitted sweater and cardigan. To be continued...

Too cold...

...to work in my room upstairs.

As everywhere else in Europe the past weeks, it has been very cold. So I decided to move my computer downstairs, where I have no internet, but my view on the garden makes up for that.

January had a very hectic start, so I try to get a bit of rest in the evenings. I'm knitting a green cardigan, a rather easy pattern, because I like to knit while watching television.

Our Christmas tree is waiting to get planted, all the decorations were put in their boxes till next year.

The snow started to melt today, time to put a bit of spring in my house.

Crafting for Christmas

A week before Christmas, I decided to make a few gifts myself. This year, we had a Christmas party with friends, and we had to give something to this lovely couple. I needed projects that I could finish in a week, so I made:
a scarf for him

and a pair of socks for her.


After all the partying and eating, I had a very lazy sunday. I did a bit of ironing, a bit of reading, and I made a resolution list for 2010. I wonder what will come of it.

Sometimes it's a good idea to take the example of a cat, and sit by the fire and relax and meditate a bit.
I'm ready for the new year and the work that got piled up on my desk!

A happy 2010!

For all of you out there: a lovely, creative, healthy and happy 2010!
My New Year's resolution: more blog posts...

Almost Christmas

No, I will not be able to finish my Christmas sampler in time. Here you see the result after week#13 and week#14.
Due to all my "real" work, I neglected my sampler a bit... And cross-stitching isn't something you can do full speed, I'm afraid.

It takes me a few hours to stitch a little flower.

It started to snow a few days ago, so with a bit of luck we will have a white Christmas! It seems that we had our last in 1986, I can't even remember it... I'm probably getting old.

I'm not giving up...

...on my Christmas sampler! I managed to work a few hours on it last week (the 12th week, by the way). I don't know if it will be finished by Christmas, at this tempo...

Christmas stress

This is the kind of Christmas I had in mind:



This is how my house looked about a week ago:


And this is how it looked yesterday night. Yes, we got a tree! And no, my walls aren't painted yet... the plaster needs to dry till February.

But that doesn't stop me from wishing all of you a very Merry Christmas!

Christmas sampler

This is a cross stitch sampler I started when I was pregnant of my son, about twenty years ago... I completely forgot about its existence. And now I really have the intention of finishing it.

I wish all of you a Merry Christmas and lots of inspiration in 2008!

Christmas classics

When my children were younger, we had our classics in the Christmas holidays. I used to read them books like "Peter and the wolf"

and "A Christmas Carol".

And we had our movie classics of course: "The Snowman", "The wizard of Oz", old Disney movies like "Pinocchio"...

Watching "The Snowman" is soo nice, try it if you don't know it already!

Christmas embroidery

For the third block of Lucy's quilt, I'm going to embroider cute winter girls. Not my own design, it's from my Japanese embroidery book.

All work and no play...

I have a lot of work to finish, drawing and also working on the computer.

But that didn't stop me from decorating the christmas tree. I have another week to get a bit in the mood... It seems like Christmas is arriving earlier every year!