Christmas telly (includes Merlin finale, Homeland finale and Doctor Who Xmas special spoilers)

Oooh its been ages since I did a TV post, anyway……

Merlin

*Sob*, the ending of Merlin, *sob*. Merlin ended at the right time, after 5 series it was getting too predictable, ‘ooh someone’s flying backwards’ again, ‘oooh someone’s gone all evil so of course they’ve had a complete wardrobe change and are now just wearing dark clothing’ again etc etc. However in the last few episodes there has been some wonderful acting from the two main leads; Colin Morgan (Merlin) and Bradley James (Arthur), specially in their scenes when they’re together on their own and in that final episode where Merlin tells Arthur what he really is and Arthur rejects him and then grows to appreciate and finally thank him, *gulp*. This was bromance on full blast and I think it’s unusual, specially in prime time telly, for script writers to give two male actors material to do such really emotional stuff together. I think Merlin reached its natural end and I am now really looking forward to seeing what Colin Morgan and Bradley James do next with their careers.

(I also liked the very ending, a glimpse of Merlin in modern times, that just instantly brings stories into your head, where’s he been? what’s he been doing all this time?)

The Raymond Briggs-athon

Raymond Briggs was very much part of my childhood and I don’t think I appreciated back then exactly how good the art work was, well The Snowman anyway, I think Raymond Briggs Father Christmas is showing its age a bit but what I didn’t quite get as a kid is exactly how depressing his stuff is! They’ve shown The Snowman, Father Christmas and the new The Snowman and the Snowdog over Christmas, at least it’s a good thing I don’t think they’re showing the Raymond Briggs cartoon about nuclear war, now that was one book I very clearly remember from my childhood. But hey I’m all for showing good quality animation on TV in an age where everything can be a bit too slapdash and computer-fied.

Room on a Broom

Just as my childhood was firmly in the grips of Raymond Briggs, my kids are firmly in the grip of Julia Donaldson and I’m happy that they’re in more cheerful hands, with her not completely saccharine messages (after all The Gruffalo proves that bad things do sometimes exist but on the other hand if you’re smart and clever you can defeat them) that are far more positive. I think Room on a Broom was so clearly turned into a cartoon because The Gruffalo was so successful and whereas most of Julia Donaldson’s books are good, The Gruffalo is so in a league of its own, it can be very tempting to compare anything else unfavourably. So trying desperately to forget The Gruffalo, I liked Room on a Broom, I think I liked more the fact that Boy Lacer was sitting next to me reciting the lines from memory for a good part of the cartoon (he’s just done Room on a Broom at school). Now can they do The Smartest Giant in Town next please?

Doctor Who

New assistant and they’re snogging already! The shocker! I guess it gets the will they won’t they? / will it be platonic? over and done with and I guess the Doctor hasn’t had an assistant to snog for a while, considering he’s been hanging out with a married lady and actually hang on, he’s married, ahh the problems with these multi-temporal relationships. But then of course she’s dead, again, I think this is going to be a really interesting season.

As for the actual episode, it was hard to remember that this was a Stephen Moffatt episode, it seemed a little run of the mill compared to his usual edge of the seat stuff but I guess he had to rein himself in a bit considering you could hardly have Weeping Angels level of terror at Christmas teatime. I liked the snowmen though, I thought whoever designed those as monsters did a good job and it was nice to see thingy from Silent Witness get more work.

Homeland

Ahh Homeland, proving again that all the best actors in American dramas are British (not to mention rather good looking). As the current season of Homeland reached its climax we’ve been treated to some really edge of the seat episodes, which made me, of course, expect the final episode to be particularly ‘explosive’ and although yes, it was at the end, yawn, christ it was dull before it got to that bit and I never thought I’d ever associate the word dull with Homeland . . . This episode just felt like one hour long set up for the next series and really didn’t have that much to do with the current series.

All images property of the respective channels / production companies and used for illustrative purposes only.

Teacher gifts

When said I was going to make hardly any Christmas presents, this is what I meant by hardly, as I’d always planned to make these. The patterns are by that seasonal staple September House, this year’s Christmas patterns (the tree) and an earlier year’s Christmas set (the snowflake). This is Boy Lacer’s last year in infants *sob*, so my last year making Christmas presents for the teachers (although having said that I need to glue together Girl Lacer’s class’ card for their teacher, as I’m doing the collection for that this year).

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I have a stinking horrible cold right now, the sort of cold with bells on and it’s getting worse, not better, which is making me sulk as this has happened for the last two Christmas’ we’ve been at home, whereas Christmas’ when we’re away I’m (and everyone else) is as right as rain. Christmas at home  (as in my home) is important to me, it’s where I get to do stuff for me, do my traditions i.e. lots of baking but when I and other people in the house are ill, that doesn’t happen. The closest I’ve got to Christmas cooking this year is watching Nigel, Nigella and Paul and Mary.

Calendars

September House pattern

Way before I had decided I wasn’t going to be making (hardly) any Christmas presents this year I had been super organised and ordered some 2013 calendar panels from September House and well if I didn’t use them they’d have gone to waste, so this year my aunts and uncles are getting handmade but it’s the last year people!

The calendar above was stitched fittingly with the pattern from September House that goes with the calendar panel (which I now can’t find the link to).

The next calendar was stitched with a peacock from Urban Threads.

Urban Threads Pattern

And the final calendar was stitched with the Cheeky Bird pattern from June Craft.

June Craft Pattern

I ummed and ahhed about how I was going to finish them and opted in the end for using trouser hangers, I fear my aunts and uncles may think this odd, I am still pretty convinced they’re going to think the whole thing odd, I guess a generational thing, they are after all the generation that firmly gave up the mend it, fix it, make it ethos that their parents would have had and that we (or at least us legion of crafters) now have back again. Hey, oh well, if they don’t like the calendar at least they’ve got a new trouser hanger . . .

(And another problem with Christmas crafting, never any decent light)

Uzbec ornaments

This is what I’ve been working on for quite some time, it’s Uzbec ornaments 1 to 3, there is a fourth but I ran out of time before Christmas as they are actually meant to be Christmas ornaments, although I think they’re nice enough for all year round and I definitely plan on making the fourth ornament after Christmas, as it does feel like there’s something missing. With each ornament the design gets more complicated and I do want to do the most complicated design (although considering I made mistakes in ornaments 1 – 3 …..).

Anyway the patterns are by Felicity Hall and I’ve used different colours than she specified (chosen by the kids with final yay or nay and some ‘suggestions’ from me). The patterns use tent stitch, which was great fun and I so want to do more tent stitch projects.

Christmas Tree

I may be plumbing new blogging depths here, blogging about my Christmas tree but I’m particularly proud of it this year. Me and Girl Lacer went for a kitsch Japanese theme (she’s thankfully past the bung everything on the tree stage), helped by some new decorations I’ve bought this year from Paperchase and John Lewis. I think the dinosaur is my favourite

*Ssssh* don’t tell my dad (and not making things this Christmas)

I am largely not making things this Christmas, I did start, was about a third of a way through a project, realised I was getting bored silly, was resenting the hell out of doing it and was pretty sure that the person it was intended for (not my dad) probably wouldn’t particularly appreciate it, so I ……stopped. Consequently this year has been a little weird, not having the normal pre Christmas crafting rush, I do now, in it’s place have a ‘oh my god I haven’t gone shopping yet and I can’t until I get paid (middle of the month)’ rush but hey, it’s a different kind of stress  It hasn’t been all good that I haven’t succumbed to Christmas crafting frenzy this year though; I had planned to assuage my ‘guilt’ and my ethics by buying exclusively handmade on Etsy instead but my real life job is a zero hours type contract job (basically where I work the number of hours they give me / I volunteer for) and my November pay packet was particularly low so I couldn’t be organised and get that online shopping done (this would have been where making cheap homemade presents would have come in useful). My December pay packet will be pretty good thanks to a particularly eye opening project I’ve been working on at work for the last month, but it’s too late for those online shopping deadlines really. Also I have kinda missed that enforced sitting down, making stuff time, yes it can be frantic and a little stressful but when else do you really have the excuse to almost make things 24/7 for a while?

Anyway, I’m still trying to retain a spark of individuality in my Christmas presents and this is what I got my dad, which in a way is sort of ‘made’.

It’s a personalised diary from Blurb; my dad, a while ago, went through and scanned all his extensive collection of family slides onto his computer and gave CDs to me and my sister, so I used those photos, plus a few more modern ones of Girl and Boy Lacer, to create the diary. The cover photo is of me, my mum and my sister (I’m the middle one). I am pretty sure from the photo we’re standing on the beach where they now film a lot of Doctor Who, which always makes me smile because it’s one of my favourite beaches and when we used to go there, they obviously never even filmed Doctor Who in Wales but my mum always used to say (fairly frequently) that they should film Doctor Who there due to the beach’s strange rock formations, roll on 30 years later …..

The diaries are fully customisable, you can add photos for the start of each month and even a tiny photo at the bottom of each page (I didn’t do the latter, although it would have been nice it would have gone beyond my budget), you can even add text to the actual diary entry pages, so you could have say, for a particular day, ‘Jo’s birthday’ printed, although I didn’t go for that option either because it just felt a bit funny as obviously I call members of my family different names to what my dad calls them and well, seemed strange writing someone else’s diary entries for them, but I think that’s just me.

Anyway, I tried (but failed for some of the more boring months) to keep the photos seasonal, this is October’s photo, Boy Lacer has seen this photo and he goes “Is that you being Harry Potter?”, no, more ‘innocent’ times when a witch was just a witch.

And I like this photo to, a very early one of my mum (looks like before I was born), proving that taking a photo of yourself in the mirror is not just a 21st century social media thing.

I have also made a diary for the mother-in-law (Mr. Lacer once again scoring it lucky and getting me to sort out his mother’s presents), that one used more up to date photos of the kids.

I don’t know if Blurb have passed their last shipping before Christmas dates yet but it may be worth a check out, however I should add the proviso that the diary above is Blurb’s second attempt at printing it, as the first diary they sent me had someone else’s photos inserted half way through! However, to their credit they did print a second copy with no fuss and it still got here in plenty of time for Christmas.

Cushions

After telling myself last year that I had to stop making cushions (as I was in the habit of making every embroidered piece I made into one and we were beginning to drown in cushions), when we bought a new sofa at the end of last year and we realised that most of our old cushions were either 1) lumpy 2) beyond saving by a good wash 3) just didn’t go with the new sofa or a combination of all three things, I realised I better start making cushions again because as lovely as our new sofa is, it still needed cushions and we are a cushion dependent family.

Some cushions were saved, principally this (well, actually that was brought in from my craft area due to cushion shortage, I now sit on one of the old grey cushions that really needs throwing out when I sew), this and this (if you click on the links you’ll see the common denominator between all three is patchwork in bold colours), I think my new sofa is a very patchwork (in bold colours) kind of sofa. As for the other cushions, I don’t think any of them actually got chucked (despite my intentions), some were returned to the sofa because we couldn’t cope with just three cushions, some were clung to, by tooth and nail by the kids (our tatty floor cushions that spend most of the time on the sofa) as they were too attached to them (I’m planning on buying new floor cushions at some point, as the current ones have already been recovered once and are very lumpy) and other cushions have somehow, mysteriously made their way onto the kids bed. But anyway, I need to make cushions.

It took me about a month of thinking to decide exactly what cushions I’d go for, I didn’t want a mish-mash like last time and I wanted something to go more with the colour of the sofa and the ‘theme’ (if you can call it that) of the room (with the giant New York picture behind the sofa, which we’ve had for years). I also wanted cushions everyone would like, so anything too floral and cutesy is out. Me and Girl Lacer actually did a reccy of the cushion department in John Lewis the other weekend and we both decided we really liked the strong graphic prints and appliques, we particularly fell in love with this cushion (searching for that link just now I also found this one to, which I think is lovely). But I rarely actually buy cushions these days as they’re so expensive compared to me making a cushion myself.

Anyway, so with all this precise, military-esque sofa cushion planning, of course the first cushion I finish since we bought the sofa does not really fit the theme at all.

It’s actually one cushion not two, I wanted to stitch both of these gorgeous Elsa Mora designs and they felt like they should both be on the same cushion. They’re not too bold and graphic-y are they? But at least they’re patchwork (wonky patchwork, don’t look too closely) and most importantly I love them, goes to show you can’t stick too closely to a theme (And in my defence these were started in September and I didn’t have my new sofa then, they turned into very heavy going patterns – but worth it). And anyway, I think they look sort of gentleman’s club like, so that goes with the whole masculine vibe thing anyway.

Also finished off today (I’ve spent much of the day sewing cushions, I’m pretty busy at the moment and although I can still squeeze in embroidery time, it’s hard to find sewing time, so I’ve got to grab it whilst I can) was *ahem* a Christmas present for Boy Lacer, also a cushion ( we are a family of cushion addicts), this is from Wild Olive’s solar system pattern. (Please excuse the terrible photos, like I say, I finished late and although I suppose I could wait for better light tomorrow, it’s January, what better light, anyway the first photo, which is particularly bad, is just to show the cushion overall, as it is one big cushion).

(I particularly love the Earth pattern, that was fun to do)

Anyway, this cushion isn’t for the sofa, Boy Lacer will drag it round all over the place and then it’ll probably end up under something but he did like it when I gave it to him and that’s what counts.