Crafty, Christmas Countdown!

Inspired by a craft tutorial in the current issue of Selvedge Magazine I decided to make gift bags this year to cut down on wrapping paper.
I bought one of these lovely ponies for my neice - Marion (one of HH's crafty mates) makes and sells them along with her delicious preserves at farmer's markets and craft fairs.
He's called Biscuit and to ensure that the bag fitted I measured him up!

This gorgeous print is some old unused fabric that had been put by for ages and I reckoned that this would be the perfect excuse to use it.
The pattern needs four pieces shaped like a bag with ears and although I made all four pieces the same it would also look really nice in four different fabrics...maybe the next one that I make will be like that!

When it's all sewn up you tie the 'ears' together and present to the lucky recipient, they get a lovely gift AND a little bag that can be used for ferrying toiletries or a packed lunch around and you get to help reduce some of the waste produced at Christmas - result!

It's always lovely to meet fellow knitters and the group that meet at the Brewery Tap are an especially nice bunch - a load of them visited HH this morning and we had a homemade Christmas cake to greet them along with lashings of tea!
There were sighs and gasps at some of the buttons, all the yarn was thoroughly inspected and you could almost see minds storing up ideas for yarn-y projects.
I even had a few ideas myself, the Katia yarn Ondas has been a big hit and we had some of the green knitted up into a scarf by Miss Pat, it's gorgeous BUT it also makes a great wreath for the door and being the blue door leading to HH it could only be trimmed with notions (of course)!

Hope everyone is enjoying the crafty countdown to Christmas as much as we are, Nic x