Merry Christmas One and All, by Caprilicious

Hello lovely people, Merry Christmas to all of you reading my blog. I hope you're all having a good time Covid notwithstanding and that Santa will visit you tomorrow morning with loads of goodies.

Iris

Over the last few weeks, I've been adding tiny beads to a piece of stiff felt, inspired by the agate at the centre of this piece. I added crystals and more beads until I couldn't fit another one onto the piece if I tried. 

One of my neighbours gave me a bunch of rhizomes when she divided her plant up a couple of years ago, and not knowing how finicky they were, I just stuck them in a flower bed and hoped for the best - every year they grew the most beautiful spear shaped leaves, but no more. Fed up with the no-show, I did the work - on researching it a bit I found out that the tops of the rhizomes had to be almost 90% visible to the sun and atmosphere all year round for them to bother producing anything resembling a flower. 
I dug them all up, and put them in a pot - I just placed the rhizomes on top of the soil and was instantly rewarded next spring with beautiful flowers. I must remember to go out this weekend and check that pot again - hubby, who is the chief water provider tends to spray my plants with a heavy hand, and the soil has probably splashed onto the rhizomes and covered them by now. 

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The last picture shows how slim the pendant is, so even though it looks dauntingly large, it weighs next to nothing, being made of just a bunch of tiny beads.

I had a most intriguing parcel hand delivered to my house and hubby refused to tell me who had brought it round - I poked it and prodded it - and then I'm ashamed to say I decided I'd been so good all week I deserved an early Christmas present, and ripped it open. My neighbour, who has recently retired from running a business painted this fabulous picture of Wilfred she must have copied from a photograph I once posted on Facebook, and put it in a little white frame for us. It has been done in watercolour, which is such a difficult medium to manipulate - hats off to her! She's got his expression exactly right - he was sitting on the fence and looking into the kitchen window to check if the person making tea would be prepared to give him something more to eat!

That's me for this week, folks. Thank you to all of you who sent me cards and wishes for Christmas and the New Year, it is ever so sweet of you. I hope you've all been boostered and are playing it extremely safe.

​Merry Christmas, one and all and I'll catch you next week, same time, same place,
Until then
​xx

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