CHICKPEA SEWING STUDIO

Santa Lucia

Painting by Carl Larson.

Today is my very favorite Saint's day, Santa Lucia. I make a cardamom wreath every year and light it with candles. The sweet dough is rising as we speak. Once braided and baked, this wreath will take a little trip to my friend Nancy's house, who is having an holiday party for all of her quilting friends. Nancy owns Whimsy cottage, a quilt store in my neighborhood (lucky me!). 

I have tried many recipe for the dough, but the best is found in the amazing Baking with Julia. This book is in fact the very best I own when it comes to baking. It's so rich in details that you might think a master chef lives in your kitchen. Mine is well worn and might need replacing soon...

Oven-dried orange ornaments

I wrote a post last year about drying your own oranges, mine held up really well and are in the tree this year. This is a really cheap project, good for a no-money tree trimming. 

Find the post here.

It's a wrap!

All went well. Every single guest came. Those who drink had beers, wine and champagne, those who don't hot chocolate and Cokes. They all ate, although not enough... I bought way too much food, and will not have to cook again for quite a while!

The big hits turned out to be the only two things I baked, the holiday cardamon wreath and the marshmallows.

I finished the CDs while cars were pulling in the driveway, very stressful but a little personal victory too. I would love to insert one of those nifty blog music players here, but can't remember where to find them. For now here is what they looked like:

A basket for my tree.

First of all, I must thank everybody for their suggestions of Holiday songs. Nothing new on that front but at least I should have lots to pick from, just no time to do the picking.

The party is tomorrow and of course we are far behind schedule, for example Thomas needs to paint part of the kitchen walls tonight, install a baseboard and do some calking (!)

We did however buy a tree last night, and my plan to use a basket instead of a tree skirt restricted the potential tree pool considerably. 

With a smaller tree, there was a lot of ornament editing, which left some room for my little spun cotton mushrooms. Take a peek:

Holiday Music Misery.

HMM, holiday music misery, that's what's tormenting me these days. As the work-related Holiday party we are hosting approaches, I decide to add yet another thing on the list of things to do/make/buy.

This time it's a mix CD of Holiday Songs to listen to and  for guest to take back home.  Easy enough? not so.... I am no authority on American tunes, being French and all. Plus most of the time this kind of thing leaves me vaguely nauseous. So here is what I am considering so far, not in that order. If you want to give a suggestion, do! I need at least four more.

I've got my love to keep me warm. Ella Fitzgerald

Sleigh Ride. Harry Connick jr.

Cool Yule. Louis Armstrong

Christmas night in Harlem.  Louis Armstrong

 Sugar Rum Cherry (Dance of the sugar plum Fairy). Duke Ellington.

Please come home for Christmas. Mariah Carey

Winter Wonderland. Tony Bennett

All I want for Christmas is my two front teeth. Nat King Cole

Update

 From the comments I am also considering:

Father Christmas. The Kinks

Santa Claus is coming to town. Bruce Springsteen

River. Joni Mitchell

   

Gummy Wreath::

After seeing this picture at Sew Mama Sew, my hands were aching to make one too. Now they are just plain achy, but since it's going to live at my friend Ambre, gingerbread house maker extraordinaire, it's for a good cause. 

There is a tutorial available here. I found most of the supplies at Joanns, they even had the gum drops. I would recommend wearing gloves, because it's all so sticky. I used 40 OZ ( about 1 kg) of Spice drops, which turned to be a really good choice: they are so vile tasting that there is no risk you might eat any!

Holiday Cheer: check!

Weihnachtsmann

                                                                           

Tom bought me this little guy half an hour ago and I am already in love. I can't get enough of watching him blow smoke out of his little pipe. We found him at a little shop called Mount Olympus Clocks, the kind full of nutcrackers and pendulum clocks. The real purpose of the visit was to find the tiny candles that fit in the pyramids like the one in the photo below, but we were unsuccessful. I guess they still make the pyramids but not the candles anymore. Two years the store has been out of them. I might try the candles that go on Menorahs and see if they will fit.

  This figurine is a Christian Ulbricht, which I believe is from east Germany, which doesn't mean GDR anymore. The pyramid on the other hand I purchased last year in from Kathe Wohlfahrt in Rothenburg which is in the south of the country. Don't be fouled however, it is horribly cold out there right now. The coldest I ever felt. I love the little persons on the pyramid, they remind me of the Peanuts. especially the one with the baseball-looking hat in the back!

                                                                  

Holiday Wishes to redo...

   So I have officially wasted six perfectly good cards along with my entire morning. As I am staring at the picture all ready to be posted here I realize with horror that Holiday is misspelled! The fact that I have already stamped, embossed and rounded all of those cards without noticing anything makes me wonder about what we call auto-pilot...

I am completely out of blank cards by now; those Holiday Wishes will be so belated they might arrive next year. Makes me want to curl back in bed with my new copy of Bend the Rules sewing by Amy Karol. Maybe paper projects are not my forte.

PS: I just noticed that I saved the document without misspelling the word...arrrh.

I have a mini-explanation on how to make the lined envelope here.

Felt Tree Skirt How-to

This picture is the result of the Tree Skirt experiment conducted with the thick felt I made in the last post. I am happy that I had so little time to think about what I was doing, this way it was really spontaneous! It's minimalist and it hides the Uber-ugly plastic tree-stand underneath. We found a really European looking tree this year. It makes me  feel back at home. Unfortunately this kind of branches doesn't take well to electric lights. They are too far apart and the strands look a bit weird. So we chucked the idea.

This project take an hour at most if your felt is ready. (Read last post to see what this is about.) The total cost for the skirt was $9 with a 50% off coupon at Joann's. That fact alone makes me happy !

I used two yards of the white felt, one yard for each half circles. The felt shrinks a lot as it thickens so the skirt won't be 72 inches wide in the end. Once washed there is no risk to see anything through the material, it is completely opaque. Find the middle of each long sides  and place a pin. Tie a string to that pin as shown right. Make the string as long as you can to get a half-circle out of the cut of felt. You will use that string as a compass. On the other end of the string tape a disappearing ink pen, see picture below. Draw a nice half-circle holding the pin in one hand and keeping the string straight.

Make a smaller circle, mine is 3.5" radius close to the pin. Cut both half-circles on the line with pinked shears, regular scissors will do the trick too. From the left-over felt cut two bands, about 1.25" wide. I used pinked shears on one side of each band too. You will sew these bands on each side of one of the half-circle. My seam allowance is 1/4 in. and the seam length is 4mm (long), you are working with really thick layers of felt here.

The picture below gives a view of the sewn band. Although it might be hard to see that both sides of the band are sewn on the back. The buttons are sewn on the other half-circle. I used four vintage red buttons for each sides, eight in total. Which means that the button holes are on the thick two layers side. I used a simple seam reaper to cut the holes with no apparent problems.

By this point you should be able to button each side of the skirt and put it on the tree. It really goes quite fast and leaves you loads of time to sew on buttons, rickrack or even embroider it.

I decided, in part because of exhaustion, that mine would remain white as snow, as long as it's not covered in cat hair!