The light on the front of the sleigh

Reports of the struggles of a Warwickshire crafter discovered after several weeks pinned to the floor by balls of yarn, tinsel, two tubes of wrapping paper, her spinning wheel, niddy noddy and the kitchen scales, with a floury smudge on her right cheek, scotch tape inextricably bonded to her hair and yet still trying to stir the mincemeat with her toes and knit just one more row, are largely unfounded. At least, it's probably happened to someone but so far that someone isn't me and I've finished the mincemeat so I think I may be safe.

Sorry for the silence. I think that's just been the longest that I've ever left the blog without there being any more reason than sheer crafty panic. Because we were seeing my family before Christmas, my cut off date was suddenly sooner than expected but it means that I've now just got a foot of a sock to knit before New Year's Eve and that's the Christmas crafting done - phew. I'm now off work until next Tuesday which is wonderful, and gives me a little time for crafting something Christmassy for me - yippee.

With a few things now safely in the post to people who don't read the blog (too little) and a rather special something opened early for Christmas over the weekend I've even got a few pictures to share, although each might deserve a post of its own.

I have also been baking - over 8 dozen mince pies so far (and by 'so far', I mean 'I've finished the pastry, I've got enough for us for Christmas and I have no intention of making any more until next year!'). Lest you think that I am now entirely mince pie shaped I should explain that our church has an annual turning on the village lights with carol singing followed by mulled wine and mince pies in the church - and that accounted for 3 dozen alone.

My best idea this year was to make edible Christmas cards for my colleagues - OK, I know, I just wanted an excuse to use my giant copper Christmas cookie cutters - and I'm always in favour of icing - but I do think that they turned out well:




Each of them has a name on them but I've blurred it out hence the odd smudgy look to the middle of each cookie. I need to work a little harder on my icing techniques but I had great fun making them and the team seemed to be having great fun eating them (and, in a halo-polishing moment of glory, a colleague from another team thought I'd bought them).

If you fancy trying something similar the decorated cookies are put into freezer bags, sealed and rolled down, and the toppers I made on the computer and printed out onto card, folded horizontally and stapled together. As the meercats say: "simples!"

The most exciting thing around here though has been the SNOW!! SNOW!! SNOW!! - the mittens worked, and if it can hang around until Friday I'm totally counting it as a white Christmas.

I was in London last Wednesday and as a colleague and I headed out of his office mid-morning from the corner of my eye I caught the tiniest little flake falling. The inner me instantly screamed SNOOOOOOOOWWWWWWWW!! and started to do the happy dance. The outer, professional business me, was calm, collected, mentally noted that a drop of frozen water had descended from the skies, and (showing huge restraint) made no comment at all.

Happily for me, I had forgotten that this particular colleague spent much of his youth in the Channel Islands, has seen just as little snow in England as I have, and gets almost as excited. We discussed snow in depth all the way too the court; both desperately wishing for the inches and inches currently landing on Aberdeen.

The next day was even better, when a blizzard blew in across Birmingham during lunchtime; just after I'd got back with my sandwich, enabling me to spend the whole lunch hour staring out the window and the pretty white swirly stuff.

The current weather forecast doesn't suggest any more snow soon - but I've got my fingers crossed!

In the meantime, may all your Christmas crafting be merry and bright, and may all your Christmases be white!