Christmas Ornament Swap, a Scarf and a Blanket

I've been catching up on blog reading this morning and drooling over all the Christmas trees, decorations and the beautiful stitched ornament finishes you all have.  I'm afraid the only decorating that has been going on in this house is the wallpaper hanging kind.  

Stevie will be home on Christmas eve and we are frantically trying to get everything done so she can wake up on Christmas morning in a proper bedroom rather than the store room it has been for weeks. The furniture was ordered yesterday and will be delivered next Tuesday, Mark has put up the paintable paper, so my task this week while he is away will be to paint that so that he can hang the "pretty" paper next weekend.  I went on another shopping spree yesterday for new bedding, pillows and a quilt, so hopefully it will all come together by the time she comes home.

There are some lovely ornament finishes out there and i'm disappointed with myself that i really didn't manage to stitch much this year, the only ornament i managed to stitch and finish was one for the Christmas ornament exchange on the Needlecraft Haven forum.  Christine organizes this exchange every year and I was to send to Casey, (no blog).   I knew what i wanted to stitch because I've been wanting to stitch this for ages, it has all the elements I love, alphabet, snowman and red :-) I was hoping that Casey would love it too, thankfully she too likes snowmen so I think she was happy with what I chose.

Winter Sampler "Snowman" free design by Marika Belfiori.

I was the lucky recipient of Christine's ornament, this is what she made for me.

The design is by Olde Colonial Designs and from this year's JCS Ornament Edition.

Isn't it lovely?  Thank you so much Christine.

Whenever I've had time to sit down I've been knitting away on a scarf for Stevie.  When we were in Worcester a few weeks ago she saw this scarf in White Stuff, it had a ridiculous price tag so I said I would knit her one and took a photo to remind me of the stitch.

Below is the Moss stitch scarf from White Stuff

And this is my re-creation of it.

Worked in double moss stitch with a request for the band to be in purple.

I'm using Woolcraft double crepe yarn held double.
Double crepe should withstand even student washing! and it is lovely and soft and won't be scratchy to wear. 

There has been a little bit more progress on the Granny Stripe blanket, it's growing, all be it slowly. 

I'm still loving the colours :-)

We are still lacking a Christmas tree, that will not happen until the weekend now, it's the first year in many that my decorations haven't gone up on December 1st, so just to add a little bit of Christmas cheer around the place I've hung some of my stitched ornaments on the metal tree, (which didn't make it into the loft and was still in the garage after the move).

Once we have the tree down from the loft they will be hanging on there, for now this will have to do.

Hopefully I will get another blog post in over Christmas when the madness has settled down.

Have a good week whatever you are doing :-)

-X-