Frosty Winter Photos

If I'd known 5 years ago that I'd be living here, along with two dogs, I would never have believed it!

Frozen moss on a fallen twig

Hard to believe this is a daily sight for me...

Contrasting the enclosed woods against the exposed open

Frozen lichen on a fallen twig

A frozen pine cone

I love the contrast of the exposed frozen trees against the pines

A frosty hawthorn (my favourite tree)

Close up of the frosty hawthorn

This may look like dusk but it was only around 1 pm

The rest of the advent decorations!

In no particular order...
For some reason, Jamie wants his tree leaning against his bedroom wall! So most of the decorations are hanging two together on the "nipples" and none are round the back of the tree! In the end many of the later ones ended up on the proper Christmas tree!

Not all of the decorations are from Alan Dart's Advent Tree - some are adapted from his Advent Calendar. The sweetie is my own design. I've also adapted all of them to suit, leaving out bits or adding others. The observant among you may have noticed there are only 24. I've always had advent calendars with only 24 windows on them but that's not the reason why... I just ran out of steam and, because I was behind, Jamie was none the wiser. However on the day after Boxing Day, he asked if there was another decoration for him, so I've given him the option of choosing from those patterns that are left and I'll knit one more. There are 25 "nipples" on the tree after all!

Merry Christmas!

Send your own ElfYourself eCards

Who can't count then?

I missed two decorations from the last blog post! No-one (all two of you that read this blog!) seemed to notice. One of them is the snowman, as I forgot to take a photo of it and am waiting for one from my daughter. The other is:
Because I love beads, I think this might be my favourite so far (though the polar bear and Rudolph are awful cute too!).

Alan Dart's Advent Tree and decorations

I started on this a while ago for grandson Jamie. I managed to get the tree and a few decorations done for 1 December and have had to do catch up since! I've now done enough to see him through to 12th, which means 13 more to go (as Alan Dart has 25 decorations on his tree)!

Here they are in order of being knitted: All the above are Alan Dart patterns as given for the Advent Tree.
I adapted the candy cane based on Alan Dart's Advent Calendar, an older pattern.
Rudolph is an adaptation of Alan Dart's Advent Tree Straw Goat. I decided Jamie wasn't likely to know what that was so I used the basic pattern and changed it to Rudolph the Red Nose Reindeer. This tree is a half-size version of one given in a magazine pattern around 25 years ago. I've no idea what the magazine was but I've cherished these patterns all this time.
Alan Dart's own.
I was so unhappy with the final result of this little elf that I decided to add a parcel to soup it up a bit!
Another half-size version of that old knitting pattern.
Alan Dart's own.

Here's some inspiring photos