Is There a Christmas Connection?

The prompt for Our Beautiful World this week is the word CONNECTION.  How timely that I had just finished working on this project for our school office.  It's something I saw on either Facebook or Pinterest and with the right tools, pretty easy to do.  Here is the link to the creator's website Stubbornly Crafty.

All you really need is cardstock and jute twine.  I used silver cardstock for the light sockets on mine, but you could use black or dark green, or really any color that you would like your sockets to be.  They are cut into strips measuring 1 1/4 x 4" and then scored every 1/2 inch.  The third and 6th segment are punched. 

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And then use a good adhesive (I use redline tape) to attach both ends together so it looks like a paper bolt kind of.

Then cut various shades of cardstock into strips measuring 1 x 8.5".  Gently fold each piece in half - don't make a hard crease if you want the bottom to look like a real light.  Hold the tops together and punch a hole in both at the same time so they line up.  Then just hold at the punched end and a gently press the creased end into the palm of your hand to give the paper a "bulb" shape.

Then you need to CONNECT them with the jute or I suppose you could use ribbon if you wanted.  It wasn't necessary for me to make any knots to keep them in place because of the size of the punch that I used, but if your punch is bigger or you use ribbon instead of jute you might need to secure them in place. 

This is the view from my desk with my IKEA felt tree and you don't see all my holiday-related solar dancers on the counter.

And one more project that I'm working on (because who doesn't need just one more project to work on before Christmas?) are these "chair socks".  I'm crocheting them and I've found that I can even do that when I putting in my time on my stationary bike in the morning.  (That is providing I get to do the bike in the morning as the mornings this week have been pretty full of other things to get done before work.)  I only need to do, well, I'll do what I can do before Christmas Eve.  But, I have to say that they are not hard to do and they do make such a difference with the chairs on the wood floor.  We had those stick-on felt pads on the bottoms of each leg, but they are constantly slipping off and guests would even find them stuck to the bottom of their shoes when they got home!  I picked out yarn in various shades of brown, but I've seen them made in a multitude of colors - user's preference.  And I've been using my Michael's 40 or 50% off coupons to buy the yarn. 

Ombre Sky and a Finished WIP

This was not today - this was actually last Friday morning.  I don't remember exactly why I was up a little early, but I think it was because our neighbors' car alarm went off at around 5 a.m. and then again 20 minutes later and at that point I couldn't get back to sleep.   I'm not an early bird but I was glad that I was up a little early to catch this beautiful sky.  HWNSNBP thought I was a bit nuts to grab my coat over my pajamas to run outside in the cold to try to capture it, but it paid off.  He even had me send the picture to him to update his screen saver.  

I wish I had a better picture of what the evening looked like.   We had some extremely cold weather that came through with a quick snow.  I was turning in early (probably because I was up so early) and I got a text message from someone just as I was going up to bed.  That triggered me to turn on the outside light to see if it was still snowing and it was like someone had dumped a truckload of glitter.  I don't think I've ever seen such sparkly snow.  This time though, I didn't want to throw on my coat and go out and thusly, the pictures through the windows just didn't cut it.

Earlier that evening I finished a project that I had started about a year ago.  This skinny heart-motif scarf.  I found the pattern here.  I used a little less than two 1.75 oz. skeins of Martha Stewart Merino Wool in 501 Milk Glass Pink which I picked up at AC Moore in the clearance bin for about a dollar a skein.   

You crochet two halves and then join them in the center so the hearts appear right-side-up all the time.  

The pattern calls for only 12 motifs on each side but when I held it up to me, I decided that would be too short.  Don't know if it was because of the yarn, the gauge of my stitching, or the difference in my ample landscape and that of the model.  So I continued for 20 on each side.  And no, it's not too long, but since it took me so long to make it,  my stitching consistency was a little off and the sides don't exactly measure the same in length after I steam pressed it.  But unless someone is looking for the exact center around my neck it won't be noticeable.  

I'm hoping to get myself more on track with finishing some of the many projects that I have started or have bought the ingredients for.  That is my goal for the year.  And I gave HWNSNBP a goal also.  There are a few creative projects that I want him to finish and we're both aiming for one per month.  I don't think that's too unrealistic.  We'll see how it goes (he's already a month behind).