On the Shortest Day.........

...............In the morning I  braved the supermarket crush to do my Christmas food shop. We and very lucky to be invited to family for Christmas day so mine was just my weekly shop plus buffet food for Christmas Eve. Twenty family and friends this year. 

It was a bit crazy but I was very happy to find  some red tulips to pop in my trolley...........

It's just a small bunch but thankfully I have the perfect jug to display them. I got this vase in the spring when I visited Yorkshire . That was a special weekend.........

This is the first year I have bought red tulips for Christmas , they are yet another blogland inspiration and I LOVE them.
Behind them you can see my card hanger. This in not new this year . It's been used every year since we came to this house but I still love it . It keeps most of our cards out of the way but easy to see and makes a lovely feature......

I'm not keen on cards on every surface but one or two especially pretty ones do make it onto the mantle......

...........This afternoon , after taking these first photos I decided to leave the housework a bit longer and make something from my new crochet book. I first saw this book over at YarnRoundHook and somehow , when I was ordering Christmas books for the boys it ended up in my basket :0)

                                               at under £5 it was an affordable treat

Quite a bit of the book is about leaning to crochet, but there are also some tempting projects. This is Erika's delightfully named "ice crystal" table mat  It's made by holding two strands of yarn together and grew super fast. In fact this took less than an hour to make ( I seem to have a thing for quick projects this Christmas).
The book  says to steam   iron the finished motif on the reverse , and thankfully it worked well.
So much quicker than blocking.........

I think it's a great , modern take on the doily and it looks perfect under my jug..........

..........In the evening I lit a couple of candles on my kitchen windowsill to quietly mark the winter solstice.........

There may be plenty of wintery weather still to come but after today the days will Slooooowly be getting longer. Yay :0)

Jacquie x