New Year's Eve

Christmas Day went well, with just seven of us sitting down to lunch. Although I still struggle with timings, I make extensive checklists for Christmas Day. As one of our friends remarked, we could probably have fed twice as many people. But that's part of the beauty of Christmas lunch, as far as I'm concerned: I don't have to do any cooking for several days afterwards.  

With most of the preparation done in advance, the day itself mostly involved setting things off at suitable times. I got up around 6.30 to do the first few: pudding in the steamer first thing, potatoes (prepared the night before) parboiled and left in hot water; red cabbage/apple/onion prepared and set off in the slow-cooker; carrots prepared and ready to go later; coconut cream whipped and put on the trifle.

The shepherds in my knitted Nativity set then arrived at the stable, and baby Jesus emerged from Mary, and was laid in the manger.

On decorating for Christmas

When I was growing up, decorating for Christmas used to happen at the start of the school holidays. Or that's what I recall, anyway. My parents had a real Christmas tree for many years, so wanted it to last until it was taken down on January 6th. And since they used to host Christmas Day for the whole family even after I was married, Richard and I didn't have a tree for some years.

However when our sons were small we bought an artificial tree; I think it was in 1989 when Daniel was three, and very insistent that we should have our own tree. So he and Richard went out on Christmas Eve... but the only real trees they could find were either very scraggy, or enormous and very expensive. So they compromised with a fake tree, pointing out that if we used it for more than one year it would be good value. Thirty-five years later, we still have that tree. We didn't take it to Colorado when we lived there for two years, and we didn't have it here in Cyprus for our first few years. But it's probably had thirty Christmases. 

Since we were home educating in Cyprus, there was no obvious time to put up the tree and other decorations each year. So it was somewhat random. If we were hosting a Christmas party early in December, we would decorate before that event. If not, it was sometimes left until a day or two before Christmas. When the boys had grown up and left home, we didn't feel much like decorating at all, but usually managed to host local friends (and for many years Tim came home). 

In the past thirteen years, our friends' three daughters have helped put up our tree at some point in December. Thirteen years ago, when the oldest of them was six, and the youngest just two, the adults did most of the work, and the hanging of decorations was a bit ragged, so I adjusted everything after they had left.

But it made a tradition. In 2018, for instance, they managed most of it themselves. 

The date of putting up the tree has gradually become earlier in recent years. Since we take everything down around January 5th, I quite like having decorations up for at least four weeks. So in the past couple of years, we've decorated around Advent Sunday. And despite our young friends now being teenagers of 19, 16 and 14, this is still an important tradition for them. 

They put the tree together rapidly and efficiently, then open the decoration boxes to decide which baubles and other decorations they will use. 

The Roomba is now situated in the place where we used to have our tree, so we haven't quite determined the best place for it. But this year we decided to have it next to the DVD bookcases. 

We had already bought a poinsettia and placed it in the usual spot where they seem to thrive, despite our record of killing indoor plants:

And, as I have done for several years now, I hung last year's Christmas cards up across the doors between our living room and dining room: 

Many people no longer send cards (postage prices from the UK are horrendous) but those that do arrive usually get here in the last few days before Christmas, or the first couple of weeks of the new year. So I always keep them to display the following year.

On the table, our knitted nativity set was displayed, this time with the baby conveniently hidden inside Mary's skirts during advent:

I no longer have to do any rearranging of the tree. Our young friends are artistic and competent, and the result was just as I hoped: 

Christmas Decorations... and a few aberrations!

We don't do a great deal in the way of decorating the house for Christmas. I'm not artistic, so we tend towards minimalism - anything more would look cluttered rather than attractive.

But we always put up our artificial tree, bought nearly thirty years ago in the UK when we left it a bit late, and there were no real Christmas trees to be had (or not for a price we were prepared to pay). It has become an annual tradition, over the past nine years, for me to have help from my friend Sheila and her daughters. As they gave grown older, they have started decorating without much assistance, and this year they put the tree together by themselves.

They all remembered that the branches are of differing sizes, marked with letters of the alphabet to match the slots in which they go.

We were amused that K (13) was finding one branch at a time, locating its hole, and slotting it in.  H (10) was checking each branch in turn as she searched for those marked 'A', which she wanted to put in first. And E (8) was trying to sort them all into alphabetical piles before starting.

Despite these differences in approach, the tree was put together with surprisingly little argument. K then lost interest, and the younger girls did most of the decorating. I wasn't watching what they were doing... they decided to be creative, and made it look (as they explained) like a face:

They didn't expect me to keep it like that, so after I'd taken the photo H decorated more traditionally, and I didn't have to change anything later:

Well... other than picking it up and replacing a few items more firmly, after the cats knocked it down. But that has only happened twice so far, within a couple of hours of it going up. Since then, they have ignored it.

Meanwhile, E decided to get out the nativity characters which I knitted back in 2016.  Again, I wasn't taking too much notice, until she told me it was set up:

The donkey and sheep, she told me, were having a snack at the manger. Joseph had just acted as midwife for Mary, so he was exhausted and taking a nap (when I said I thought Mary would have been even more tired she rolled her eyes). One of the shepherds was so worn out from his walk to the stable that he had fallen over. And E was still not quite sure what to do with the Magi, since (as she pointed out correctly) they arrived some time afterwards (probably days later, maybe a couple of years later) when the shepherds would have gone home.

I adjusted them later to a more traditional scene:

The post to Cyprus at this time of year is remarkably slow. Most years we receive at least half of our Christmas cards after the New Year.  I've got into the habit of keeping the current year's cards in an envelope, to hang up the following December - not that there are as many as even five years ago, as fewer and fewer people send cards.  Only five have arrived so far this year, and they're up on a bookcase. But I had thirty-three from a year ago.

Yesterday I decided it was time to hang up last year's cards.  I managed to get the shorter string up, and hung eleven of the cards only to have Lady Jane take a decided interest:

While she was occupied, I started putting up the other string, which is a bit more complicated. I didn't expect her to come leaping towards me along the pelmets.  She didn't expect that brushing against the clock would knock it down and shatter the glass front...

I swept up the smithereens, and thought the clock was history. Then I noticed that it was still ticking. So I thought that perhaps we could at least rescue the mechanism. Further investigation revealed that the oval frame at the front of the clock was undamaged, as was the face, although the two had come apart and there were several broken-off pieces from around the edge. Richard said he thought that perhaps he could repair it...

... and succeeded in doing so.  So the clock, without a cover, is now back on the wall, as are the rest of last year's cards.

Oddly enough, Lady Jane has not been back to check on the Christmas cards or the string... and since 'her' human will be arriving this evening, for nine days in Cyprus, I hope she'll be too occupied over the next week or so to think about them again. 

Winter and Christmas preparation in Cyprus

I have evidently been neglecting this blog recently. I've been busy with various things, and somehow blogging has slipped off my radar. My last post was early November, when I was writing about October. Since then, winter (such as it is in Cyprus) has appeared, and Christmas will be here very soon. So here's a brief summary of the past six weeks or so:

The temperature always takes a downward turn around the second week of November. So around that time I got out our two cat beds. I made one of them, a few years ago, and we bought the other one. To my surprise, the cats decided to sleep in them.  However, Alex, who is really quite a large cat, squashes into the smaller bed:

While Lady Jane, his petite sister, spreads out comfortably in the larger bed:

On November 20th, we went into the large and somewhat random shop Kleima. I forget what we were looking for, but we spotted some large poinsettia plants at just €4.99.  We usually pay more than that for much smaller ones.  It felt much too early for a plant we consider to be a Christmas decoration.  And I was dubious about buying it from Kleima; the shop isn't known for great quality. But somehow we decided to buy one anyway.  The pot was a little small, so I re-potted the plant:

In the process, a couple of the stems fell out. They didn't break off, or anything; they were stems that had apparently been pushed into the soil to bulk the plant out a bit. I trimmed them and put them in water.  Over the next few days, I noticed other stems starting to droop... and on gentle pulling, found that they, too, were just loose stems.

However, the actual plant, while considerably less voluptuous than it originally appeared, has survived well and is looking good.

Our closest friends here had been away for over two months, so although winter was approaching I hadn't done any early morning walks in October or November. But they returned at last, and I woke early enough to see a sunrise on November 25th:

A few days later, it was my turn to travel, though I was only away for a week.  My flight was quite early, though after sunrise; as I looked out of the plane window I spotted part of a rainbow:

My trip was to the UK, in order to help my father celebrate a special birthday.  While there, visiting a garden centre, we saw this display of mechanical toys:

They were delightful to watch, but then we saw the boxes. Each one cost at least £30, some of them more, and one alone would be rather dull. They're not toys, and they're the kind of thing one would only get out at Christmas. They were a great display for the garden centre, but I did wonder who might buy one!

At the weekend there was a family party, with twenty of us in all, and a magnificent cake made by my father's wife:

Since I was seeing my siblings and their spouses, with whom we still exchange gifts at birthdays and Christmas, I did all my Christmas shopping online before I flew out. I then wrapped everything, and distributed appropriately.  I also wrote all the Christmas cards for UK friends and relatives, and got our newsletters printed and posted too.  I even made this year's Christmas puddings and mincemeat before my brief trip.  I don't think I have ever been so organised, and it was a good feeling.

A week after my return to Cyprus, the Christmas season was well underway.  The Larnaka Christian Writers' group had our annual Christmas potluck lunch with lots of good food and enjoyable company:

Among other things, I took along some of my first batch of mince pies.

Then, the following day, Sheila's daughters helped me to decorate our Christmas tree, something which has become an annual tradition:

A couple of days after that, Richard and I celebrated the 40th anniversary of our first date.  We had a take-away lunch, had some professional photos taken, and saw some of the lights of Larnaka:

In the evening we went out to eat, and then - along with many other people - took photos of this rather strange giant bauble at the end of the small pier:

At the weekend, I hung up last year's Christmas cards, something else I do each year since so many don't arrive until January. And I sewed up another shepherd I had knitted for our Nativity scene:

I made the first of this season's lemonade on Saturday, after buying a crate of thirty lemons for a couple of euros. On Sunday I made the second batch of mince pies, and some veggie 'sausage' rolls for freezing.  On Monday I made some gingerbread and chocolate chip cake.  I also opened up and made up the sofa bed in Tim's room, which made Jane very happy:

Tim arrived last night and she was even happier. He has always been her human of preference.

Today I made marzipan and put that on the Christmas cake. I need to make some more mince pies, within the next few days, and ice the Christmas cake... but that's about all until we cook the turkey on Christmas Eve.

The house is not as warm as we'd like because one of our central heating pumps needs to be replaced. We've bought the new pump, but the central heating engineer recommended by the shop hasn't come to fit it, though he said he would do so yesterday evening or this morning. However it's not particularly cold out, so an extra jacket is sufficient, at least at present.

I hope to write another blog post on Christmas Eve, as I tend to each year, and will then make a 'resolution' to write at least one post per week in 2018. 

Knitted Nativity (Jean Greenhowe)

I had not done any knitting for years. But I'd hankered after a knitted Nativity set since seeing one at a friend's house, and tracked down the pattern book, Jean Greenhowe's Christmas Special, on Amazon. I was given it for my birthday in April 2016, and bought plenty of double knitting yarn in a variety of colours, so I could start in May.

I began with one of the three magi (wise men), for no particular reason. Almost all the basic figures are the same, so I took it slowly and followed instructions carefully. The one thing I changed was to make all the skin tones olive or brown, suitable for characters from the Middle East and Asia, rather than pink, as suggested in the patterns.

I was told to 'block' the cloak by dampening it in water and the pinning it to the figure overnight. I didn't much like doing this, but I was pleased that I took the time to sort out my bobble-headed pins, which have been immensely useful in other projects.

I'm not convinced blocking made a great deal of difference to the cloak, so I didn't do it for all the others.

Jean Greenhowe patterns, I know from experience, are very well written, explaining each step carefully. I'm not good at thinking in 3D and there were times when I was bewildered, wondering how a particular piece was going to work out. This, for instance, was what the wise man's gift looked like after the knitting:

However, when rolled up and lightly stitched, it all made sense:

The hat was even more ingenious but I followed instructions, and was delighted with the result:

I decided to make the pink/red wise man next.  I thought he looked somewhat oriental in his dress, so made his skin tone a little yellower. I also decided to make him a bit shorter than the first king. The pattern had all the standing figures the same height, and that felt unrealistic. So I reduced the number of rows in the main body and the cloak, and it worked well.

Here are the two wise men side by side, to show the difference.

I next embarked on a shepherd. He was similar to make, with a simple headdress and a staff made from yarn wrapped around a straw. I wasn't sure how that would turn  out either, but followed the directions carefully, and was pleased with the result.  I followed my first shepherd with a lamb, which was quick and easy to make:

By now I felt ready to embark on the most important characters in the scene.  The manger looked straightforward and quick, but was in fact quite difficult to knit. Not that the pattern itself posed any complications. But it used two strands of double knitting, which was very tight to work with. Still, the effect was good and it was worth the problems. The yellow blanket (supposedly straw) is removable.

Knitting the Baby didn't take long, but my bugbear is always facial features, particularly mouths. That's no problem with the standing figures who all have beards, so all they needed was eyes and a hint of nose.  I wasn't happy with the features on either Mary or Baby Jesus, but they worked as a group with the manger:

I liked the adaptability so that the Baby could be removed from the manger and placed in Mary's arms:

Time for another shepherd, I decided, and I wanted to make him shorter than the first one; perhaps a shepherd boy, I thought at first. But shepherd boys at the time of the Nativity would have worn shorter clothes, and wouldn't have had beards. So I made a shorter shepherd:

I should perhaps have made him a bit thinner too, as he looks rather dumpy next to the first shepherd:

By this stage I had realised that I wanted a donkey in my Nativity scene. After much research, I discovered that Jean Greenhowe had created a pattern for one in her 'Christmas Treasures' booklet, separate from the original. I found it second-hand (though in excellent condition) on Amazon, and embarked on the donkey.

I'm glad I'd done the other figures first, as it was one of the most complex figures I've ever made. There are several different parts, and at times I was almost in despair.

However, it was worth the struggle.  I was very pleased indeed with the donkey when it was complete:

By this time it was mid-October, and I'd wanted to finish my set by the end of October, if at all possible.  I'd completed Joseph, so there was one more wise man - the yellow and orange one - who made a nice finale to my project.

Of course nobody knows how many wise men there were, and most likely they visited the Holy Family a couple of years after the Nativity rather than being present with the shepherds.  I'm sure there were many more than two shepherds too.

But any Nativity scene used as decoration in the Christmas season is representative only, and on the whole I was quite pleased with the display:

We kept the wise men separate, although on the same table, and I thought they looked surprisingly effective:

The whole scene, finally, bathed in sunlight one morning in December:

Knitted Nativity

As my young friend Helen pointed out to me this morning, it's exactly two months until Christmas. Even after nineteen years in Cyprus, I can't get my head around the thought of the approaching season while the daytime temperatures are still in the upper twenties.

However, it seemed an appropriate date to write about a small knitting project which has been ongoing for the past six months, and in my mind for a great deal longer.

I used to knit regularly when I was younger. Among other things I knitted several soft toys for the boys, a long scarf and - peak of my achievements - a cable-knit sweater for Richard, back in the early 1990s.  But the boys grew out of soft toys, and I did less and less knitting as other activities took its place. From time to time I thought about it; but the last thing I made, some years ago, was a small chicken that I gave to Helen's sister when she was born, a little over six years ago.

I had brought my knitting needles and yarn to Cyprus, but had a hard time finding any stuffing, until I needed it for the chicken, and had to buy a huge bag:

I thought that would motivate me to do more knitting, but it didn't. I started a cat, but got bored. I started a seasonal mouse, and got bored of that too. The pieces lay muddled up with my box of random yarns, and my knitting needles were idle.

In January this year, a friend on Facebook posted a link to an article giving the health benefits of knitting. Around the same time, I spotted on Amazon a booklet by Jean Greenhowe (the author who produced the booklet of knitting instructions for soft toys) featuring a knitted nativity scene. I had seen something similar at another friend's house many years ago and liked it very much. Our nativity figures are rather stylised - we were given them by people moving from the island - but I'd never found any affordable ones that I liked better.

So the Christmas knitting booklet went on my wishlist, and I was given it for my birthday, back in April. I hoped it might be - I would have ordered it myself, otherwise - and when I was in the UK earlier in the month I bought some very nice knitting yarn, a ten-pack of unusual colours that included some browns and greens; ideal, I thought, for my potential project.

One more thing to sort before getting started: I wanted a little drawer unit in which to store my knitting supplies, rather than keeping it in a box in a cupboard. I found exactly what I needed for around ten euros at the local thrift shop, and Alex gave it his stamp of approval:

I had already decided that, rather than knitting the people with light pink/beige skin, as in the instructions, I would make their faces olive or light brown, as is much more appropriate for people from the Middle East and Asian areas. So I visited a very nice little craft shop not far from where we live, and bought some suitable shades of brown too.

All the yarn, including the oddments from previous projects, fitted in one of the drawers nicely:

By then, it was the middle of May. I decided that if I knitted for half an hour each day, I might complete one figure per fortnight, meaning that I could finish all ten figures by about the middle of October.

I decided to start with one of the magi/kings/wise men. I opted for the 'green' one, since I had plenty of suitable colours. I followed instructions carefully, and was a little puzzled at the requirement to 'block' the outer cape, which seemed to require rather drastic acupuncture for the poor man overnight, after dampening it and turning it inside out:

I do trust Jean Greenhowe's instructions although there were times when I had no idea how something was going to work out. I am not at all good at thinking in three dimensions. Knitting the wise man's gift, I wondered if I'd done something wrong when I ended up with this:

However, I kept following the directions, and it turned into this:

At last everything was complete, just before the end of May. The sewing process is my least favourite part, but I was quite pleased with the result:

Next I decided to try Joseph. The main body was the same, with some variations, although I didn't think he looked as impressive as the wise man. Perhaps that's appropriate, since he was an ordinary carpenter:

However, I finished him in just a week. Without the fiddly gift and headpiece, and with more confidence in the instructions (and no having to hunt for suitable pins...) it was considerably quicker.

Then I did a shepherd, and that took less than a week, though wrapping yarn around a bendy straw as the final touch was rather fiddly:

After three human figures, I decided to try something else. The manger wasn't a difficult pattern, but was remarkably difficult to knit as it required double thickness of yarn, which, on 3mm needles, took a great deal of effort.

Mary was a bit more complicated than the men too, as she is in a permanent sitting-down position. Moreover, as there's no beard she needed a mouth; I found it impossible to get that to look right, but hope that won't show too much when the whole scene is in place.

I put off knitting baby Jesus, for a while, wondering if this fell into the category of making graven images... however I could hardly have a nativity scene without him, so I continued, and was pleased that he is able to be taken out of the manger and held in Mary's arms:

I had realised that the cream yarn which I used for the shepherd's headdress was thicker than double knitting, and I didn't want to use it for the lambs. I also realised that I didn't have bright enough colours for the other wise men.

But I learned that the Zako shop on the main road nearby sells knitting yarn, so we went there and I bought yet more supplies:

By this stage, it was the end of June and I was way ahead of my provisional schedule. I was also feeling a lot more confident about how the figures worked, so I decided that, rather than having all the standing figures the exact same height, I would make my next wise man a bit shorter. That meant he was quicker to knit, too; here he is next to the first one:

Next I embarked on a lamb. I wasn't too sure about the eventual result, which included quite a bit of fiddly sewing:

But when placed next to the shepherd, the effect isn't too bad:

I did the third king mainly in yellow; I enjoyed making the wise men the most:

I know that there may have been more than three of the wise men; but there were three gifts mentioned in the Biblical accounts and there are three patterns, so I decided to stick with the traditional three.

I wanted one more shepherd, and thought I'd make him shorter than the first one too, as I was pleased with the effect of the shorter wise man.  I think perhaps I overdid it (or under-did it...) as he looks a bit too short; but never mind:

It was early August by now, and I'd completed almost everything well ahead of schedule. So I started a second lamb, but having knitted all the pieces, I realised there was no hurry to sew them together. And I started playing around with some of the tree decorations in the same booklet.

I also realised that I was lacking another important animal: the donkey that carried Mary and Joseph to Bethlehem. A brief search online revealed that Jean Greenhowe had been asked repeatedly for a donkey, and had included one in a different Christmas knitting pattern book. No longer in print, it could be found very inexpensively from the Amazon Marketplace.

I had arranged to spend three weeks in the UK in late August, so I ordered the booklet, and was delighted to receive it in 'as new' condition. But the donkey instructions looked remarkably complicated. I didn't start knitting that until nearly the end of September, and it was, indeed, a more complex set of instructions than any of the others.

I played around with starting to knit a couple of other things. Then, after discussion with my small friends, I began knitting a doll from yet another Jean Greenhowe book.

I realised, about a week ago, that my knitting drawers had become very muddled. So I took everything out, and sorted the different pieces from different items, and put them in bags so that I could see what I had:

I set myself a target of finishing the donkey by Sunday.  Once again the sewing part was the most fiddly; the legs involved sections of straws as well as stuffing, to keep them sturdy, and the mane was very strange. But I was pleased with the result:

I also completed the second lamb. I haven't put everything out together to make the Nativity tableau, so that will happen mid-December, or whenever we decide to put up Christmas decorations.

And if anyone wants even more detail than this post describes, here's a full description of the Nativity knitting process which was originally on a separate blog dedicated just to knitting projects.