It is the last, or almost last, day of November, and it is a foggy and wet night in Copenhagen.
The last couple of days I have dared to look at the blog 'count-o-meter' and it seems that people are up for a little bit of christmas fun and random rantings at this space again this year! As usual I sort of stumble breathlessly into the seasonal blogging, as this is (as mentioned before) a very busy time of year, and this year, all is as nuts as usual. Home renovation, work deadlines on top of each other (after a very quiet summer with not much to do - maybe I should start a summer blog?) - and as usual, we have a lot of these small crafty christmas fairs in Copenhagen, and as usual I try to produce something in the line of christmas finery (and start working on it in the latest of possible minutes. Of course).
Usually I try to come up with at least one thing I haven't done before, along with the jewellery and paper things, which I always do. This year, I decided to do some simple himmeli-style ornaments. Some of you have read about my rather mad obsessing over these lovely (mostly) Finnish christmas decorations - I wrote about them
here,
here and also a bit about making them
here.
I figured it would be reasonably easy to produce a whole bundle of simple, small ones, as hanging ornaments, but decided against natural straw or drinking plastic straws (too flimsy), and started to look for some more sturdy materials. I managed to get my hands on various types of brass tubes, found some pretty black thin carbon fibre tubes in one hobby shop, and some white plastic ones in another.
When I started to work on my little project, it quickly dawned on me that it would take forever to produce the hundreds and hundreds of small bits of tube, that I needed, with my little hobby saw and my old chopping board. To cut just one bit of brass took me at least a full minute - so multiply that by a gazillion, and understand my despair.
But luckily, I have a sister who is a teacher, and she simply took me and my bundles of tubes to her school woodshop, had a really nice woodshop teacher introduce me to the many nifty powertools and workbenches, and just a song and a dance later all my little bits were cut!
So this blogpost is dedicated to my lovely sister and heaven sent himmeli-factory-assistant - and I managed to get a fairly big batch made for todays market. If you live nearby, you can buy them
here....
So this - among other things - has kept me busy. But I will be back, with both words, images, and nice things for you to make.
*And what's with the
'rauhallista joulua' - ????
Simply my excuse to post this darling old Finnish christmas card. It means 'merry christmas' - duh!
Do you see the himmeli?
