After two weeks of horrible weather we were beginning to think our Christmas break would be longer than usual. Thankfully it cleared up enough for us to have our planned Christmas party. First of all though I have a lot of finishes to show you as the cold weather has encouraged us to stay in doors and keep busy. Back in May we had our first swap night. Sheena picked up a lovely cross stitch kit and has not only finished it but has also framed it. You can see how fitting it is as the cats look out at the lovely snow scene. Silver thread has added a touch of glitter to it.
Donna has used her crochet skills to make this lovely Christmas stocking (as modelled by Moira). I wonder how many of us would have wanted that as their stocking. Not only is it very pretty but it would also hold a lot of presents!
As you can see the snow has kept Val very busy. She has finished two beautiful quilts and a table runner. The first is a daisy quilt. You can see the daisy pattern in the close up. This is going to be a wall hanging (I think it may also be my favourite as I love daisies). The second is her beautiful Christmas table runner. Helen and I both admired her fabric choices. All of which were festive and went well together. We couldn't decide which of the fabrics was our favourite. Lastly she finished a stunning musical quilt. This is going to a charity raffle. I can't imagine anyone who wouldn't want to buy a ticket in order to win it.
Janette has also been busy. She finished two quilted dogs. The first one is in bold red, black and white musical fabric. This is going to be for charity. The second is a little different from her usual. It's done in tweed fabric. Very different to the other quilted dogs but no less lovely. The last is again done in tweed but this time quilted ducks. These ducks are actually filled with sand are to be door stops. 
Roberta finished knitting this lovely baby cardigan for her granddaughter. She used a striping yarn which had a lovely effect on the jumper. Roberta herself is unsure of it's turn out but the rest of us admired it.
Last but certainly not least of our finishes are the dolls. Yes the dolls are back. Stephanie had ordered some more of these little dolls and has already knitted up their little outfits. Everyone is completely enamoured by them and I can see us coming back to more after Christmas.
Our party came later. We had Christmas music playing in the back ground. We had Christmas cracker and of course we all put on our Christmas hats. And as you can see from Adam we also had mince pies. This is the first year we have had the space to do something like this and so we were all very excited about it.
We also had a secret santa style game which Helen suggested months ago. The idea was that everyone gets an unwanted gift or unused item from their home, wrap it up and bring it in. I then put names in a bag and with the help of my glamorous assistant (Suzanna) called them out. Each person came down one at a time, picked a gift and opened it. You could choose to keep the gift or swap with anyone who has went before you. Poor Val got to go first which meant she had no one to swap with. Luckily she liked her gift and got to keep it too. I was actually surprised that more people chose not to swap. We did have a couple though. Helen who had threatened to swap with someone got a beautiful bag which she decided to keep. Stephanie was next and got some lovely leather gloves. She decided thought that the bag would go better with her jacket and so swapped. The only other swap was Moira and Isabel. Moira received designer toilet paper. Isabel was a little jealous and so Moira swapped with her. Now Isabel is chuffed to bits as she can tell everyone she has designer loo roll.
It was a great night and I think everyone enjoyed themselves. Our bakers even brought along some treats for us. Aileen had made some chocolate covered dates with a nut centre. It proved to be a favourite amongst the non-mince pie people. Magdalena also treated us to some traditional Polish Christmas cake. As you can see it was quickly devoured by the group.Hopefully we can do this again next year. Maybe have to think up a different game. Any ideas?
In the meant time I hope you all have a very merry Christmas and a happy New Year. We will be back on 4th January. Hope to see you there.
Almost forgot, there were several more photo's but obviously I didn't want to completely over run the blog post. You can see the rest of our Christmas photo's on our facebook page.
