It’s the third Sunday in Advent today, so we lit another candle on the Advent ring and our daily Advent candle is going down fast, I’ve been pretty good at keeping up with it this year. We’re taking it in turns with chocolates from the advent calendar, I have the even days, my OH has the odd days!
We’ve been starting to decorate the house for Christmas this weekend, we walked up to the local riding stables to buy our Christmas tree, as usual we pulled about a dozen out before we found one we liked…I’m sure we’re not the only fussy ones! It needs to be not too wide at the bottom, so it doesn’t fill the lounge, not too thick with branches so decorations have room to hang, but not too thin either, nice shape…I like the traditional norse pine as I don’t think you get as much scent with the non drop trees, and they are cheaper!! We walk back with it under our arms, always a laugh, especially when we’re trying to cross a busy road! It’s become a bit of a family tradition!
Pride of place this year on our tree is my Mistletoe Humbug. It’s a design by Faby Reilly, isn’t it gorgeous!! It was fairly quick to do, once I got the counting right across the line of mistletoe. I love the gold ribbon curling around the mistletoe, though I’m still not keen on stitching with gold thread, I just don’t like the feel of it! Three different stitches are used for all the gold starts.
Around the edge of the design is a line of backstitch in ecru thread, this is used to whipstitch the humbug together. There are excellent tutorials on Faby’s website on how to make up humbugs etc once the design is stitched. You can line it instead if you want so you can put a little treat inside. I decided to stuff mine, I had some narrow gold tape which matched perfectly for the hanging loop.
I’ve got two more of Faby’s Christmas designs to stitch, I might just get one done by Christmas, but I think two could be a stitch too far! I think I’ll try and make the Christmas star, there’s not so much stitching! I’d like to stitch some more humbugs next year as Faby has some beautiful Christmas ones, they look so cute hanging on a Christmas tree.
I’m linking up today with Kathy’s Quilts for Slow Stitching Sunday, why not have a look what everyone else is stitching.
thecraftycreek 
Your story about the Christmas tree made me smile – obviously it’s such fun. I love your mistletoe piece.
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A beautiful treasure to hang on your tree! I do love the star too!
Thanks for linking up to Slow Sunday Stitching!
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Oh wow, it’s looking fab in your tree! What beautifully neat stitching too 🙂 !!
I know what you mean about gold thread – it’s not very pleasant to stitch with, but the final result is well worth the effort, I think.
You probably know this already, but just in case you don’t, Thread Heaven is a sort of wax that you can safely use to coat your metallic threads and which makes them glide much more smoothly through the fabric. It helps a bit.
Happy Sunday 🙂 !
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Thanks for the tip Faby, I’ve not heard of Thread Heaven, I’ll have a look on line 🙂
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I love the design of these, I’m going to check out the website. We got our tree and decorated this weekend too. Decided to have it down and welcome our college girls home instead of waiting for them. Will do some baking together instead. Love the smell of our tree!! Your new humbug looks wonderful on the tree!
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the Humbug looks lovely!
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When I see the word “humbug” I always think “Bah, humbug” with its anti-Christmas attitude! But your little humbug is delightful!
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What a beautiful design! It’s always nice to have some hand made ornaments thrown into the mix. Thanks for sharing your tree story – I definitely got a giggle!
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Nice story. I didn’t know what a Mysterious Mistletoe Humbug would be! Love it.
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