Day 5 of the 2021 Online Advent Calendar

 Welcome to day 5 of the 2021 Online Advent Calendar and the second Sunday of Advent.  If you were just cruising around looking for dusty, neglected blogs, the Online Advent Calendar is hosted by Jo at Serendipitous Stitching.  For previous days' postings and more information you can go here.

I am very much a holiday/Christmas stitcher.  I, before being possessed by a knitting demon, always had a holiday piece on the frame.  I still have one on the frame, it's just not getting too much love right now (that's not strictly true, as it's a Christmas stocking, I'm now frantically stitching on it ;-)).  Here are the last two Christmas pieces I finished:

The one on the left is Vintage Baubles by Shannon Christine Designs.  The one on the right is Candy Nutcracker by Barbara Baatz for Kooler Design Studio.  These were made for my great-niece Cassimera and my great-nephew Grady.  I have one Christmas stocking on the frame for Cassie's new brother, Beckett and one for Grady's baby sister, Ellidae is in the wings.  

Jo always provides us with a question or theme for discussion and this year's is to tell you about my tree.

While I love real trees, I have had various artifical ones for probably 30 years or so.  I don't honestly remember why we switched over to an artificial one, but clean-up is easy and I'm not finding needles in April.  Despite having an aritifical tree, I am not one that puts their tree up right after Thanksgiving (American).  The tree goes up, typically, a couple of weeks before Christmas and stays up until Epiphany. And that statement may be why we have an artificial tree.  As people pushed back the start of Christmas to Thanksgiving, the supply of real trees was greatly diminished by the time we went to get one.  Rather then buy a real one that was not going to be at its best by the time we put it up and completely dried out by the time we took it down, we decided an artifical one would be best.

I'll start from the top down - we have an angel.  It was The Hubs'.  It's seen better days, but the season is also about memories and she has plenty.  Our tree is now pre-lit but I am a Christmas light lover, so it was always the more the better.  I don't have a color, or any, theme for the tree.  I have glass and stitched and handmade and glitzy, tacky and whatever catches my eye at the time ornaments on it.  I add a couple new ones each year.  Ever since the dog walked past the tree and came away covered with it (gotta love static and fluffy dogs) we have not added tinsel.  I'm not sure if tinsel is the same world-round, but for me, it's thin strips of shiny metal foil, usually silver and it looks like icicles on the tree.  I do use a shiny beaded garland.  And last, but definitely not least, I use the same tree skirt every year.  My sister made it for me and I treasure it.

As for stories of the trees over the years, I could tell you about the foster kitten that scaled it, or the cat that picked all the ornaments off, or the dog that used the water reservoir as his drinking bowl but every year there is a story added to the tree.  This year, even though I'm in Virginia and they're in Michigan and will probably never see my tree, we're adding Ellidae and Beckett to the tree's story.

Happy Christmas and Season's Greetings if you celebrate a holiday this time of year.  I hope you have a wonderful day if you don't celebrate.  I wish all of you peace in the coming year.