Merry christmas

we have finally started the happy season with Montol, a Penzance solstice festival of guise

the main thing is to be masked or in disguise so all those familiar local faces disappear behind masks and we are all quite disoriented

we take lanterns through the town and up to an old fort above Penzance where a beacon is lit.  There are fire dancers and strange disguised morris dancers

and afterwards the home edders came back for mulled wine and chilli in baked potatoes.  This and Mousehole christmas lights always make me feel christmassy

and then the last minute christmas making can begin.  Every year I tell myself  'next year will be different' and every year my sewing machine is buzzing away on christmas eve!  But this year it was accompanied by the most delicioussy peanut butter cookies I have ever tasted in my life...  honestly.  And they come from this gorgeous book that my lovely sister sent me

because she is lucky enough to live near San Francisco where this beautiful and apparently 'most charming' pastry shop lives.  Because I can't visit Miette we did a deal, she went to Miette for me and took a photo and I went to the Tinners arms in Zennor for a pint of cider for her.  But she went a step further and sent this beautiful book that means I am going out to buy tiny tartlet tins and miniature cake tins so we can make all the beauteous bounty within its pages

aside from eating biscuits I was also sewing today (yes christmas eve, a little late as usual!).  Stockings

Using this cute reindeer pattern for decoration on them

this is as far as I had got when I realised it was (only just) still light enough to photograph but I assure you they are now finished and I have cracked open the Baileys.

So a Merry Christmas to all of you and thank you for all your lovely comments over the year, it's so lovely to have crafting conversations with people from all over the world, I am always a little overwhelmed by the incredibleness of the internet and all the wonderful people it puts me in touch with

x