Fire Angel and Ice Queen...

The little Fire Angel is finished, and also Mother Winter who has been waiting patiently for her ribbons and bows.  Perhaps she has been sleeping, hiding away from all this heat and bright sunlight and dreaming of long dark nights and ice festooned trees.

She is lying on the small gift bag I made for her, 

hand-sewn out of linen dyed with onion skins and eucalyptus leaves.

And just for Oya's Daughter...the trick is actually a tiny, very fine pen nib, 

mounted on a feather for lightness, and gold ink!

In the end, I decided not to try looking for a suitable quote as I would be here till next Christmas on the web trying to find something.  So I just wrote a little poem that I think/hope will be appropriate for its new owner.

Old Mother Winter with her ice leaves and crystals.

Another little poem, about rebirth and the circle of seasons.  Within the dead of winter lies the seed waiting for spring (goodness, I sound like a Bette Midler song!), and here, in Western Australia at least (apparently in the East States summer has yet to put in an appearance) in the harsh dry summer we wait for the greening that comes with the Autumn rains.

It has been a busy weekend, I always have this pie-in-the-sky Christmas dream of a perfectly clean and tidy house ready to be decorated with gorgeous home-made things, but I never quite seem to get there.  Always there is a mad scramble of cleaning and dusting (accompanied by much sneezing), of putting away (or when that fails, shoving into the spare room), of cooking and Christmas always arrives at least a week early. I made my Pan Fortes, but will need to make more as they are likely to disappear without a trace when the other half is anywhere near.  Mind you, the munchkins will also magically disappear them now, despite the fact that they are quite spicy (Chilli has become a compulsory ingredient in the last few years)!  But today I decided I'd had enough with the cleaning, and spent a little time making a Christmas banner for my kitchen window.  Brown paper and string never looked so good, I think!