Seasonal greetings...

So, as it is officially autumn again, my thoughts naturally turn to CHRISTMAS! MWAHAHAHAHA!

More specifically Advent Calendars. Every year I try to get unusual or interesting advent calenders for JJ and the family and I normally leave it too late. Last year I got JJ a lego advent and tried to order it in November only to find it was out everywhere and ended up having to pay well over the odds on Ebay for it so this year I put a reminder in my calender to get one earlier and today the reminder went off.

So I have been looking this evening. I'm not sure that I will get himself a lego this year, doesn't pay to be too predictable. And on my hunt, I found some GORGEOUS specimens....

I particularly like this with the polar bear insert :




And this one is a snip at a mere £30,000.

The advent calendar I remember most fondly is one that my parents gave me when I was about 12. It was a 3d house that, when you opened the windows, it enhanced the house. So for example, one window would coincide with the actual window on the house, opening it showed the inside of the room and a mouse, icing a christmas cake. It was fantasic and I still had it until recently.

I also read Gift of the Magi which I hadn't read before - ahhhhhh!

Autumn

Officially Autumn on Saturday and it really felt it. I was reminded of one of my favorite poems by Keats:

Season of mists and mellow fruitfulness!
Close bosom-friend of the maturing sun;
Conspiring with him how to load and bless
With fruit the vines that round the thatch-eaves run;
To bend with apples the mossed cottage-trees,
And fill all fruit with ripeness to the core;
To swell the gourd, and plump the hazel shells
With a sweet kernel; to set budding more,
And still more, later flowers for the bees,
Until they think warm days will never cease,
For Summer has o'erbrimmed their clammy cells.

Who hath not seen thee oft amid thy store?
Sometimes whoever seeks abroad may find
Thee sitting careless on a granary floor,
Thy hair soft-lifted by the winnowing wind;
Or on a half-reaped furrow sound asleep,
Drowsed with the fume of poppies, while thy hook
Spares the next swath and all its twined flowers;
And sometimes like a gleaner thou dost keep
Steady thy laden head across a brook;
Or by a cider-press, with patient look,
Thou watchest the last oozings, hours by hours.

Where are the songs of Spring? Ay, where are they?
Think not of them, thou hast thy music too, -
While barred clouds bloom the soft-dying day
And touch the stubble-plains with rosy hue;
Then in a wailful choir the small gnats mourn
Among the river sallows, borne aloft
Or sinking as the light wind lives or dies;
And full-grown lambs loud bleat from hilly bourn;
Hedge-crickets sing, and now with treble soft
The redbreast whistles from a garden-croft;
And gathering swallows twitter in the skies.

Lucious, isn't it?

A fierce but friendly really dragon.

My fierce but friendly really dragon., originally uploaded by Angry Angel.

YAY! I have been waiting for EVER for a pattern for this dragon so I could make it for my sister and add to her mutant animal collection (not that the pattern is mutant - my appaulling crafting skills produce the mutants) but I have been checking the wrong page for the pattern. I am SO happy now!

Having said that, I have to finish my hubbys replacement VW hat first - I shall post pictures once it is done.

Flickr

This is a test post from , a fancy photo sharing thing.

YAY! It worked!