These are a couple of placemats I made for one of my sisters (and if my mom can hold off telling everyone she know about this blog–hi mom–she won’t know she’s getting them for christmas). You would think placemats would be easy, hell even my husband said so, but you really do have to pay attention. You can’t watch crappy tv while cutting them out with your dull ass rotary cutter on your cutting mat that is way to small, or none will be the same size. This set is saved by the pretty fabric, but I made another set (for another sister) and everything went wrong: they are too big, I used plaid fabric so you can see every flub, I tried to make them pretty with a decorative stitch, but it make them look old fashioned, so I made some matching napkins (I never want to hem anything again) and they look ridiculously small next to the huge placemats, oh and I had to patch some fabric together because I didn’t have enough. There is always at least one project that goes like this, where everything goes wrong no matter what you try. My mom used to call these days “E.I triple T. S.” days: everything I touch turns to shit. So here’s something nobody can screw up:
pomanders. I did this with my daughter and her friend last week: just push cloves into oranges or clementines; for small people cut a tiny slit in the orange so the clove goes in more easily. You can tie a pretty ribbon around them and hang them on your tree or in your closet–they smell lovely. I was going to make letters with the cloves and spell out something festive (noel was the shortest christmas sentiment I could think of) but we started eating the oranges…
Here is something you can do if you want to eat them and another if you don’t have any cloves.
