Advent Flowers

Hey friends,

This week I had an impromptu day in London, sketching and enjoying the sunshine. Although it was quite cold! I got off the Tube at Westminster where I sketched the Abbey. And gave directions to some tourists who then proceeded to go in completely the opposite direction. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

This page was pre-splashed with watercolour. I love how it worked just perfectly with the sketch of Westminster Abbey. :-)

There is just one month until Christmas! This weekend we’ll watch the first Christmas film. We usually watch one, sometimes two, each weekend in Advent. Not sure which one we will start with but we will probably end with The Muppets Christmas Carol. The best film version of that story ever made. :-)

What are your go-to Christmas films?

I have a little advent present for you: a wee embroidery motif. Yes, it’s not Christmas-y because I’d like it to be useful besides this holiday. But with a fitting colour choice you can make it feel festive if you like. And there is room for playing with this pattern. Use all outlines, as in the image below, or go to town with all your favourite fill stitches. The pattern is 2.5” in diameter so it should work up fairly quickly. You could combine it with a mini embroidery hoop and make brooches as gifts.

You can download the motif here. There will be more motifs in the three coming weeks too. I made a simple layout where you can pop in all of them if you would like to stitch them together. You can download that layout here. :-)

I hope you have a lovely weekend.

x Carina

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Some Things I Am Enjoying

Book: The Christmas Chronicles: Notes, Stories & 100 Essential Recipes for Midwinter* by Nigel Slater. I enjoyed the writing in the ‘stories’ parts of the book but, alas, the recipes were very meat heavy and let’s just say there was some skipping of photo pages.

Book: Horizons: A Global History of Science* by James Poskett. Very interesting book!

Music: Midnights. The latest album from Taylor Swift.

Watching: The Andy Warhol Diaries series on Netflix.

Instagram: @mark_hearld.

*bookshop.org link