Fairy Story

My tenuously tree-related craftwork for today?

Making a paper skirt for a fairy.

Some days I find myself looking around for the hidden cameras, I really do. But if truth be told said fairy has been in need of new clothing (for decency's sake as much as anything...) for a few years now. And yes, as you may have guessed, she's the fairy from the top of the Christmas tree; I believe she pretty comfortably pre-dates me as a member of the family. Originally she came with a skirt of crepe paper and golden (iirc) mesh, but years of having the top of a pine tree rammed up her, ah, garments as a means of getting her to stay in place at the top of the tree, well they long ago took their inevitable toll and she's been hiding behind a swathe of tinsel since the early 1990s. So today I sat down and pleated some tissue paper and bound it on with the aid of some wired tinsel. From a distance it didn't look too bad, although close to it's a little more revealing in terms of what shows through than is perhaps desirable in a Christmas fairy. Shouldn't be a problem as long as the cross-eyed robin isn't placed in an unfortunate position... But as I say, didn't look too bad.

Unforunately surviving the brisk tree-dressing habits of the Old Man was more than the pleats could cope with...



Mind you we're lucky to have any other decorations but lights round here at all. The Old Man loves his Christmas lights. Not the large, inflatable snowman, santa-and-sleigh-across-the-roof kind of lights, but strings and strings of little fairy lights. Mainly white. He does all the front windows and a string in the wisteria by the front door, not for our benefit but for the Chapel carolaire which is held just over the road and considered to be a bit of A Local Event. Then it spread to doing the front part of the hall with what was left over of the string of lights from doing the front door. Fresh lights this year have enabled a really good spread into the rest of the hall and comfortably into the dining room so it resembles Santa's grotto. The only thing likely to stop the march next year is going to be a shortage of map pins...