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My gift was wrapped in brown paper and adorned with a luggage tag bearing a button snowman!

And......the recipient of my carefully woven basket gift was Lisa.  Lisa is a fabulous stitcher, as you'll see later on, so I must admit I was a little nervous.....but she seemed to like it!

Lisa in turn made for Jeannette, a lovely jar with pincushion top and stuffed to the brim with sewing goodies......

Jeannette made for Nic, and carefully wrapped her goodies in this gorgeous little wicker hamper - she knows Nic has a penchant for hampers!

Jeannette made these beautiful tweed fabric hearts strung with pretty flowery ribbon and adorned with tiny jewels. 

And filled the basket with handmade iced Christmas biscuits. 

I was the lucky recipient of Nic's gift, some beautiful ceramic heart tags made at a recent Rachel Dormor workshop, plus a really pretty pressed glass bowl and creamer from Nic's own glass collection.

Michelle received a lovely stash of handmade fork pom poms made by Sue - beautifully festive!

Michelle made for Amy and her gift was home made bath and massage oil scented with lavender and camomile and presented in a gorgeous vintage decanter, tied with ribbon and luggage tag.  Michelle even added some glitter to add some extra Christmas sparkle! Amy was clearly thriilled.

Amy's gift to Shiela was a beautiful Christmas Tree cross-stitch presented in an embroidery hoop - Shiela very quickly announced that she had the perfect spot to hang her lovely gift.

Pat's gift, made by Sam, was a beautiful, personalised mug hug - which, as you can see here, also nicely fits an ample glass of mulled wine!!!

Pat made Sue a super cosy, chocolate brown, chenille scarf.  It was on in a flash!

There were no prizes for guessing who made this stunning coffee and walnut cake!  Shiela is renowned for them in these parts - and Sam was the lucky recipient - though I did wonder whether lucky was the right word, since Sam very generously proceeded to share it with us all, leaving her with only half a cake!!!

I think we all enjoyed both the making and sharing of our gifts, in the knowledge that we had invested our time wisely, with love, and had made something which would be appreciated.

I can't finish this post, without showing you a few pictures of the very talented Lisa Museum's finished Santa washing line! She's been working on this at Sew n' Crow over recent weeks and here it is in all its glory - ta dah!

All handmade and handstitched.

How cute.

Sam's cat, Wellington, seemed pretty non-plussed by all of the activity and decided instead that Nic's ball of yarn made a great head rest and the perfect spot for a snooze, whilst we ooohed, aaarh'd, drank and ate!!!

On Sunday a delegation from HH HQ hit Cambridge, on a mission!

Tipped off by Harriet, who had previously attended Rachel's stoneware day course, four of us eagerly set off at a very civilised 8.45am to travel to Rachel Dormor's Cambridge Studio for a porcelain handbuilding workshop.

Rachel's beautiful work greeted us as we entered her studio - amid welcoming wafts of freshly brewed coffee.

After introductions and a brief round table explanation of our previous clay experiences (most of which hark back to our school days) we began..........

Rachel started by explaining the basics and giving us all what looked like a camembert to work with. Our weapon of choice: a rolling pin!

Rachel has the most beautiful set of printer's letters which I couldn't wait to delve into...once I had made something to impress them into!



How pretty are these little ceramic stamps too?



Our first 'creation' was a handbuilt porcelain jug. It was a little tricky to get it to stand on it's own but with a little help and encouragement from Rachel, it was there. The pattern is acheived with embossed fresco wallpaper! We also all did a vase or jug using a former to wrap the porcelain around too.