Poetry Monday: Holiday Romance

It's Poetry Monday . . . and the topic this week is "holiday romance."

Join Diane and me (Delores is on temporary hiatus) as we take this topic out on a date. You can leave a poem in the comments on either of our blogs, or post on your own blog. If the latter, please leave a comment to let us know where to find you. Use the topic or not; just have fun.

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I may be in the minority here, but I've never had a holiday romance. So I felt a bit at sea when considering the topic.

Then I thought about romance in terms of "what," not "who," and a dim bulb finally brightened.

The thing I love to do that's connected with the holidays is to make Christmas tree ornaments. I don't know why, but making ornaments brings lightness to my heart and a sparkle to my eye. I get butterflies when I think about it. Truly I do. That may be weird, but it's how I'm wired.

A hundred points for anyone who noticed that "wired" is just "weird" with the letters rearranged.

So anyway, the last few years I've made a lot of Christmas ornaments to sell at craft sales, using stacks of buttons or thread spools. (I make other stuff, too, but that's a different topic.) You can read about them and see some pictures here, or you can take my word for it and just look at these pictures from last year:

Snowmen made from buttons. I also make Santas, Christmas trees and angels.

Thread spool ornaments . . . with buttons on top and bottom . . . and that's a hand-made tassel on the left one, people. Not so impressive when one realizes that everything was hand-made at one time, though. Why do we think machine-made is the pinnacle of beauty, I wonder?

This year I tried a couple of new things:

Little felt people,which may look familiar to Steve and his readers at Shadows & Light, modelled on an ornament given to me last Christmas, similar to the ones Steve found:

The first one off the home assembly line. A bit wonky. Kept for personal use, as is usual with my first drafts.

Angels with musical instruments:

Angels with music books:

Angels with flowers:

Angels with feather wings (my personal favourite); these are tiny, about two inches high:

And bundles of cinnamon sticks with dried orange peel stars, inspired by two things: the need to use up a bag of cinnamon sticks I inherited when our daughter moved away, and reading about crafting with orange peelings by Cherie at North Yorkshires Craft Guru -- thanks for the inspiration, Cherie!

They smell pretty good. You can't smell them? You're not close enough to the screen. Come closer. Closer . . .

Now, I'd like to report that these items were a huge hit with buyers at the several craft sales where I flog my wares and that I am now very rich because so many sold . . . but that would be lying. I sold very few of them, which was a disappointment. But I had fun making them, and I'm proud of the final product, and they will keep until next year's sale, where they will get marked down in price in order to move them along.

And I've found my new project for next year's sale: Gnomes!

One variation of many on the gnome theme. This is not my work, but I hope to replicate it. (photo: Pixabay)

Another hundred points for anyone who noticed I've managed to work a whole post about crafts into what was supposed to be a Poetry Monday post.

Thank you for your patience. To help make up for it, today's poem is another short one!


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Can I Interest You In Yet Another Glittery Gizmo??

Some folks would be on cloud nine if they could be on a beach with their feet in the sand
But I could die happy if I had buttons/ribbons/fabric/felt/beads and a glue gun in my hand


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Wishing you a week of romance or creativity -- or both!

Update:  As next Poetry Monday is Christmas Eve, the topic will be "that time of year" . . .