Skiing in the French Alps

Last week I went skiing in "Les 3 Vallées"
That's me on the pistes just outside our chalet-hotel!

Snowy mountains and blue sky; big change of scenery for me (from London)

The sun was casting a lovely light on the relief and snow bumps

The view from one of the glacier

View from Roc de Fer

Across Les Ménuires (or was it Val Thorens?)

Again I love how the light played with the bumps

The wind sculpted the snow like a sand dune

With Simon!

Starting to be covered in snow
(because it snowed, not because I rolled into it)

Not so great visibility then...

A cheese fondue is the best to recover!

At Mickey's!!

During the previous holidays I went to Disneyland Paris - yay! We enjoyed our favourites attractions, the parades, the show they do with the castle, strolling along happy-face people… and queuing most of day! 

The main street

Pirates of the Caribbean

Princesses are excessively mannered

Space Mountain at night

Playing with the Christmas Tree lights 

 To finish the day, a spectacular show with lots of effects

My Birthday

A couple of weeks ago it was my birthday - yay! We had a party, especially as it happens to be new year's evening… 

Louna helps Sarah making tartines

Bread, olive oil, rocket, parma ham, dried tomatoes
topped with fried garlic and pine nuts
… a real treat!

For dessert: a crepe cake (recipe here)

Step-by-step Hand-Felted Necklace

As I went home for holidays, I assisted my sister making necklaces! Today I show you the step-by-step confection of a hand-felted necklace.

First step is to choose assorted colours of wool and make a knot with the fiber.

Second step is to push fiber ends inside, shaping the knot into a ball with a hook.

See the progression, from folded knot to tighter ball.

And here are all the balls of wool for this necklace.

Third step is to felt the wool balls, using soapy water and hand workout! The idea is to make the ball tighter and tighter (but not too much either as one needs to embroider them) rotating them in the palm of the hands.

Once they have dried, it is the tricky part of finding a quantity of small beads & buttons to insert between two felted beads matching the style and colours.

Then one needs to arrange them in a balanced and harmonious order.

Then sew all together on sewing thread. We use satin cord for the visible part of the thread.

Finally, each of the felted bead is embroidered following a pattern, like spiral, stars, dots or leaves.