A Little Crafting for Me

Because I am overly-ambitious when it comes to crafts, I find myself during the Advent season scurrying to finish sewing, stitching, baking, beading for other people, trying to meet a Christmas Eve deadline. If I make a batch of ornaments, I usually end up keeping one for myself, but I rarely have time to complete the crafts I wanted to make just for me. But once Christmas day and my obligations have passed, I have until Three Kings' Day to make up whatever I want.

Last Tuesday, the cookies were baked (and being eaten), the goose and pernil were cooked (and being eaten), the presents were made and wrapped and unwrapped, the driveway and sidewalk were shoveled (so much snow, oh my God so much snow), and my mother and brother were safely in the house after a harrowing drive through the blizzard's aftermath. I spent the day at a loss on what to do -- I wanted to do something crafty, but what? I could work on this:
but as much as I love the design, sewing through copper mesh is both slow-going and painful. Besides, I wanted to bead. Looking through some bead magazines in a half-assed attempt to pick up, I found this Bead & Button pattern for a beaded stocking, free for subscribers. Perfect!

I made the little stocking as directed (making a few tiny color changes):
but it was lacking something. Then I noticed the instructions had a "tip" for adding fringe to the top of the stocking, making the white band "fuzzy" like fur:
Just the touch that was needed. I now have a cute little stocking to add to my collection (which I forgot to put up this year).