THE COOKIE:
A finish a finish! I was shocked that I didn't have any finishes for the WIPocalypse; I've got a tall stack of WIPs so I want to keep on crackin'! I was still in a cookie mindset and this was small and half done. This is the second of the "biscuit" coasters that I started during the Queen's funeral.
I called it a thumbprint cookie on it's progress picture, because that was the closest name I could come up with, but Jo from Serendipitous Stitching kindly let me know that it's an English cookie called a Jammie Dodger.
This photo is from Mr Paul's Pantry, which has the recipe I may be trying soon....cookies...mmm. There are molds you can get to make the ridges, so maybe Santa will indulge me. By "Santa" I mean DH, and by "indulge me"I mean want me to make him some new cookies, lol!
These are thumbprint cookies, which is when you get a lump of dough and mash your thumb in it to make a hollow for some jam. I had thought that the cracks were sort of what the pattern designer was going for. (picture from Love and Lemons).
WIP UPDATE:
I've made progress on "Waiting for Santa" from The Stitcherhood. The pattern is from last year's JCS ornament issue:
THE FLOAT
I went up to Los Angeles and helped decorate a float for the Rose Parade!
This is the model of the float I helped with:
The decorating is all volunteer; they're counting on the community to show up to help, and they do. Our coordinator said they've had volunteers from as far as London and Amsterdam this year. I won the distance prize for the day because my drive was two hours. Yay me!
This is where the float was when I got there.
My job for the day was cutting up yellow flower petals to get glued on the lanterns. If the petals are too big they won't stick, so they had a whole table of us human choppers cutting up strawflower petals.
This is the underside of the dragon - the floats are required to have their entire surface covered with flowers, seeds, stems, or bark. The yellow stripes are done and they're letting them dry before they go in with purple. They paint the surfaces with regular Elmer's school glue and then moosh the seeds or petals on:
This lovely lady is doing the big stones for the base of the float. She's got a cardboard tray full of seeds to paint on as grout. The judges mark down if there are any exposed spots, so the "painters" have to be very thorough:
This is another float that looks way behind schedule to me. It's been sprayed and marked off but no one was working on it and only the head and legs were done. I don't know whose float it is. The plastic wrap is to protect those delicious seeds from the birds. The decorating happens in huge semi-open barns and they have a problem with birds flying in and going crazy eating the seeds off the floats:
They said they won't put any actual flowers on until after Christmas because they just wilt, and the weekend before the parade they have a small army of misters running around spraying all the live flowers so they stay fresh for the parade. I thought the whole thing was super interesting and I'll be really proud to see "my" float rolling down the street next month!
