A Spot of Christmas Shopping - In Vienna

Vienna is just a wonderful place to be at this time of year - the streets are full of Christmas cabins full of wonderful gifts and families are milling round drinking mulled wine in the lit up grounds of the Town Hall. Inside the town hall, weenies are having fun in a Christmas workshop making spiced biscuits and Christmas tree decorations.

There are so many festive decorations to choose from - how to choose? Somehow that mulled wine isn't helping the decision making process one bit!

The Christmas countdown is well under way and this Christmas for the first time in seven years Richard and I can relish all the simple preparations for Christmas with no book deadlines to be working towards. We are having such fun together deciding all the things we want to do between now and Christmas.

One thing for sure is that we shall be very busy in the kitchen making all sorts of Christmas treats to share. I doubt there will be this many helpers, but maybe friends will drop by and help stir up a few fruity and spicy mixes.

Knitting seems to be really big this Christmas and I was so taken by this Christmas tree festooned with colourful knitted woolies for Santa's elves. Have I got time to knit up a few myself?

One of the reasons for being in Vienna right now was to see the Klimt exhibition at the Belvedere. Klimt was an artist I fell in love with in my twenties and by now I should have got over him......but old flames never quite die. The Belvedere is such a wonderful place and we had a delicious lunch there too.

I think Mrs Rudolf is missing her mate - but what tales he will have to tell on his return!

Mother Christmas is busy in the beauty parlour, making sure she looks the part - a pity that the waiting list for replacement knees is longer this year - all she wants for Christmas are two front knees. And now it is time for some Strauss waltzes in the biggest, brightest open air room in Vienna. I hope your Christmas preparations are as joyful as ours!

The Thimble Society - Thimbles, Buttons, Chatelaines, Samplers & More!

It was quite a serendipitous discovery (as all delightful discoveries must be) to find a letter which had gone astray in my in-box. I was able to redirect it and in so doing learned that the sender was Bridget McConnel. And of course I simply just had to ask if she was THE Bridget McConnel.

Bridget McConnel is the author of a number of books on needlework tools - particularly thimbles. So we chatted as needlework people do and Bridget directed me to her web-site - The Thimble Society.

This wonderful site is full of not just thimbles, but needlework tools and accessories in all their varieties.

And as you can see there are also samplers! Click here to pop in to visit the Thimble Society.

European Needlepoint - Sinterklaus Regrets!

There is a delightful shop on one of the main shopping streets in the heart of Old Vienna that specializes in petit point miniatures. Here you can see some examples from their store window. For almost 100 years, this small shop, which is one of the oldest shops on Kärntnerstraße, has been in the possession of Kovacec family for three generations. In the 1960s, Ms. Annegrit Kovacec decided to focus exclusively on the sale of the finest embroidery – petit point.

The artistic richness of Petit Point Kovacec consists of a vast number of hand painted patterns, which serve as the basis for manufacturing the embroidery. Each pattern is a masterpiece in itself, showing floral and figural scenes that almost always have been painted a century ago. This guarantees the authenticity of Petit Point embroidery. The needlework is produced in the surroundings of Vienna. Each piece requires passion, patience and a high level of dexterity in order to achieve perfection as you can see from the detail below. Mail order from their internet site is avaialble. For more information - click here.

For those of you expecting Sinterklaus today, go easy with him - he might be somewhat delayed. He was a bit the worse for wear when we last spotted him.

Queen Mary's Pillow

We are so accustomed to royalty being consumers of fine embroidery for their gowns, that sometimes we overlook the fact that, even in modern times, they also created embroidered artifacts. This pillow was embroidered by Queen Mary and subequently given as a raffle item for a charitable event by Queen Elizabeth, the Queen Mother. Queen Mary was the model of dynastic duty. Born Mary of Teck (Victoria Mary Augusta Louise Olga Pauline Claudine Agnes), she was known as May. Her parents were Francis, Duke of Teck and Princess Mary Adelaide of Cambridge, a member of the British Royal Family. When 24 she was betrothed to Prince Albert Victor the eldest son of the Prince of Wales, but six weeks after the announcement of the engagement the prince died unexpectedly and the year following she was engaged to Albert Victor's next surviving brother, George. As Queen Consort she was at the side of her husband through the First World War, and after his death 1936, her eldest son Edward became King-Emperor, but to her dismay he abdicated the same year in order to marry twice-divorced American socialite Wallis Simpson. She supported her second son, Albert, who succeeded to the throne as George VI, until his death in 1952. She died the following year, at the beginning of the reign of her granddaughter, Elizabeth II. Perhaps needlework was her source of strength in those difficult times.