The Holly and the Ivy

[ailbhe]

I finally managed to buy holly! It was stupidly expensive, I thought, but I bought a good deal of nice berried stuff with sharp prickles, and there was some not so good, non-prickly stuff, too. I had to get five bunches to get enough long, prickly bits.

So then I made a wreath. I'm told that you need a round base to work from, but I didn't have one, so I just wound the holly into a circle. I used cable ties for the initial structural fastening, and then thread and coloured cord for the adding-bits-so-it's-not-bare fastening. Then we tied on some lovely scarlet ribbon and hung it outside the door, where it is swaying and turning.

Janice arrived halfway thorugh the making process and was very useful at pointing out bare bits. Then we put the leftover holly around the dining room, apart from one glorious, dark, sharp and scarlet branch, which we propped up behind the nativity scene in the library.

We even have holly around the candlesticks (which I washed during our housework fest on Sunday; they look lovely now) which we got from Sweden. They're very dark blue, and the dark green looks wonderful. And Janice stuck some in an elegant, slim winebottle, and tied the remaining red satin ribbon around the neck of the bottle. It's all getting very festive downstairs.