Planning for a Pennant-pocalypse

Union Jack tins and pennants from Sweet Candy Occasions in the UK.

I fell in love with this picture on Pinterest.  I have a board of Union Jack stuff, but it wasn’t these adorable tins that stayed with my imagination.  It was these pennants in the background on the wall.  I thought they were just adorable the way they were buttoned together.  I've never seen any like them.  Usually the triangles are hung from some sort of ribbon or string.  The button design is such a fun way to be able to adjust the length of the decoration or change the order of the triangles. 

There are pennants all over Pinterest and decorating magazines.  Apparently it is impossible to have a party without them.  I saw this at The Clover Market.  Denise from ThePainted Home was doing crafts with kids out of this adorable old camper. 

Pennants make the camper.

See? Pennants everywhere!

As adorable as the English buttoned pennants are, I thought I might do them one better and make them reversible and interchangeable.   If you just flip a pennant, the button or buttonhole will be on the wrong side.   I made half of these pennants with 2 buttonholes and half with 2 buttons.  That way they can be flipped and still buttoned together. 

Buttoned but reversible

If you want to put two buttonholed pennants together, you can tie them together with a bit of ribbon.  Here you can see I used a bow-tied ribbon on a button end to hang the right side of this series from a pushpin. (The left one is just hung from the buttonhole.) Two button-topped pennants could be joined by a ribbon as well.  Although I hope to make enough variety that I won't need to "fudge" the connections.

Reversible Pennant Experiment

I experimented with a bunch of fabrics and trims from my stash in coordinating colors.  On the reverse of the aqua and pink pennants, I made red and green ones.  This is my idea of Christmas colors.  

My idea of Xmas colors.

This set can be used interchangeably.  These  bi-colored stripes, gingham and dots set off the apple, owl and floral prints.

Rearranged and flipped

I am going to keep experimenting with these in a variety of fabrics and trims.  I showed them to a friend who has a home décor shop and got a lot of great ideas about ways they might be marketed if I can make them for the right price.  So there will be some further experiments.  I have ideas about how I might be able to produce them efficiently.  I don’t know how anyone will be able to live without them once they see their versatility and charm.  (If I do say so myself.)   I bet nobody else even noticed those pennants behind the adorable Union Jack tins full of lovely sweets.

Day 38, 62 to go: Daring the Fates...

An English Tradition

I finished the list I was working on yesterday and uploaded it to our family website.  Let the changes of life commence. I have dared the Fates.

I learned a lot while determining the whereabouts of some extended family members, even managing to glean a story or two from my mother about her cousins in the process.  

Proper Cracker Procedure (See the crowns?)

What I spent the most time making today was: family bonds and memories.   I raided the local TJ Maxx for our traditional Christmas crackers with Borg #7 of 8.  Crackers are an English Christmas tradition—you and a partner pull them open and they snap loudly.  Inside, there are a paper crown, a toy or trinket and usually a slip of paper with a Christmas-themed joke or riddle.   Any British movie set at Christmastime will include a scene with at least one character wearing a silly tissue paper crown.  Now you know why.

Later, we went out to dinner to celebrate my sister’s birthday again.  It was the same crowd from yesterday plus our 2 oldest nieces and our friend Bridget.  The restaurant is a former Elks lodge hall complete with a wall carved with the initials of Elks of generations past.  They had an interesting gingerbread carrot cake on the dessert menu that I am going to have to go home and re-create.  The gingerbread flavors in a moist carrot cake are inspiring.  They serve the cake with a coffee caramel sauce which I did not have.  (Coffee and caramel are yucky to my palate. I’d rather eat Brussels sprouts.) I am thinking I will do a chocolate hazelnut sauce instead. 

Tomorrow will be the Christmas celebration with the whole family.  There will be so many people packed into my mom’s living room that we have to turn off the heat a couple of hours beforehand and sometimes even crack a window to offset all the warm bodies.  It is a noisy, joyous raucous time.  Disappointingly, my brother, sister-in-law and their awesome kid will not be able to make it in person, but at least can join us by Skype for the gift-opening and annual family portrait. 

Until the crowd arrives, I had better spend tomorrow crocheting the rest of that lacey hat I started the other day.