Craft yourself a merry little Christmas

Regular readers (and we understand that there are still two or three left) will no doubt be aware of this writer's fascination with the televisual opus of Kirstie Allsopp, Nigella Lawson and other domestic divas whose main role in life seems to be to make those of us who are unlucky enough to live in the real world all too aware of our own inadequacies.

Kirstie blows her own glass Christmas tree baubles. Nigella whips up a festive four-course meal from nothing but panettone and tomato paste. We watch, we marvel, we feel as though we can’t compete.

A lot of this DIY creativity plugs into a sort of fake nostalgia, a desire to go back to a simpler time before Xboxes, before 3DSXls, before Wii U’s, before other surreal and random alphabetic combinations.

Back to the time when you could make your own Christmas crackers from old loo rolls, a sheet of tin foil and a packet of Polos.

All right, they didn’t crack when you pulled them but they looked convincing, and gave your parents hope that you might have at least one creative bone in your body.

Or back to the time when you could even, in the case of Mrs D’s dad, fashion one large Christmas tree from the trunks and branches of two much smaller ones.

But if your nearest and dearest want the latest in technology for Christmas, and you still want to keep your crafting skills alive, there are a couple of swift projects you could just about complete in the brief time between now and the Big Day.

First, why not try knitting a pair of touchscreen mittens? It’s simple as anything: just buy yourself a couple of balls of conductive wool in the colours of your choice (like Kirstie, you should source yours from a chocolate-box wool shop in a tiny Cotswold village). Cast on, purl 3, plain 4, drop 2, round the back and tie the whole lot off with a bow.

Your iPad-toting relatives will be delighted – at least until they lose all feeling in the tips of their fingers.

Of course, this year’s must-have festive gadget is the radio-controlled helicopter with built-in webcam.

Which is not designed for spying on your neighbours, but for more mundane tasks like making spectacular videos of waterfalls, mountain crags and other inaccessible features. Like your guttering, for a start.

But why spend hundreds of pounds on off-the-shelf technology? Half the fun of this sort of thing is building it yourself from found objects.

A quick rummage in the loft should turn up all the parts you need: metal biscuit tins can easily be hammered into shape for the body of the chopper, a couple of wooden rulers can be pressed into service for the rotors, and the motor from that retired food processor will serve as the power plant.

Stick an old Polaroid camera in the nose and it’s chocks away!

And as for radio control, well who needs it? This baby can fly itself.

At least until your pride and joy starts making a noise like a Stuka dive-bomber, crashes into the cat and shakes itself into a million pieces. Happy Christmas everyone!

Your ultimate Christmas Checklist

Do you know the last posting day for airmail packages to Vanuatu? Can you tell the difference between a chestnut roaster and a turkey baster? And can you tie one of those curly ribbons without which no present is truly presentable?

If your answer to one or more of those questions is “No”, then you need help, and you need it now.

Christmas is just around the corner (if you hadn’t quite realised yet) and there’s still lots more to be done.

So here it is – your Ultimate Festive Cut-Out-And-Keep-And-Stick-To-The-Kitchen-Wall-And-Forget-About-It-Until-It’s-Far-Too-Late Christmas Checklist.

• CARDS: What do you mean, you’ve posted them already? You can’t have – not all of them. OK, you’ve been through your address book and decided who to send them to. But you’ve left off that family from down the road who moved to Canada two years ago. Sure as baubles is baubles, you’ll find a card from them popping through the letterbox on December 22, when it’s far too late to do anything about it. And nothing will assuage your guilt.

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• DECORATIONS:  Based on 20 years of painstaking scientific research, Dixon’s Second String Theory postulates that any string of fairy lights that worked perfectly well last year will fail within five minutes of unpacking them and plugging them in again this year. It further states that no DIY shop within a radius of 10 miles will have the right fuses. And it finally predicts that the best way to get them working again is to chuck them out and buy a whole new set. All of which explains why fairy light makers are rich, and you are not.

• FOOD: There was a time not long ago when your choices were limited to a monstrously large turkey or a monstrously expensive goose. These days, of course, variety is the key to spicing up your Christmas dinner table. So if you don’t like the idea of one of those four-bird roasts they’re always advertising on telly, why not try a five-bird roast? Or a six-bird roast? Or a grotesque amalgam of herb cheese, smoked salmon, chilli jam and filou pastry? The only limit is your own imagination. But don’t go overboard on the quail’s eggs and pomegranate sorbet. It has a nasty habit of repeating on you.

• CHRISTMAS CRAFTS: You can crochet your own Nativity scene, you can create tree hangings from old paperclips, and you can even fashion decoupage tea-trays to give to your nearest and dearest. Let’s face it, though, life’s too short, and there’s only one Kirstie Allsopp. And by no stretch of the imagination is it you. 

• OFFICE PARTIES: It’s OK to enjoy yourself, and have a few drinks, and strut your funky stuff on the dance floor. But never, ever, ever succumb to the karaoke. There are few festive experiences less pleasant than waking up on a Saturday morning with a rasping sore throat and the strains of Beyoncé’s Single Ladies still ringing in your ears. And you can take that from a man who’s tried it.

• TREE: Don't worry, there’s still plenty of time to get a tree. Yes, really.

• PRESENTS: At this late stage it doesn’t really matter what you buy. Just keep the receipts, and remember that Amazon don’t deliver on Christmas morning.

• DRINK: Oh all right then.

Man against the sewing machine

Lazy Sunday afternoon... a break in the rain... snoozing on the sofa... dreaming... Lottery... tropical islands... coconut palms... piña colada... don’t even like piña colada... glass of dry rosé would slip down nicely though...

“Hugh?”

Euromillions...

“Hugh!”

Jackpot...

“HUGH!!! Please can you mend the sewing machine?”

Probably not, if truth be told. For the sewing machine is a mighty beast, not to be trifled with by a half-asleep chap still shaking off his afternoon doze.

A black hand-cranked Singer 99 of 1927 vintage, with all the original filigree and a bentwood case, it looks more like one of those steam engines that pull trains full of disgruntled tourists up Welsh mountains than the sort of gadget a deft seamstress would use to knock up a ball-dress or a camisole.

Industrial archaeology. (Picture by Lloyd Ellington)

It has instructions that say things like: “Place spool of thread on spool pin. Raise take-up lever 5 to its highest point. Lead thread into thread guide 1, down and from right to left between tension discs 2, into the loop of the take-up spring 3, under the slack thread regulator 4 (not through the eye in the thread regulator).”

Which are enough to put even the most mechanically-minded of chaps right off his breakfast, but clearly held no fear for the genteel ladies at whom the Singer 99 was originally marketed.

It even has a shirrer and a ruffler. Whatever they are.

And it’s sticking.

This sounds like a job for the internet. You can diagnose any illness after five minutes on Google, so surely you can solve a Singer 99 malfunction with a quick blast of a search engine?

The first thing you find out is that you should never, ever, fiddle with the piece of red felt next to the bobbin. Point this out to Mrs D, who goes a bit quiet and admits that she did  have a tug at it because it looked like lint. It’s not. It a lubricating wick.

Slather with oil, loosen pull-rods, tighten reciprocating cams, turn crankwheel back and forth with increasing desperation. Still locked solid.

Remember when you were eight, and you took your alarm clock apart to see how it worked? And then you couldn’t put it back together again?

It’s like that, only five times worse.

Suddenly all becomes clear: the needle is jamming. Adjust needle alignment, spin handle, Singer 99 whirrs into action.

But there’s a nagging doubt: deep in the instruction manual, Mrs D has read the dire warning: “Under no circumstances must the screw EE be loosened.” It’s confession time: in the course of all that fiddling around in the bowels of the machine, screw EE did get loosened. But only for half a minute before it was tightened up again. Honest.

By now it’s nearly bed-time, and Weston’s answer to Kirstie Allsopp puts off her crafting to another day.

That day dawns, and with it a ghastly truth: the machine turns, but the bobbin won’t lift. The timing is out, the Singer won’t sew. And it’s beyond rescue by an amateur.

Thank heavens in Bath we have sewing machine shops who are prepared to have a look at it.

But spare a thought for the chap who has to carry it in for repair.

Because it weighs a flipping ton.

Christmas enemies, featuring Kirstie Allsopp and Delia Smith

Hurry up, hurry up. It’s time to write your Christmas list. No, not for cards. You should have done that in October.

And if you haven’t already written your cards, addressed the envelopes, sealed the envelopes, unstuck the envelopes, put the cards in, stuck the mangled envelopes back down with Sellotape, gone out for stamps, come back with lightbulbs and Maltesers, gone out for stamps again, stuck the stamps on the cards you meant to deliver by hand... then to be quite frank you’re far too late.

Just forget it for this year, and try to do better in 2010.

No, the kind of list you need right now is a Christmas enemies list: a list of things and people that get right up your festive nose and rattle your Yuletide cage.

The kind of thing or person you want to avoid until January 14  at worst, and forever at best.

Top of this list for any right-thinking person is the sprout.

Let’s not drag up its association with  the capital of Belgium: it only starts pedantic arguments about spelling it with a capital or lower-case “b”.

And there’s no need to constantly remind the Belgians that the sprout is their national shame. (And bad driving, but let it lie.)

The sprout is a puny excuse for a cabbage and a huge waste of culinary effort. What normal vegetable has to have a notch cut in its sprouty stalk before it can be cooked to the satisfaction of the tiny number of people who actually like it? And what normal vegetable attempts to avoid capture by disguising itself as a Morris dancer’s jingly hand bell shaker?

Enough said.

Next on the list is that Christmas DIY show on the telly. You know, the show that belittles your own festive efforts by suggesting that the only good Crimbo tree is one you’ve cut down yourself.

The show that makes you feel a failure because you don’t have the wherewithall to blow your own glass baubles for said tree.

The show that suggests, if you want to make a Christmas garland, that all you need to do is scour your “back yard” for evergreen sprigs.

Presented by Kirstie Allsopp.

Kirstie has her very own Christmas house, which  exists in some sort of time warp in the hills of Devon, its floors unsullied by children, fur-shedding pets, old video games and two-week-old copies of the TV guide.

In Kirstie’s house, everything is colour co-ordinated. In Kirstie’s house, you just have to say “I want red ribbons and evergreens. Everywhere.” And it will happen.

Kirstie’s house is a TV set. It goes on the list.

(Our house has a holly tree. With yellow berries, not red ones. Whoever planted that goes on the list too.)

Delia Smith is another one. Yes, she’s a national treasure and has her own football team. And your humble columnist risks getting drummed out of the Boys’ Brigade for saying it.

But she doesn’t half go on, especially at Christmas time.

We watched Delia’s Classic Christmas the other day. She didn’t give out the quantities: perhaps you have to buy some sort of book to find out how you actually cook all this festive fare. And the best thing that can be said about her roast collar of bacon with blackened crackling is that the kids would scream if you served it up to them, and the grown-ups would probably mutter something like  “Interesting” and not come back for seconds.

All right, we’ll leave Delia off the list. But her crackling stays on.