Firstly, if you’re Jan and don’t want a spoiler about your card, stop reading immediately!

I think I’m jinxed. There, I said it. For last year’s seasonal card swap, I was paired with the lovely Hélène and the card I sent her was returned to me by Irish Customs, who didn’t deign my wares good enough to cross its country’s borders. This year, I am unable to send my finished card to Jan because Royal Mail says no (well, Canada post says no, they’re not accepting any mail until their strike is resolved).

If I take part in next year’s swap, you might want to avoid me as a partner…

This year I decided to take the notion of a postcard rather literally; I wanted something the size and look of one, and so decided to put my sewing machine to use.

I cut some pre-felt almost to size and marked down the lines typical of a postcard using a heat-erasable pen. See the twisted red wool on the top left corner of the photo? At first I had the idea of felting the lines with it, until I realised it would take me forever and not look half as good as using the sewing machine. I changed tactics.

After sewing those lines I wrote down my seasons greetings. I was ambitious in what I wanted to say, as you’re about to see.

Using yarn, I worked with a felting needle and carefully started following the outlines of the words. I immediately realised my “handwriting” wasn’t going to be as small as I intended. Oops. If you look carefully at the picture above, you’ll see the next word I was meant to write was “holidays,” which is larger than the already felted “Happy.”

Where did the word “holidays” go? Well, sometimes you have to pick your battles. Let’s pretend this was the plan all along, shall we?

And then, off to the decorating and making it a more seasonal card.

There was something missing in the background… so I did the foolish thing of working that part after having the foreground finished. However, I think it was worth it, but you can judge by yourselves.

Much better, I hope you agree! I particularly like the detail of the present with the bow made from yarn.

Now it was time to cut the card to size and glue it to a real postcard (a blank one made from watercolour paper). I sadly don’t have a good enough photo of the card’s front, so you’ll just have to imagine the above image in the correct size and without the markers that I removed with a steam iron.

Here’s the back of the card:

“I hope this card reaches you in time” was written before I knew Canada postal services were not only delaying deliveries but had altogether halted them. Sorry, Jan!

I will have this on its way to you as soon as possible.

(By the way, see the smudge under the flying bird? That wasn’t me being clumsy at all, no siree, that was completely on purpose and represents the movement and plight of the avian creature as it strives to reach its maximum potential. Cough cough…)

Seasons greetings, everyone! Thanks for reading.