Christmas Deer Head

I'm really not sure how this came up in conversation but a couple of months ago Gill told me about this deer head pattern and from then on I wanted one on my wall this Christmas. I duly bought the pattern, bought some brown Christmasy fabric for the head and then afterwards I read the pattern. I should have read the pattern first! The pattern suggests using woollen or felt fabric and I had bought cotton fabric. 

The head is constructed by hand stitching on the outside of the head but I didn't think my cotton was well suited to this method, so I stitched right sides together and then turned it out. Another change I made was to move the ears in front of the antlers, not where they should be but I liked the ears being more prominent. I also decided to knit him a red scarf to give him some additional Christmas cheer, so to speed things up I got out my old knitting machine which probably hasn't seen the light of day for 20 years and at one point I wondered whether it would be quicker to knit it by hand but it did all eventually come flooding back to me.

I had grand plans of making another deer head with a cardigan I felted a while ago but this one took a bit longer to make than I expected and I ran out of time. Something else to add to next year's Christmas 'to-do' list. Perhaps next year I will follow the pattern?

I've got one more 'make' planned before Christmas....then I need to put my machine away, hoover up the threads and create some things in the kitchen.