A while ago, I posted my quest for ideas for what I should submit for the ornament exchange. I ended up making flettede julehjerter, woven paper Christmas hearts that are a Danish Christmas tradition.
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The earliest one anyone has found is from 1871, among the many elegant paper clippings made by the illustrious Hans Christian Andersen, but no one knows whether he came up with the idea or whether people were already making them at the time. All we know is that by the 1880s they had sprouted paper handles and were hanging on Danish Christmas trees everywhere. When I was a kid, I remember struggling at the Christmas crafts tables at kindergarten and at primary school, desperately trying to make them come out right without getting all tangled up in paper or tearing them to shreds!
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This time, after some initial frustration, I managed to get the hang of it and make 28 of them (some more torn or crumpled than others), and I'm handing them over to Patsy in seven little cardboard folders containing four each, along with instructions on how to make them.
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Hurrah! I did it! And almost on time, too!
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Wanna make some? Here's how! (The written instructions are in really bad Danglish, so ignore that and just follow the diagram!)
