Berry X-mas Special with Tree

Spring has finally sprung in northeast Ohio!  We are knee-deep in weeds, mulch, and pool chemicals.  We have our first weenie roast of the season scheduled in just a few weeks.  We are ready for summer!

I wanted to do my mother's mouse ornament, but just wasn't feeling it the day I looked through my patterns.  I had joked with Ouida that when I ran out of mouse patterns, I was going to move on to the bear patterns and just replace their heads.  Annnnd . . . that's what I did.  According to Carolyn DeAngelis, this is actually the "Beary X-mas Special Bear with X-mas Tree."  I don't know what to call it now.  "Beary X-mas Special Bear with X-mas Tree and Mouse Head from Claude Pattern" really doesn't have much of a ring to it.  Here's the Claude ornament I made her a few years ago:

It was pretty easy to swipe his head and put it on the bear pattern, which gave me this:

And now I'm looking at these pictures and seeing the obvious omission that I hadn't noticed until this very second:  THIS MOUSE HAS NO TAIL!    I have no words for the shame.  Despite the number of pieces, this one really didn't take terribly long.  I used sequins and beads for the Christmas tree.  Get out your magnifying glass for that teddy bear, because that arm and ear are tiny!

I did want to take a moment to talk about hanger placement.  Sometimes, a finished ornament is very symmetrical and it's obvious where to tack the hanger to the back so it hangs straight.  Then you have ones like this.  When I get an ornament finished, I always stick a straight pin through where I think the center is like this:

Then I hold the pin between my thumb and middle finger and let it hang loose:

That'll show me how it would hang if I tacked the hanger there.  In this case, we're leaning a little to the right.  Move the pin and try again:

Now we're too far to the left.  One more try:

JUST RIGHT!

When you look through your patterns, don't forget to imagine what they'd look like with a different head.  It's easy to switch genders, turn bears into mice, people into animals, etc.  This really opens up a lot of possibilities for stretching your pattern collection and making more personalized ornaments for your friends and family!