12 Days to Christmas: Poodle Surprise

On the twelfth day of Christmas…
The countdown to Christmas is well under way here at Casa Leather and Abel. The advent calendar already has over half its doors opened, we’re burning through our advent candles at an alarming rate and we have already enjoyed many, many mugs of mulled wine at German winter markets because, hey, ’tis the season!
There are 12 days left to Christmas (if you haven’t already been keeping count!) and to celebrate, we want to share some seasonal fun we’ve been having every day in the run up to the big day.
This is the first instalment on the 12 Days to Christmas and will most probably be the strangest.

We went away for a weekend to visit Vanessa’s German family and came back to find a note saying we had missed a parcel delivery. We had a sneaky suspicion as to what was inside. It was a hand-made knitted poodle.

The only way we were able to guess a knitted poodle was sent to us is because we saw two identical poodles arrive at Vanessa’s aunt’s and grandma’s house the previous weekend.
As it turns out, Sanae-san, a friend of Vanessa’s Japanese grandmother and one of the Japanese Trio that stayed with us in August, had hand-stitched and sent all of us her unusual poodle creation as a Christmas present!
When we first saw the poodle, we were pretty speechless. Then we couldn’t speak for laughter. Then we fell in love with it. I have been moaning about wanting a dog for a long time and I guess my Santa (or Sanae in this case) made my wish come true!
It is knitted around an empty glass Coca-Cola bottle for structure and has a little bow-tie, button eyes and incredibly fluffy feet. It’s such an unusual and unexpected gift but we are incredibly thankful to Sanae-san for thinking of us and the poodle (yet to be named – suggestions welcome!) is settling well into its new home.
[Please note: We do realise the song ‘The Twelve Days of Christmas’ is actually about the days AFTER Christmas day but we like to do things differently here at L&A]