A Disappointing Hat and Garland

I finished the Noro hat for Ian. I love the way the colours block into those stripes. Unfortunately, Ian finds it a bit itchy. I've soaked it twice in Eucalan and it's much softer than it was initially, but the boy still eyes it suspiciously when I ask him to wear it. He's sticking to the store bought hat I bought for him to wear while I worked on the "nice" one, even when earlier this week he left the bought one on the school bus - he preferred to go hatless (it was fairly cold) instead of wearing the Noro.

***sigh***

I've been thinking much about festooning the house for Christmas. I want it to be cheerful and bright for when Elly comes home at the end of December. This year I thought it might be nice to go with a colour theme of red and white - that's usually pretty cheerful, right?

I thought, at first, that heaps and heaps of paper garland might be the way to go, so I bought a big roll of red and white striped paper and went to work, cutting all those little pieces....



and gluing them into garland - with big paper tassels on the ends. But when I saw how they looked in our Living-room, I cringed.



The colours are all wrong. The wood floors and trim in our house are dark and I've painted the walls to co-ordinate - that means ochres and deep botanical greens, which looks great (the mantle is the only thing painted close to white - and it's more of a rich, warm white). And then, there's this red and white garland. It just ends up looking cheap - and not cheap and cheerful - just plain, old cheap.

So...I've bought another roll of paper, this one is a bright, rich red and now I'm trying to decide if I should go ahead and start cutting, or just ditch the whole idea.



Any thoughts?