O Christmas Tree...

I love Christmas. Especially Christmas trees. Even more especially Victorian Christmas trees!

2 years ago Kent House was presented with an opportunity to display a Christmas tree in the lobby of the Hotel Bentley, downtown. The only catch was that it had to be representative of our historic site. So I set out researching early Victorian Christmas trees. By "early", I mean pre-Civil War. Our interpretive period stops at 1855.

What I found was a description of General Robert E. Lee's Christmas tree from 1853, from his daughter's diary. So I set out to re-create it as best I could. The tree was on display for about a week and the idiot owner of the Bentley decided to kick all the guests out and close the hotel. I very sadly took down my beautiful tree and packed everything away.

Fast forward to day before yesterday. We've been decorating the grounds for Christmas and everything had to be up by this Sunday. The lady who usually decorates the tree is out of town. So Allie said we'd take care of it. And by that she meant I could put MY tree up!!! So we did. This is it, in all its lovely glory. The only things I changed from the description that I found is obviously the electric lights in place of candles, and my mom took pictures of events at KH and made little paper ornaments out of them. I popped the popcorn and strung it myself, and yes there's tinsel on it! I nearly fell out of my chair when I found out tinsel was that old.

I've had several comments asking what the pinhead stitch is. Here's the diagram that I used to teach myself how to do it. It's quite easy actually, and I'm sure there are more diagrams out there. I think I found out about it on the TWBB.