What do the Fairmont and my Christmas Stocking Have in Common?

I toured the Fairmont with San Francisco Walking Tours and enjoyed learning the history of this hotel. Sitting atop Nob Hill, the Fairmont has wonderful views of both the Golden Gate and Bay Bridges. Barely finished, the Fairmont burned during the 1906 earthquake but reopened a year later to become a city hub.

Golden Gate and Bay Bridges from Fairmont

The United Nations formed here in 1945; its charter was drafted in the Garden Room. A few years later Dorothy Draper remodelled the hotel using flamboyant colors and luxury fabrics. Her Modern Baroque style was "the opposite of minimalism."

Fairmont lobby 

The Carousel Bar once incorporated a working antique one. That is gone but delightful murals still decorate the walls.

Murals of circus performers decorate the Fairmont's Carousel Bar

Like Dior's New Look, these exotic fabrics and colors celebrated the end of the war and rationing! After the tour I realized my family's Christmas stockings came from this same era. Bright red velveteen with green apple taffeta lining. Beading, sequins, and bells. More is more indeed.

My Christmas stocking

A family friend made the first one. Then my mother {had to} sew others as the rest of us appeared. They always look merry and bright strung along the mantle. For years I never saw these stockings anywhere else. A family from my home state moved to town. Surprise. Their stockings are twins to ours. I wonder if the original pattern was in a local newspaper or magazine.

When it was time to make stockings for my children I wanted to update them somehow. Halley's comet appeared soon after my eldest so that was beaded on her stocking below. {It looks more like a paramecium.} Then I added a rocket for the many shuttle flights. Thus began began the Heavenly Additions.

Daughter and SIL's Christmas stockings

The Voyager 2 flyby of Neptune is commemorated on one; the Ulysses boost past Jupiter on another. Neither SIL nor DIL had a stocking. His (above) highlights Discovery's spacewalk by astronaut Dale Gardner to retrieve the Westar VI satellite. Hers depicts the Rosetta landing on Comet 67P. That's the purple mass on the righthand stocking below... in case you can't tell. Over the years, my abilities have dropped off and it looks as odd as Halley's comet.  Or perhaps I can only bead planets, not comets. {I also cheated a bit; this is the year they married, not the year she was born.}

Christmas stockings celebrating space mission highlights: Ulysses, Voyager2, and Rosetta

DIL's still has a blank spot where I plan to add her wedding bouquet. I'm just a bit chicken about ruining the ribbons. Their names (covered in the photos) are written with beads and sequins across the white felt cuff.

With the arrival of grandchildren I'm busy making more. One should have been finished a year ago. Oops. The new velveteen is cardinal red rather than the former deep blue/red but the lining is still bright green. Although I drafted a paper pattern long ago, now I just use one sample as a guide.

Cutting new Christmas stockings from velveteen

They all need a Christmas tree and then it's time to let loose: snowmen, reindeer, stars, butterflies, bells. Here are the events I'm considering.

• For 2015: Discovery of Kepler-452b (possible Earth 2) by Kepler or New Horizons flyby of Pluto

• For 2017: Total Solar eclipse or Cassini-Huygens satellite entering Saturn's atmosphere

Two yards each of the velveteen and lining will make six stockings. More than enough. I cut all six; they can lay flat at the bottom of the stocking box. The velveteen won't crease and I'll know where to find them... perhaps. {I have become a champion squirrel-er-away.}

Enjoy the day, Ann