End of the year......

December and 2009 are drawing to a close. The highlight for me was holding the newest baby in our family, my Grand Niece (my niece's daughter's daughter), 3 weeks old, and absolutely perfect, adorable, sweet, wonderful, and beautiful beyond words.

New Year's resolutions don't last very long for me, but I do hope to bust more of my quilting stash in 2010 so that perhaps I can think about buying some new fabric now and then. Wouldn't that be loverly! My stitching plans include working on some parts of Christmas at Hawk Run Hollow. Losing weight and exercising more is always on my "must do" list, but like Scarlett O'Hara, I'll think about that tomorrow. Today I had a Starbucks Java Chip.

Happy New Year to friends, family and blog lurkers.

Greetings

Christmas Greetings from me and some of my friends.................

More Christmas stuff.....

This beautiful Christmas Cactus plant was purchased a week ago for $2.00. The blooms are so vibrant and lush. While the temperature outside is well below freezing, I can enjoy a wonderful plant from the desert in my cozy warm home.

Among my favorite Christmas quilts are the two below. They are colored with crayons, framed with fabric, and the edges are finished with pinking shears. So easy and so much fun to make.

I hope that you are cozy and warm this Christmas season and enjoying some favorite quilts also.

Lost and Found Department

While my guests were here, I wanted my cousin's Handy-Man husband to hang my Six Hem Sampler picture in the guest room. I went to get it and couldn't remember where I had stashed it. I looked and looked and looked. For two days I looked. We finally decided that the last time I saw it was when I took a picture for this blog and the picture showed the brown wrapping paper. I must have re-wrapped it and put it away. Everyone joined in the search for the picture wrapped in brown paper. After days of searching, I looked around the Quilt Studio once again and there it was - hanging precariously by a handy nail - out of the way in a temporary (and forgotten) spot. Oops. Very embarrassing.During our many searches for the picture, I also realized that at the same time I had straightened up and put the picture away, I had also put away a white three-ring binder that I had setup to house my Artist's Trading Cards. I thought the two might be together. But after finding the picture, the hunt was on for the white notebook. We searched through every room, every bookcase, every drawer, every closet. It was definitely missing. Then this morning I woke up at 4:00am with an AHA moment. Maybe it wasn't a white notebook - maybe it was blue. So I started searching for a blue notebook. Couldn't find it. After my company left, I searched again and there it was, neatly tucked next to my CD player where I have NEVER before put anything. It is a complete mystery to me why I hung the picture on that odd nail and why I tucked the notebook next to the CD Player.
I bet I don't forget where I stash that box of cookies I bought today at the church cookie walk!

1,000 pieces all put together to form a sewing themed puzzle - by Springbok. My cousin put the last of the pieces in today, uncovering the one elusive edge piece.

The great thing about Springbok puzzles...........they interlock so well that you can pick them up without a single piece falling off.

Here is a closer look. How many of you still have a wooden darner?

Christmas at my house

Here are some pictures showing Christmas decorations at my house. The china dogs have two old Santas keeping them company.

One of my Snow village houses looks welcoming on the living room desk.

My tree has many counted cross-stitch ornaments given to me and made by me.

Some of my favorite ornaments - the lace snowflake, the red & white striped stocking behind "Love", the sewing machine, and the top of a lion head. (I'm a Leo.)

My cousin is here visiting and we are working diligently on a 1000 piece puzzle. When will I post the picture of the completed puzzle? Well, since we are both sitting at our computers right now, it won't be today.

Finished and Started

My Six Hem Sampler is framed and ready to hang in the perfect spot. And where is that perfect spot? Hmmmm. I haven't quite found it yet, but then, there isn't much wall space left in my house.

On the sewing front, I made a few Smart Bags by Quiltsmart. They are easy to make and use two fat quarters. For a tote bag, they are a little small, but just the perfect size to carry some books. They would be great gifts for your book club friends.

Shhhh. This is part of a secret project. That's all I'm saying.............

This pillow case is for our Bee Christmas charity project. Instead of exchanging gifts, we decided to make pillow cases for children fighting cancer.

Lastly, this is the latest counted cross-stitch project in the works. It is Little House Needleworks Acorn Hill. I'm using Crescent Colours - lovely fall colors.

On the day after Thanksgiving, I'm thankful for the container of leftovers that Cheri prepared especially for me. I got to enjoy turkey, green beans, corn souffle, mashed potatoes, stuffing and cranberry salad all over again today. Yum.

Schoolgirl Lessons finished

This little piece is now my very favorite stitch. It was a breeze to do. I love the design and using just one color thread. The silk thread was smooth as........well, silk.

Little House Needleworks

"Schoolgirl Lessons"

28 ct White Lugana

Belle Soie fine silk thread - Sister Scarlet

Scones

Confession - I get very jealous of the bloggers who make bread. I love the smell of baking bread because I was brought up in a home where my mother always baked bread. We had fresh rolls at dinner time, fresh biscuits with strawberries in season, sweet lemon bread, and savory cheese bread. Mom also made the best scones - savory and plain - almost like baking powder biscuits.

When I purchase scones at grocery stores or bakeries, they are always sweet and almost cake-like. They are not at all like the kind my mom made - where we devoured them fresh and hot out of the oven, slathering them with butter.

A Scone cookbook that I recently purchased from Amazon had a recipe for peanut butter scones. Since peanut butter is my most favorite of all foods, I decided to give this recipe a try.

First a disclaimer - I am NOT a baker or a bread maker. I don't understand the chemistry, nor do I know enough to be certain that the batter is the right consistency. So, when the batter was very gooey and the recipe called for me to roll it out with a rolling pin, I knew that something was wrong. There was no way I could roll it out, so I kind of just smashed it down on the counter, divided it up with a knife, and globbed portions onto the baking sheet. I thought for sure that it would be a huge failure. This is how the globs baked up:

Not too bad looking. And the insides had the right consistency.

The taste is OK, but a little too sweet for my taste. I think I will try making these again, with more flour perhaps, and less sugar definitely.

Time to go make a cup of tea and plan my next attempt at baking.

Round Robin

The two Round Robin quilts that my friend Lindsay and I are making progress slowly. We gave ourselves a year and it looks like we will use every minute of that year. I think it has been two months now since Lindsay gave me this beautifully appliqued round. I just hated to spoil it by adding mundane borders. At our Bee group, Gail suggested that I add strip borders with many different fabrics of the same color - one purple border and one green border. I really liked the idea. One of the rules for this Round Robin exchange was that we must use fabrics from our stash.

I gathered purples easily and made the first border. Then I went through my greens and discovered that the selection was poor and the greens were not right. Too many sages and limes and greens that did not read solid enough for my taste. I agonized and fretted and finally decided the best thing to do was eat lunch. After lunch I went through my stash one last time and uncovered a kit from years ago that I had never started and from which I had previously stolen fabric. In that kit was a stack of green strips. After doing a happy dance, I got to work and made the final border using those wonderful green strips.

Now this quilt goes back to Lindsay for quilting and binding, and I will receive back the other round robin quilt to do the same.

These quilts are being donated to our church for a fund raiser.

Good Day

It is a good day when you can sit in your favorite chair, listen to a good book on your iPod, and stitch a Little House Needleworks one-color piece.

Posted on a Good Day by.........

Is it an age thing?

See the red arrow pointing down to the box of tissue? See the arrow pointing up to the paper taped to the side of the cabinet? This morning as I reached for a tissue, I looked up and there it was! The invitation.

Yesterday there was a shower for my grand niece for which I knitted a baby blanket (see previous post). (Side note - someone asked me how long it took to knit the blanket and I looked it up. I started it on July 19th and finished it on October 31st. Did I knit on it every day? No. ) OK, back to my story. Last week when I looked on my messy desk for the invitation, I could not find it. I cleaned off my desk, I looked in my highly organized Pending file. I looked in my highly organized Pending notebook. I looked in my highly organized Save This box. I simply could not find that invitation. Then I started thinking that maybe I never got an invitation. I was helping with the shower (centerpieces) and there had been many emails, so maybe no one ever sent me an invitation.

At the shower (which was great!), I almost said something to the hostess, in a kidding fashion of course, about not receiving an invitation. Fortunately I kept my mouth shut.

Imagine my surprise this morning when there it was - highly organized and taped to my office cabinet wall. Now I remember doing that and thinking I was so clever - using my cabinet wall like a bulletin board.

That means that now when I am looking for something I need to look in the Pending file, the Pending Notebook, the Save Box, AND the bulletin-board wall. Am I too organized, or is it my age?

Baby Blanket

In between answering the doorbell and handing out candy to the trick-or-treaters, I finished this baby blanket. The picture is not the best, but it is a soft yellow with a basket-weave pattern. The little bunny is baby safe and extremely silky-soft.

Here is a close-up of the Bunny and the blanket.

The shower is tomorrow and these gifts are for my grand-niece who's baby is expected in December. Yes, that will make me a great-great-aunt. (Big smile!)

Lazy Girl - That's me.......

This lazy blogger finally got busy today and made some Lazy Girl pouches to give as a small birthday gift. I love these easy to make pouches even though I can't seem to figure out how to get the zippers going the same direction. The light one pulls from the right and the black one pulls from the left. Which way is correct?

Knitting mitered squares

For the past three days I have been attempting to teach myself how to knit mitered squares per instructions from Melody Johnson of Fibermania. She knits the most wonderful neck warmers and hats using these mitered squares. The square itself is fairly easy to knit, although I need to write out row by row instructions on Excel so that I can keep track of where I am in the process. The difficulty for me was in adding the next square - picking up stitches along the left edge and adding 12 more stitches. For the experienced knitter, this is easy I suppose. But for the inexperienced knitter, the task is daunting as all the instruction books I have do not address this particular task. I searched books, I searched Google, I looked at endless YouTube videos, and I spent way too much time trying to get it. Finally, I was successful. However, the tweed-like yarn makes it almost impossible to see what I did - and there is one mistake buried in the middle.

(If you click on my pictures you can see a larger image)

Below is a close-up of the first completed mitered square, although the miter along the middle doesn't show up too well with this yarn.

The second square added to the first (below) looks like a mess because of the tweed yarn, but I guarantee it is correct. And the joining of the two squares doesn't look too bad for a beginner.

I'm through though. I have other more pressing things to do, and I just have to stop fiddling with these mitered squares. I'm putting the knitting away for know and will attend to the laundry and some quilty things.

Six Hem Sampler

Finished !

Six Hem Sampler

Indigo Rose

28 count Cashel light sand

Silk Threads - Soie d'Alger and Caron Waterlilies

Mill Hill Beads

(Thanks Brenda for your encouragement and help. Thanks MB for your good comments.)

Gratitude -

1. Soup cooking away on the stove, filling my house with mouth-watering smells.

2. Friend Liz who got me excited today to try two new things.

3. Trader Joe's

4. Honey Crisp apples