Another project off the list. :)

I finished up my Christmas towels. I bought these towels probably 2 or 3 years ago intending to decorate them and give them for Christmas gifts. Well they're finally finished - yeah! They were more work than I thought they'd be so I'm glad to scratch them off my list. I'm giving my mom and sister their choice for a set and probably give one to coworker and keep whatever is left. These are made from patterns in Nancy Halvorsen's Art to Heart Christmas books - I usually buy her Christmas book every year because she has so many cute ideas. Her books and the Need'l Love "threads" books (Autumn Threads, Wintergreen Threads, etc) are some of my favorite books to pick up for fun projects.

I was showing these to my DH when I was fusing on the applique - I asked him if he could recognize what the elf on the red towel was before I got the eyes and details on it. He said "a pig in a hat". A pig! Of course I was annoyed but the more I looked at it, yes the more it looked like a pig! I tried to make it not look so pig-ish but I'm afraid it will just have to stay that way. It is rather funny and I think I better keep that red set for myself as no one may want a pig towel. :)









Now that '24' is over for the season I don't know what I'm going to watch all summer. I can't believe they won't come back for next season until January! I need a job like that - it pays millions and you get 7 months off every year. I don't watch very much TV anyway - I don't like reality shows so other than a few crime dramas like Law & Order etc I don't watch much. I do have lots of movie and TV shows on DVD at home and I put them on in my craft room to have something to listen to. The nice thing about old movies and shows is you don't have to watch it that much, you can listen and still sew or stitch.

Here's a picture of my little dog Abby. She's very funny and amuses us all the time. It doesn't look very comfortable but for some reason she likes to sit in the doggy door and peer out at the world. Every time I open my walk-in closet she goes and sits under my long dresses. I guess she likes to be enclosed for some reason. The trouble with that is she has gotten shut in the closet twice now when I didn't see her in there. Dogs are so funny.

A Touch of Spring

No stitching updates today. We have some birds nesting in one of the vines on the fence in our backyard. I've named the newest addition Simon. Isn't he cute? Not that I know it's a "him" but I just felt like calling this little one Simon for some reason. :) My husband took this picture without getting too close as we don't want to scare off the mother bird who is busy flying in and out with food every few minutes it seems.

I was out yesterday with all my quilting friends - we had a reunion with another group we met back in March that live on the other end of town. These lovely ladies hosted a wonderful progressive luncheon for our group and of course we did some stash shopping at a new quilt store which is always fun. We "toured" 4 different sewing rooms, had lots of show & tell and just had a great time. Isn't it amazing when you meet people who share the same passions as you do - so much to talk about and learn from each other.

It was 102 here today so we spent the afternoon in the pool cooling off. Summer has definitely arrived here in the desert. It's not quite as bad as it sounds - as long as you stay out of the sun it's fairly tolerable because there is so little humidity this time of the year. Hope to have some other updates later this week - almost finished with my Christmas towels and ready to start a new small stitching project - yippee! I love new starts!

Bah Humbug!

I have a list of 10 small projects on my blog that I wanted to fit in between my big projects. I stitched one of them last week in one evening and finished it into an ornament tonite. I go on quilting retreats twice a year usually and we always have a theme. Last year one of our retreats was titled "Bugmania". We get pretty silly when we go - lots of laughing, singing and general fun times are had by all. We started thinking up bug names for ourselves - we had June Bug, Lady Bug, Stink Bug, etc. I was grumpy about my job so I decided on Humbug. So when I saw this little chart by Bent Creek I knew I had to stitch it. It was fun to do. And as luck would have it, I had some leftover cording from another project which matched it well.

Bought a bit of stash on Saturday. Picked up the new limited edition of Gingher embroidery scissors - the Glory pattern. I also bought a few of the newest Prairie Schooler patterns and "Meadow Hills" from By the Bay Needlearts. They had a model at my LNS done on 40 count pale blue linen in silks. It hooked me!

Rachel had asked me how I attach my cording. When I am doing something firm like the finishes in my blog entry below, I glue the cording on with Aleene's Tacky Glue. Those projects were 2 pieces of mat board glued and sewed together and it makes it easy to glue on the cording around it. For soft things such as this ornament, I whip stitch the cording on and try to use matching thread so it doesn't show much.

I was looking at the pictures from the tornado in Kansas tonite. Wow - I cannot even imagine winds of 205 miles per hour! It must have been terrifying for those people. It really makes you count your blessings when you realize everything you own could be gone in a couple of minutes.