A Christmas Kit

 My friend, Karen, gave me a little cross stitch kit to make an ornament for our tree for Christmas.  I decided to abandon my funky chicken cross stitch and do the kit instead this week.  I wanted to get it done before we take the tree down and put the ornaments away. My father in law drove a little red truck and my daughter called him the Red Truck Grandpa when she was little so red trucks have a special significance in our family. 

The ornament in the top right of the picture above was made for me by my friend Pat a few Christmases ago. 

Here is the red truck in various stages of completion...

I also picked up one of the books I received for Christmas and read it this week, instead of the book I had already started.  (I will get back to it now!). This was a gift from my daughter.  It was a great Christmas holiday read. 

We did not have very good weather for being outside this past week but the sun finally came out and the wind died down yesterday so we took Finn for a walk in the snow at a local conservation area. He loved it and was quite worn out last night. 

Here he is, midway through shaking all the snow off his face. 

My daughter brought home a couple of crochet projects including her book blanket.  She read 117 books in 2025 and made a granny square for each book. The gray granny squares will go in between each month's blocks.  There are 13 gray squares and 117 colourful squares for a total of 130 squares.  They will be set 10x13 with crocheted sashing in white and a few borders around the entire blanket.  

The gray square marks the start of the year.  The squares are in order of the books she read.  She found an online tutorial about joining granny squares together that she used for the white part. 

She has been working on her crochet along as well. My daughter and I both like to have several projects underway at the same time...it gives us a choice of what to work on when the mood hits. 

I will link up with Kathy and the Slow Stitchers on Sunday as well as Frederique and her followers tomorrow.  Happy New Year everyone!  I am looking forward to finishing some projects this year and starting a few new ones as well. 

Two Gifted Pillows and some Cross Stitch

Some gifts have been given and opened already so I can show them to you.  This first pillow is for a friend who just retired.  I made her a wall hanging a few years ago out of these Christmas FQ's that I have in my stash and decided to maker her a co-ordinating pillow this year. The backing fabric was not quite wide enough so a strip of brown was added.   Also, you will notice that the trees are green on one side and brown on the other.  It all co-ordinates!  There is a zipper under the flap on the back. 

The wreath pillow was finished this week too.  The fabric that I ordered was not an exact match for the fabric on the front of the pillow but it looks fine.  The store said this was Essex linen but it doesn't look like what I have purchased before.  Does anyone know if they have changed the way they make Essex linen???  Anyway, I now have 2. 7 yards of this new fabric.  I will use it for something. The young couple I gave this pillow to were very happy with it. 

This cross stitch is going to be a Satsuma Street Funky Chicken.  I will do all the stitching first and then make it into a 3D chicken.  I'm running out of the darker orange colour and will need to buy another skein of it.  

A few years ago, I made some cross stitch ornaments with old wooden spools.  I made three more this week to be given as gifts. 

Finn says he had to wear his booties again this week.   Sigh. 

Here are the little sleighs before they got put onto the spool. 

 Merry Christmas and Happy Holidays, Everyone!  I hope you get some quiet moments during the holidays to stitch, or knit or crochet or read or just relax. 

I will link up with Kathy in the morning and Frederique now. 

Slow Sunday Stitching

 Christmas 2024 has come and gone and we are now in that quieter time between December 25th and New Year's Day. I blogged earlier in the week about some of the gifts I made this year and you can read about them here.  I have been doing some reading and cross stitching every day--ahhhh! The lower left square will eventually be a picture of an owl...

My friend, Pat, knitter extraordinaire, made me these cute Christmas sweater ornaments for our tree.  I'm not sure I could manage to knit something so small!  

Finn loves a squeaky toy and this one was a Big Dill!

My daughter and Finn are here until after January 1st and she has been working on her crochet Christmas blanket every day.  A door, a window and Christmas lights were added to the gingerbread house in the middle of the blanket. 

The Christmas lights border now has a string attaching the lights to each other. 

All of the parts are crocheted together and she has started the gingerbread border. She just taught herself how to crochet this past summer and has learned a lot with this ambitious project.  I think it looks fantastic!  

I will link up with Kathy and the Slow Sunday Stitchers in the morning. 

Santa's Helper

Last week, I mentioned that I had made a surprise gift for a friend.  This block was one of 12 free blocks --part of the Quiltmas Spectacular Block sampler that is available for free until the end of December 2020.  I have printed all the blocks, hoping to make several over the next year or so --somehow incorporating them into gifts for next year.  This block is called "Santa's Helper". 

 My quilty friend, Sandra, posted the picture below on Instagram recently, and once I saw this block pattern, I knew that I had to make it for her. 

I gathered up some fabrics from my stash in the right colours to match Sandra's ensemble.

I made this little quilt in one day and sent it off in the mail.  I heard from Sandra this week that it had arrived and that she loves it!  I told her it was a portrait of her from the knees down!  So fun to surprise someone with a fun little gift at this time of year!

I have been doing some more knitting on my orange facecloth this week. 

I also still have a few secret projects that can't be revealed until after Christmas.  I will have to wait another week to post them on the blog. 

Guess who is visiting at my house?  My daughter lives alone so she was allowed to come to our house for Christmas.  Finn was very excited to see us. In the background, you can see the fence we have around our Christmas tree to keep him away from the water reservoir and the ornaments.  Finn is currently keeping my left leg warm while I type. 

My daughter finished her bee blackwork this week.  I was on FaceTime with her as she put in the final few stitches.  It took a lot longer than she anticipated but she loves how it turned out.   I love looking at all the different patterns she stitched in the hexagons. This picture was taken before it was washed and ironed for framing. 

I would like to introduce you to Santa, our newest to us Christmas decoration.  Santa was painted by my MIL when my husband was a child.  She used to do a lot of ceramics.  I think he is quite jolly!  Santa is on display on the shelves in our living room. 

I participated in a Secret Santa gift exchange through one of my guilds and received these cute ornaments as well as a small zipper pouch and some fat quarters. They are hanging on my tree and I love the bits of fabric my SS used!  So fun to get a package in the mail!

We decorated the tree last weekend and I found this ornament that my friend Meridyth made for me many moons ago.  1988!  I was not married yet in 1988!

I just starting reading this book for the book club at the library...we will be discussing it in January on Zoom.  Interesting story so far!

I will be linking up with Kathy for slow Sunday stitching in the morning. 

Appliqué Chimneys and a New Project

A few weeks ago, I noticed that another one of the Slow Sunday Stitchers was starting a new counted cross stitch project through Linen and Threads--it runs a new part of the pattern each month for a larger sampler project and there is a bonus Christmas ornament pattern each month as well.  I have decided to make a few of the Christmas ornaments and started the January pattern this week. The pattern suggests using one colour for the entire design but since I did not want to follow the directions, I picked out three shades of gray and a red to stitch my ornament. I managed to work on this most days this past week and I think it should be done by this time next week if I keep at it. 

(If you look at the pattern at the link, you will notice I made a few adjustments to the pattern due to my colour choices.)

This week, I finally got back to working on my Sarah Fielke 2019 BOM quilt--Coming Home.  For some reason, I had drifted away from this one for a few months and just could not get back at it.  The next stage involved picking colours for all of the houses on the next border and then piecing all of them.  (I actually still have a little bit of appliqué to do on the previous border as well--some stars near the moons and kites and birds near the suns.)  I started by picking out the colours...

The small houses were next.  I quickly realized that I would have to hand appliqué all the chimneys before adding the sky to each house.

I did one house at a time and soon the neighbourhood was growing.

The doors and windows will be added in one fell swoop when all of the houses are pieced.

The trees were completed in a previous step.

Soon, one "street" was completed and I was on to the next one.  There was a bit of paper piecing on the triangle sections of the larger houses.

I have four more houses to make to finish the last two sides.  Then, there will be lots of appliqué to keep me busy for a while.

I also made one more comfort quilt block this week for the Elgin Piecemakers Guild.  This one is for November 2020--green, black and tan.

I will be linking up with the Slow Sunday stitchers at Kathy's blog in the morning.