Im happy to say, I’m in sight of finishing the Christmas Gnomes before the new year.

I got all my blanket stitch done. It did improve a little as I went along. After that I sewed the beards and noses on.

I added the bell to the left gnome’s hat, and some stripes to the candy cane. There was supposed to be some embroidery on the middle gnome’s hat, but as I said before, my embroidery skills suck… as evidenced by the terrible stitching on the candy cane. I decided the hat was just fine with out it.

The next step was sandwiching and quilting. If I was headed to Mom’s any time soon, I’d just whip it off there on the quilting machine. But I’m not. And there’s too much going on for much straight-line quilting.

So…

I put it in my big cross-stitching frame and I’m hand-quilting it! It’s the first thing I’ve every hand quilted. And my hand quilting skills are barely better than my embroidery skills. But still… I think it’s going to be fun!

Like many of you, we got hit by the big pre-Christmas storm. It started as rain Thursday night, and by Friday morning it was a full on blizzard. By Saturday things were calmer, but the wind was still high

The snow was light and dry, and with the wind that spells trouble for travel – especially in wide open spaces. Large parts of the area around us had roads closed due to whiteout conditions, and blowing snow.

On Christmas Day, we were supposed to head to my brother’s. He lives three hours north of us and the drive takes us all along the shore of Lake Huron. We were hoping things would clear up by Christmas morning, but about 70% of the roads we needed to take were closed. The other 30% were marked as snow-covered with poor visibility

So it was Christmas Day at home.

The snow might have changed our plans, but it sure is pretty!

Burton and I decided to take advantage of the unexpected free time, and work on some languishing quilts.

We had a marathon trim session and trimmed up all the flying geese for the Little Wishes nine-patches. It took quite a while (There were 116 to trim!), but we got them done and started sewing our blocks together.

And we just kept sewing. It took all day but…

We now have 30 big, beautiful scrappy blocks ready to be turned into a quilt top.

I’m sad we have to wait to celebrate, but I’m happy I made such good use of the time!

Wishing you all the very best today and the new year to come

Love Valerie, Lord Burton Bearbottom, Baron Rupert von Scrufflebutt, Lemmy Purrmister, and Relic!

‘Twas the night before Christmas
and all through the house
Not a creature was stirring,
not even a mouse.

‘Cuz the cat had pounced on him
and tore him apart-
Ate his mousey intestines
And chewed up his heart.

Kitty thought he heard sleighbells,
which made him take pause-
He stopped daintily lickng
the blood from his claws.

“Must be Santa” thought Kitty
(that quite clever cat)
‘Cuz nobody else climbs down
the chimney like that.

Indeed it was ol’ Santa,
so jolly and fat
With a load of presents
and all for the cat!

“Wow, the best Christmas ever!”
Kitty thought with a purr,
Then he coughed up a hairball
and shed some more fur.

They say where there is darkness…

There is also light.

And that seems to be so true of these two.

These days, you can pretty much count on the fact that wherever Burton is, Lemmy will be too.

There is, of course, a lot of rough play. But they truly do seem to enjoy each others company.

And are more than happy to share their favourite spaces, most of the time.

I’m certainly enjoying watching their friendship grow.

Kittens…. we have a problem…

There is no way we are going to have Dad’s sweater done in time for Christmas. I just have not been able to devote the time needed each evening to it.

It’s maybe four inches further since you last saw it. Which means I still need to knit seven inches of plain knitting, and two or three of ribbing to finish the body. Then there’s still the sleeves.

My mother-in-law arrives for a visit today. I still work today and Friday. And then there’s baking to do… it just not going to happen by Sunday. Even if I had nothing else to do, I doubt I’d be able to finish it in time.

But I’m not sweating it. I have a couple other small things set aside for Dad, and I popped out and got him a gift card on Monday.

The question now is… do I finish it some time in the new year and give it to him when it’s done, or hold onto it for Fathers Day, his Birthday, or next Christmas???

So Burton got his Christmas quilt, but he still needed something else… a Christmas bandana!

I found this cute fabric at Walmart – I didn’t realize it was Christmas fabric at first – I just saw the mushrooms. I got it home, unfolded it, and that’s when I saw the Christmas birds!

Burton, of course, immediately claimed it as soon as he saw those birds.

Of course, with all that floof, it’s not really apparent it’s a Christmas bandana at first glance. But he’s happy, and that’s what matters!

You will recall that I like to have a little fun with the presents I make for my brother. We love puns and double entendre, and general toilet humor.

My brother also loves to cook, so this year I decided to make him a gift he can use in the kitchen… an apron.

I did have a pattern, but I figured I could wing one by taking some direction from my own drywalling apron…

With a little help from Miss Pee and her Cricut, I was able to bring our brand of humour to the top part of the apron.

And for the bottom half, I got this fabulous fiery fabric.

It’s very basic in terms of design, but I’m very pleased with how it turned out. I hope my brother likes it just as much!

As is was the last weekend before Christmas, I took some time this weekend to get the quilting done on Burton’s Christmas quilt..

I just did some plain crisscross stitching for the quilting, then sewed on the binding. That evening, I settled in to sew the binding down by hand.

This, of course, was a new activity for wee Lemmy, and he thoroughly enjoyed being part of it. Being that it’s a cat quilt, it’s small, so it didn’t take very long to finish it up.

As mentioned previously, the pattern is Oh My Stars. My favourite for when you want scrappy, simple, and fast. It’s all made from Christmasy scraps. For the back, I pieced together some chunks of plaid flannel I had left from the back of another quilt.

Burton is just thrilled with the decor change.

Though it looks like I have to teach him a little something about the spirit of the season and sharing…

Facebook can be a dangerous place. Already overloaded with Christmas projects… I saw something I just HAD to make. A button Christmas tree!

I have a large collection of spare buttons, inherited from an old relative. All I needed was some pins (which I got from Amazon) and a stryrofoam cone (purchased from a dollar store)

I put it all in an cardboard pop box, and settled down in front of the tv one evening.

Burton always loves it when the buttons come out, and settled in to help. It wasn’t a super fast project, but by the time the evening was up, I had a completed button tree.

Burton looks rather pleased with our work.

And I must say… I am too!