Happy Boxing Day!

I hope you all had a wonderful holiday and are able to relax a little now. I’m happy to say, I finished Dave’s Christmas socks in time, and I didn’t even have to knit in church on Christmas Eve (They were finished the night before). I ended up playing a serious game of yarn chicken with this pair…

… hence the blue toes. I was lucky, I had a bit of blue Barn Cat in the stash that was a pretty close match to the blue in the yarn. I think it worked out well.

As you can see, I got two different pooling patterns on the socks. And just like on the first sock, the leg pooled differently than the foot. So interesting!

They are now keeping Dave’s feet warm… and I have to find something new to knit!

 

We hope you’re all having a wonderful day and wish you all the best in the year to come!

Tonight’s the night! And we are ready.

We’ve got an evening of church with and carol-singing with Dave’s grandma, and dinner tomorrow with my parents. We hope wherever you are, you’re with the ones you love!

 

*a note on yesterday’s post:

Thank you for all the comments on my outfit. The dress was bought on a whim from one of those Chinese websites the internet has warned you about. It was just so ridiculous, and it was only $7, I figured it was worth a try. To my surprise, it fit perfectly when it arrive (I followed the measurements listed on the website). The quality is sub-par, but it’s a novelty, and for $7 I’m certainly not going to complain. I was going to wear a black cardigan, but when I showed it to neighbour Krista, she suggested red, and I knew I had the perfect boots to go with it (they were also bought from one of those Chinese sites, a few years ago). The sparkly cat ears were a last-minute buy on an impromptu shopping trip with Krista. It couldn’t have worked out more perfectly!

Yesterday was the first of our Christmas gatherings. My brother was suppose to come down the other week, but since the plague was ripping through the family, things got postponed, and we ended up going into him.

I loaded everything in Mom’s truck early Saturday morning and settled in with my back seat companion for the 3-hour trip north to Owen Sound…

A great time was had by all, but sadly I took very few pictures. All I have to show you is poor Pou-bella hiding from the big scary dog with Rowan’s stuffies…

This cute little set of fashionable felines the girls gave me…

And the purr-fectly wonderful outfit I put together for the festivities…

Now we’ve got today to rest, then two more days of festivities!

I’m not done trimming all my HSTs for the Leader & Ender quilt, but I’m getting close. I have finally run out of fabric to make them. I was worried that I was going to have to move this one from L&E and into the regular rotation, but I was happy to discover it can stay an L&E for a little while longer.

Since all the HSTs are random, the resulting pinwheels are too. So I every time I need an L&E I can just grab a couple non-matching HSTs and sew them together. And when I have a pile of them, I can assemble them into crazy pinwheels.

Once all the pinwheels are done, it will finally become a regular rotation quilt, because I’m going to do my best to make sure no two fabrics are side-by-side. But I’ve got a while before that happens.

Here’s where all my projects stand.

• Autumn a-whirl: I found a great deal on a huge batik chunk, and it arrived a couple of weeks ago. Soon I’ll put the border on and this one will move to the to-quilt pile.
• Marseilles Stars: Slow going, but I love it. I’m going to try to do two stars a week, but we’ll have to see how that goes.
• A quilt for Ty: This one is a commission and it’s in a holding pattern until we can get out and get more fabric for it. Probably not until after the holidays
• Grey swan princess: I still haven’t named this one. It’s half done and I’m already thinking about backing. I have enough grey fabric, but I think I’d like to find a nice flannel backing if I can.
• Leader and Ender HSTs: All the HSTs are done, and now we’re assembling crazy pinwheels!

It’s been a while since I’ve given you an update on Miss Winnie… so her she is in all her beautiful glory!

She’s somewhere between seven and eight months old now and she’s just been spayed.

You may remember when Mom first brought her home, she was the tiniest little ball of fluff. We were so sure she was going to be a long-hair. But as you can see, while her coat is gorgeous (and so, so soft!!!), it’s not very long at all.

You may also remember that she had the derpiest little tale.

It was a short, stumpy little thing and we debated whether we thought it would grow or always be short (Peno has a short tail, though it’s not obvious when you first see her.)

Well Winnie’s tail grew…

In fact, it’s absolutely magnificent! The pictures don’t do it justice. It’s HUGE AND FLUFFY! And even more so when she’s all wound up. She almost looks like she’s part raccoon!

And as fantastic and floofalicious as that tail is, she’s still a pretty small cat. Right now she’s about on par with Rupert (who’s a tiny 6.5 lbs). She’s still go some growing to do, but we don’t think she’s going to be a giant.

Regardless – she’s come a long way from the sick little kitten she was!

I’m still undecided on what I really want to knit, so I’ve been working monogamously on Dave’ Christmas socks every evening. As a result, I was able to finish the first on up on the weekend.

Nothing fancy – I’m letting the fabulous yarn do all the work. I like how it swirl-pooled on one direction on the leg, but then switched directions on the foot.

The second sock is well underway, so I should have no problem finishing them by Christmas Day. (Even if I end up working on them in church on Christmas Eve…).

The swan quilt is going swimmingly… so to speak..

I work on it, a quadrant at a time, and it’s now half done. Unlike Victorian Love Charm, I’m not doing each quadrant exactly the same this time. Unfortunately, the selection of fabrics in the charm pack wouldn’t work out. So I had to get a little more creative. The finished quilt will have two matching pairs of quadrants – set diagonally to each other.

I think it’s going to look fantastic when it gets its bottom half!

Productivity in the quilting department has really fallen lately. My bout with the sick, coupled with a really heavy workload at the day job has really cut into my sewing time. But this weekend, I managed to bang out a couple more Marseilles stars

They are made from charm squares, and since I can get two matching centres from two charm squares, I’ve worked out a way that I can sew two blocks at a time with chain piecing.

Last time I showed these, many of you commented how nice they look on point. I agree, and I think that’s how I’m going to lay them out in the final quilt. I just have to decide if I want them touching each other, or with a plain block in between (like in my bear paws). Then Mom could do some fancy quilting on the plain blocks!

It will really come down to how big things are working out once all my blocks are done (I have 10 more to go). This is another couch quilt, so I don’t want it too big.

Of course, I’ve got plenty of time to decide – I’m no where close to finishing the star blocks.

We interrupt this Christmas knitting to work on (and finish) more Christmas knitting…

As I was going through all the stuff I had to wrap for Christmas, I realized there was one small present I’d forgotten about. Luckily, it was small and quick and I had them knit up in no time…

The pattern is Family Slippers and I used some Bernat Chunky Felting I had kicking around in my stash. I loved using the Felting because the single ply makes them look a little like the Phentex Mom used to use, but the Felting is much nicer!

A couple evening of knitting and they were done, and now I can get back to Dave’s Christmas socks. Of course, if I don’t finish his socks in time, he can always get them for Valentine’s Day!