Happy New Year!

A Christmas Gift

Terri had my name for Christmas this year and today my gift arrived in the mail. What a wonderful surprise! I have great admiration for anyone who can come up with an original design for a quilt and it comes naturally to Terri.



She tells me she picked out the fabrics in November, so she actually was able to put this together pretty quickly. She must have had the math all figured out ahead of time.




I'm guessing my tall, skinny house was her inspiration.

I'm loving it!

Sometimes I Knit

I had Brian's name in the gift exchange this year and decided to knit him an afghan. Fortunately I didn't wait until Thanksgiving to make the decision -- this one took much longer than I expected. I don't do a lot of knitting so I really didn't know what I was getting into.

By the time I got to the last few skeins of yarn, I had enough of unraveling rows when I made a mistake, so there are a few left in there. I think it'll still be just as cozy.

Merry Christmas to All

"Christmas Christmas now is here,

Festival most glorious;

Bringing joy beyond compare;

Blessed mirth and gladness."

Lots of wishes for a joyful Christmas to all from this very happy Grandma!

UFO Challenge

Judy over at Patchwork Times is organizing a UFO Challenge for 2011. You can click on the icon on the right and check out her rules, but she does allow bending the rules to fit your hopes and expectations. I've chosen 6 UFO's to work on in 2011 -- here they are:
1. Kaffe Fassett Ice Cream Quilt -- complete assembly of quilt top. 2. Pink/Green Baby Quilt -- baste, quilt and bind.

3. Red/White/Blue Coin Quilt -- baste and quilt.

4. Homespun quilt -- baste and quilt.

5. 30's baby quilt -- assemble blocks and complete quilt top.

6. String quilt -- finish making blocks and assemble top.

Judy will be drawing numbers each month to determine which project we will work on. Since I have chosen only 6 projects, on the months that she draws numbers 7 through 12, my plan is to work on her monochromatic challenge of the month.

I was looking over my 2010 quilt photos and found that I had completed 8 quilts. Four of them were UFO's that I completed, four of them were quilts that I started and finished during the year. So my quilting goals for this year may be more than I can deliver, or hopefully Judy's challenges just may just be the motivation I need.

Stay tuned ;)

After completing my January UFO on time, I decided to forego the monochromatic challenge and instead added six more quilts to my UFO Challenge -- see post on January 30 for details.

Therapy for a Quilter

Lately my sewing room is such a mess that I have to close my eyes when I walk through it. So, instead of cutting more fabric into little pieces and stitching them back together to make something that pleases my eye, I head to the kitchen and find satisfaction chopping up veggies into tiny little pieces

and throwing them all together in a pot to make something to please my appetite.

Maybe Monday I'll dig in and organize my sewing room. Again.

Wedding Weekend

It was certainly the best weekend I've had for a long long time. For the most part I left my camera behind and just soaked up the joy. I'm fortunate to have a sister, a daughter, and a daughter-in-law that are much better with the camera than I am and were quite willing to capture some special moments. Their links are to the right.

On Friday morning we went to the church to see what needed to be done to get ready for Saturday. It was awesome to see so many ladies taking time away from their Black Friday shopping to help out with preparations.




And just look at how much they were enjoying doing it!

Jodi Helminen made the cute love birds for the bridal table.

It was great that my mom was able to make it to the wedding. She was disappointed when she had to miss the last trip when I travelled downstate for Shannon's shower, but this more than made up for it.

I was thankful to have Bill as a driver for our travels so I didn't have to worry about wintertime driving. We lucked out and had bare roads for the whole trip.

Now I can spend my quiet time wallowing in the good memories made. I feel very blessed to have another awesome daughter-in-law!