It’s just irksome….

not the end of the world but simply irksome that I have not taken vacation in ages and two days into it I’m getting a cold.  Middle of the night I woke up with a sore throat and tried telling myself it was just because it was dry in the house – and part of it was that it was the air in the house is so dry – and it doesn’t really hurt anymore after the bazillion cups of hot coffee I have consumed today.  Then I started sneezing. Dagnabbit!  But then it was to be expected I guess because it seems every Christmas I end up with some form of croupy coughing crud – seems I can’t ring in a new year unless I’m sick for some reason. 😉   Oh well, I decided to make a quick trip to my local Walgreens since there was not a Kleenex left in the house, got some Zicam type stuff to see if that might help ward off this cold and keep it from turning into the croupy coughing crud.  I believe the boxed brownie mix I also picked up will definitely help me feel better too — possibly more than the medicine! Homemade brownies would have been better but Walgreens simply doesn’t carry the chocolate I needed so I’ll just have to muddle through with the boxed mix.  🙂

Riding public transportation this time of year is a risky prospect — much coughing and sneezing going on all around you so I figured it was just a matter of time — oh well, it could be worse.

I did spent most of the day sewing which was nice.  I’m about 15 geese short of being half-way done with all the flying geese that go in this project.  Here’s the top half so far laid out on the design wall.

But enough sewing for one day.  I pulled some homemade French onion soup out of the freezer, which is thawing and will go well with my melty toasted cheese sandwich, followed by a steamy hot shower, and then I’ll snuggle into my knitting chair with my blankies for the rest of the night.  I’ve got the baby bonnet seam sewn so need to finish burying ends and then I can add the icord ties.

Saturday Stuff

It was very short-lived  — Mother Nature’s sunshine which we finally saw some of yesterday did not return today.  Tho my computer says it’s “42 but feels like 34” outside,  I don’t think it even feels 34.  The wind was roaring  when I opened up the door, it definitely is very windy and it looks like it rained a bit making it damp so feels colder out there.   So much for my contemplating making a quick run to the grocery store – think I’ll just stay inside today.

I started last night on a new project so am stitching many flying geese.

 Only about 140 more of them to make. 🙂  I don’t really like making them with the stitch and flip a square technique – wastes fabric and adds extra steps.  But then I remembered I’ve got an Easy Angle ruler (EZ International  -no affiliation, just like this ruler) which makes cutting and sewing them much quicker.

I just cut a few pieces to make sure I liked how they were turning out so need to go back and cut more but if you look at the stack in the upper right of the photo of the background triangles, the one that is laying right side up with a wrong side up on top of it — you’ll see the top of it is blunted, not a point.  That’s because you cut those triangles from strips and the ruler has a blunt edge you align with the top of the strip.  This also helps with placement for stitching.   Once they are pressed, I just have to trim off the dog ears in the corners and they are the perfect size with no other squaring up.  So hopefully by the end of the day I’ll have 140+ flying geese ready to put up on the design wall.

I also made great progress on my little baby bonnet once I ripped back what I had done and switched out the colors a bit – my first choices were not really showing the color work well.

The flash is washing out the colors – they are a bit darker.  The green is leftovers from the baby blanket I made – so it’s a bit darker as shown in the blanket.

I just have to cinch up the back of the hat and sew a little bit of a seam and then the bottom edge gets I-cord all along it and to form the ties.

But before getting back to those flying geese – I think I need to go turn on the oven so I can warm up a breakfast treat –

I made blueberry muffins yesterday and since I had been previously talking/thinking about Mom’s streusel coffee cake, I decided to top my muffins with streusel and added in just a bit of coconut I had in the cupboard – I love coconut in and on anything.   They turned out pretty tasty.

Camp Loopy 2 project. Start. 7/1/14 Fin. 7/13/14 Pine Forest Baby Blanket

Final Giveaways for DPPAS and Knitter’s Gifts

I’ve cleared out my box of goodies and I still have some giveaway goodies for the 2014 BOM projects.   There are still two large Dog Pound Pals 2015 calendars.

 

 

 

 And there are still two Knitter’s Gift tote bags  as well as one blank notebook.  So time to clean out the final items so I can get them mailed out next week oops – not next week, I’m still on vacation so they’ll be mailed after first of the year when I return to work.

How can you be eligible to win these items??  Glad you asked.

(1)  to win a chance at the Knitter’s gift blank notebook — all you have to do is live in the US and leave a comment on this blog post.  Sorry to the non-US residents but postage would cost more than the actual notebook cost which would be a bit silly.

(2) to win the Knitter’s Gifts, you must have participated in that project, not won a tote bag previously (I have a list) and upload your photos of your blocks to the Justquiltin Flickr group.  You can load multiple photos for chances to win but each photo must contain a different month’s blocks that you haven’t posted previously and/or the larger section we have assembled  to date.  (well some of you have assembled it, I still need to play catch up).

(3) to be eligible to win the Dog Pound Pals calendars you must be a participant in that project, not have won any giveaways in connection with that project previously, and leave a comment on our DPPAS page (not this blog post).  Any comment left prior to 12/27/14 on the DPPAS page  is not eligible to be included for the drawing.  I’ll just use comments posted between today and the day I award the goodies.

Winners will be posted on New Year’s Eve.     UPDATED – 12/31/14 – WINNER’S ANNOUNCED – CHECK TO SEE IF YOU WON