Merry Christmas

Wishing All of You a Very Merry Christmas

Sunday Stitching

Winter Solstice on Friday gave us the shortest day and longest night of the year, now each day will grow a little longer. This solstice was particularly unique, as it aligned with two other special astronomical events: the full moon named the Cold Moon or the Long Night Moon as well as the Ursid meteor shower, if you were looking up into the sky within the 48-hour block You might have caught the Ursid meteor shower,

and you would have be able to see Mercury and Jupiter too. The next time the full moon aligns with the winter solstice will not be until 2094 so mark your calendar!

On the slow stitching front I am slowly putting stitches into one of my most recent hand embroidery projects a series of drumming and dancing pieces.  I cut out quite a bit of stitches and reworked the piece which is always a bit frustrating.

I haven't made much progress since I am trying to get the crocheted afghan for my brother in law done, it's nearly complete with a little over half a skein of yarn to go.  But after a few hours of crochet my hands need a change from crocheting so I once again picked up my hand embroidery.  I have the second design ready to go.  I will link up at Kathy's Quilts today https://kathysquilts.blogspot.com/2018/12/slow-sunday-stitching_23.html

We have closed the Amazon, Ebay and Web stores for the week so I am officially on vacation, yesterday I spent time wrapping Tessa's Christmas gifts, I realized I may have gone a little overboard so I put a few things aside for her birthday in February. 

Today I am going shopping for a new sofa and the rest of the day relaxing with some crochet and hand embroidery content in the knowledge that donations to my favorite charities have been made, I added 2 new charities to my list this year.  I am bringing dessert to my sisters house for dinner and I didn't lift a spoon or a mixer just click through a few online menus and pick up is Monday morning on my way back from the post office where I will ship the last of any pending orders made before we closed the store. 

I wish all of you who celebrate a very Merry Christmas and Happy New Year.

Welcome winter

Have a warm and wonderful Winter Solstice

Busy with little time to stitch.

The holiday season is upon us, festive lights and decorations are popping up all over, not to mention Christmas music playing just about everywhere since the day after Thanksgiving. Having the online shops makes this my busy time of year so not much in the stitching department gets done.  Most of my days are spent unpacking boxes arriving almost delay from vendors, and shipping out the daily purchases of our customers, not to mention the eight hundred to a thousand items we send to Amazon each week which takes most of the day to label with our unique bar codes, packing some items into individual bags etc. the process is usually 2 days, but well worth it to have Amazon shipping and storing those items.

I have done some crocheting over the past few weeks when I have some down time, the afghan I'm making for my brother in law is nearly done.

and the little purple doll dress I made for my great niece is finished, the dress fits 18" American Girl

size doll, the dress is modeled on Our Generation doll.  I have a few more pieces I want to make for the doll.  I actually bought Tessa an Our Generation doll for Christmas with several pieces of clothing but I thought I would toss a few handmade pieces in too.  The doll above is fa few years old I keep at my house so I have something to check the fit of the clothes I make, you wouldn't believe how often a friend will request a handmade doll outfit.  I keep a few pieces of clothing here too so Tessa can play with it when she visits.  I have dolls of several sizes around from 6" to 18".

My Orts for the month are few and I don't expect much more until the new year, I haven't picked up my spirit bear piece of hand embroidery or any of the other patterns I have traced onto fabric waiting to be stitched

I made a few errors and had to snip them out of the bear piece so until the crazy season is over I'll stick to crocheting for a while. I was working on a doll sweater with the most horrendous yarn that kept splitting every time I made a stitch so I unraveled it after the fourth row.

 I haven't even had the time to pick up a book to read in the past few weeks though I have thumbed through the pages of a few magazines and catalogs and today I finally made the time to write a few letters that have been waiting for replies, I usually don't write letters in December but some of the letters have been waiting since October and that is so unlike me. Tomorrow I plan to take the time to write out Christmas cards and get them in the mail.

I am linking up today at Kathy's Quilts https://kathysquilts.blogspot.com/2018/12/slow-sunday-stitching_9.html
I love linking up to Kathy's site and seeing what she is currently slow stitching then I take the time to see what other bloggers are slow stitching today too.  And Kathy's post reminded me I have a quilt I have been working on since 1989 so I pulled it out of the closet and plan to get in a few stitches today and perfect day because it's rainy, cold and damp so a quilt on my lap will be quite cozy.

This is the first quilt I ever made it is hand pieced, and hand quilting has been in progress since 1989. I cut each piece with scissors.