January blocks

This month's Peace Circle block for do.Good Stitches was a quick and painless block.  We just had to add triangles to 5" dark blue squares.  The triangles could be any size, straight or wonky.  I knew my scrap bag full of triangles would come in handy one day!  Sometimes hording fabric actually pays off!  😊

The Power of Hair

Little Guy was blessed with curly blond locks of hair.  He's cute and he knows it!  I've never had a kid have so much hair this young.  Little Lady was still practically bald at this age.  We have a friend who cuts hair for a living who refers to Little Guy as Samson.  She says we can't cut his hair, because that's where his power lies. Everyone kept telling me that if I cut off his curls he'd lose them and his hair would be straight after that.  We've left his hair alone, but every time we wash it I notice it's past his shoulders.  He looks like he's the lead singer in an 80's metal band.

It was the hair laying over his ears on his sides that finally convinced me to trim it.  As the curls came off I was pretty sure a little part of me was going to die on the inside.

 It turns out my fears were unfounded.  It just made his hair curlier.  He's seriously so cute!  I think his power is definitely in his curls!

Some Progress

I found a tutorial for The Road Trip Quilt, and it was for the size of scraps I had.  It came together quickly, and now I'm currently working on the border.  Here's the quilt top:

I also have quilt club tonight, so I needed to complete a row.  I'm back working on my original dragonfly quilt.  I sewed 2 rows together and then made some 4-patches to go with them.  I didn't sew my row on, because I'm still playing with design.  Yet again, I'm finishing my row a day before we meet.  There's just something about a deadline that gets me moving. 

New Projects

I got a second wind after the kiddos went to bed last night and I tackled my sewing desk.  The drawers are organized, and (gasp) I even dusted!  Wahoo!

Another side benefit- I finally couldn't ignore the stuffed animals my children have been begging me to fix for...um, a very long time.  I think the chihuahua made the move broken, so that's 6 months right there.  Oops.  Anyway, I reattached his leg and fixed the zebra's ear, and all is right in the stuffed animal kingdom once again. 

My newly cleaned desk is just in time for another project I need to get under way.  I need to whip up a baby boy quilt quickly.  I remembered I had a bag of scraps from this quilt I made over 4 years ago.  I got the scraps, and I'm so excited to be using them again.  I love this fabric line, so I'm glad I have an excuse to use it.   I want to do something completely different this time with the scraps.

A New Year

I'm not very good with goals.  Well, I'm good at making them.  I'm not so great on the completion part of it.  One year I posted the goals on my bathroom mirror, so I saw them every morning.  I did better that year, but I still didn't accomplish most of them.  This year I'm just going to tick off a couple of things that are on My Bucket List.  There are some things I've always wanted to learn and/or do.  I didn't include my traveling bucket list, because I don't foresee much opportunity to travel this year, and I wanted this to be as realistic as possible. 

One of the things I wanted to do this year is to read more classics.  I saw this Back to Classics Challenge, and I thought this was something that I could reasonably do this year.  I've just preliminarily put a possibility for some of the categories, but I haven't decided on most of them yet. 

1.    A 19th Century Classic - any book published between 1800 and 1899.

Little Women by Louisa May Alcott

2.  A 20th Century Classic - any book published between 1900 and 1967. Just like last year, all books MUST have been published at least 50 years ago to qualify. The only exception is books written at least 50 years ago, but published later, such as posthumous publications.

Dubliners by James Joyce

3.  A classic by a woman author. 

Georgette Heyer

4.  A classic in translation.  Any book originally written published in a language other than your native language. Feel free to read the book in your language or the original language. (You can also read books in translation for any of the other categories).

Something in Spanish

5.  A classic published before 1800. Plays and epic poems are acceptable in this category.

The Tempest by William Shakespeare

6.  A romance classic. I'm pretty flexible here about the definition of romance. It can have a happy ending or a sad ending, as long as there is a strong romantic element to the plot.

Georgette Heyer

7.  A Gothic or horror classic. For a good definition of what makes a book Gothic, and an excellent list of possible reads, please see this list on Goodreads. 

 Rebecca by Daphne du Maurier

8.  A classic with a number in the title. Examples include A Tale of Two Cities, Three Men in a Boat, The Nine Tailors, Henry V, Fahrenheit 451, etc.

Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury

9.  A classic about an animal or which includes the name of an animal in the title.  It can be an actual animal or a metaphor, or just the name in the title. Examples include To Kill a Mockingbird, Of Mice and Men, The Metamorphosis, White Fang, etc.

10. A classic set in a place you'd like to visit. It can be real or imaginary: The Wizard of Oz, Down and Out in Paris and London, Death on the Nile, etc.

11. An award-winning classic. It could be the Newbery award, the Prix Goncourt, the Pulitzer Prize, the James Tait Award, etc. Any award, just mention in your blog post what award your choice received.

A Wrinkle in Time by Madeleine L'Engle

12. A Russian Classic. 2017 will be the 100th anniversary of the Russian Revolution, so read a classic by any Russian author.

The other thing I need to do is organize myself, so I'm joining my fellow do.Good Stitches Peace Circle member in her Sewing Organization Challenge.  First up- cleaning off your sewing table...  Here's my official BEFORE picture.  It seemed a bit unfair that you can't tell how messy it is because it's completely covered by the Christmas quilt that I haven't been working on for the last 3 weeks.

 I was feeling guilty that I hadn't worked on the quilt, and now that Christmas is over I don't really feel like working on it anymore either.  To ease my guilty conscience I quilted some blocks on this portion of the quilt and then I packed it back away.

 Here's the table without the quilt.  It revealed the 2 stuffed animals I've been promising to fix for my children for...um...let's just say quite a while.  Maybe I'll do that this evening since they saw them again and got upset about it.  Oopsy.  Nobody every said getting organized is an easy process.

What it looks like without the quilt on top

 

Coping Mechanisms

Sometimes the stars align and the kids play beautifully together, and sometimes the kids are fighting on their way down the path from school before they even reach the car.  When that happens you just know it's going to be a long evening.  This is when I intervene with craft therapy.  They craft and I avoid therapy.  This gives me at least 30 minutes of peace, and that's priceless.

 BB painted a sun burnt Santa and then ran off to tear apart something, but here's my proof he can create instead of just destroy once in a while:

A Little Progress

After a 5 year hiatus,  I decided to pull out my Christmas quilt and work on it.  I was thinking that I didn't have any required quilting projects for a bit since Stitches takes a break during December.  I thought I could at least piece together my leftover Christmas fabric to form a back.  It didn't take very long, and before I knew it I was laying everything out in the front room and pinning it together!  I kind of like that the Christmas tree is peaking out in the corner of the picture.  It makes the quilt even more festive.

I'm still planning out the quilting, so I haven't started that part yet.  This week is crazy, so I won't be doing much quilting, but I like the thought that I've actually made some progress.  At this rate I may actually get it done before another 5 years pass! 

Square in a Square

Today is my quilt club and I've finished up my row.  Technically speaking, this one is 4 blocks that she wanted us to leave apart.  She's going to arrange all of the blocks at the end.  The only stipulation she had was that the blocks needed to by 8 inches out of her fabric.  I chose a Square in a Square block.  It's not the most creative name for a block, but it fits.  I love the colors in her fabric, so I enjoyed working with these.