Happy 2008!

Happy New Year!!

It's been a while since my last entry. Hopefully you've all had a restful and enjoyable break, and are ready to face work/school (or in my case, a very messy craft room and the joy of starting job hunting). We had a really good visit filled with delicious food (as usual), skating, movies, drinks, dinners, crafts and boxing day shopping. And this time I even lugged home two huge baguettes from Fred's Bread (I know, I know, I said Ace Bakery was the best, but sometimes you just have to make do with what's nearby and available). And luckily the border crossing officials didn't look in my trunk, although I think bread is fine. They probably would have confiscated them just seeing how delicious they looked.

Now that the holidays are over, I can finally do my Christmas recap. And tomorrow, if the light is good, I'll show you the new toys I received as well as progress on some projects.

The Christmas giveaways:

Pattern: Various internet readings, stitch dictionaries & Stitch n' Bitch Nation

Yarn: Lamb's Pride Worsted

Needles: US 8 dpns

Basic Cabled Socks for H - I was obsessed with making labels

Four coaster sets to give away, more labels

I tried not to look ridiculous taking photos of everything I ate and drank, but here's one from Christmas day - brandy champagne cocktails. It kind of captures the bulk of how we spent the holidays. We were in a perma-celebration mode.

And here is D's mum's Christmas cake, looking very pretty and cheery (and deliciously boozy - Christmas cake has definately grown on me over the years). The flowers are made with royal icing, I think, and the flower stamens were dipped in yellow food colour. The hearts were piped onto parchment paper, dried, and the attached with thinner royal icing.

And here is my friend A, the recipient of some Knitticrafty mittens, proudly modeling them on a freezing Yorkville morning. And (so far) the only person I know to explicitly state her desire to be featured on my blog. Done! I'm not one to prevent someone from reaching their goals.

More to come!

Last Minute Quilted Coasters

Quilted coasters from Last Minute Patchwork and Quilted Gifts, one of the many beautiful and simple projects from this book. They are relatively easy to make, even if you've never quilted before. I ended up using just a standard presser foot on my machine because the walking foot was the wrong size (ordering it in would have taken 3 weeks - how can I wait that long?) and I think they turned out just fine.


The nice thing about this project is that as long as you are using coordinated prints, you can just cut and sew as you please and then later match the coasters together any way you want. I think I'm going to go test drive the coasters now... curl up with a cup of tea and munch on some shortbread cookies.

Quilty Cat

While D was away I had the whole place to myself, so I moved all my sewing things out to the dining room. I forgot to pre-wash all my fabric, so it took some time before I was ready to cut and sew. I did a ton of ironing as well - here is Gatsby sitting on my nicely ironed pile of quilting fabric. What a pain. Unfortunately I don't have any pictures to share - somehow I let the whole day go by without remembering to take some, and then it was too dark to take any good ones. But it was hard to resist this one:

I like to sit on anything people don't want me to sit on

I've been working on a bunch of different things - coasters, toys, pincushions, real cushions, knitting, beading - and getting very easily distracted by each project so it's hard to finish any one thing. I know I said I'd have projects every day, but the camera situation messed that up. And also the fact that some of the projects are Christmas gifts that won't be a surprise to the recipient if they are reading this blog. Oh well.

This week I also lined up to get my social security number, quite an embarassing experience really. I turned over my documents (passport, application form, etc) to the SSN person and then passed over my driver's license thinking it was my work permit card (forgetting I now had two pieces of Ohio photo ID). Of course, the SSN person just kept saying, "Ma'am, this is not a work permit. You need to talk to Immigration Services and get your work permit". And so I insisted, over and over, that that very card (in fact, the driver's license) was the only thing that I was sent and that it was definitely the work permit. Sigh. At some point I did realize what was going on, but couldn't they have just said "Ma'am, this is a driver's license"?

Thank goodness this is almost the last of the paperwork...I'll be happy when it's all done.