2012 has been a wonderful year for me, and I hope for you as well. Best wishes for a very special 2013 for everyone!

Christmas was a blur from the great Grandson tearing into his gifts

to the delicious dinner topped off by this made from scratch cheesecake made by my Grandson. Everyone agreed he can be the official cheesecake baker as it was every bit a good as it looked!

With Christmas out of the way and all of the evidence cleaned up, I was able to get started on the newest art quilt. It is always so exciting to start something new. Here is the progress after about three days of sewing.

This is going to be pretty good sized, what you see here is about 8 x 12″.  I’ve spent a couple of hours online looking for some more of that McKenna Ryan fabric that makes good fur, but it is too old and unavailable. No problem, I’ll just use something different, and it will be even more interesting! We are expecting more snow today so I will be happy to stay inside and sew.

You can scroll back to see the photo that I am working from, of our dogs in the snow, taken a few years ago .  WordPress has made improvements (?) and I just lost my entire post during the uploading photos stage. I should learn to “save” more often…..

Like everyone else, I have been busy getting ready for Christmas. Shopping, wrapping, decorating. planning as well as trying to do all the usual. With “Who, Me?” finished there has been no sewing, but the next piece is in the planning stages and will soon be ready to go. I have chosen the photo of my dogs in the snow from a few years ago,

plotted the sewing lines and all that is left to do is to project it to the finished size and transfer it to freezer paper. But if I do that I will not be able to resist starting the sewing and right now there is too much on my plate to let myself go there!

This gorgeous Minerva Amaryllis was a Christmas gift. It has been blooming for at least two weeks! This is the second stem and they have both had four blooms. Wow!

This red one is over two feet tall and I have had it for at least three years, maybe four, now. It only has three blooms per stalk, but they are huge, each eight inches across!

It’s lovely to have things blooming when it is so cold and dead outside. Perfect weather to stay inside and quilt. The harrier must be at least half done now, with just some foreground and the sky left to do. I’m finding that I can’t quilt for 6-8 hours like I used to do, 5-6 hours is about all I can take!

I worked most of the day on the Harrier with a little time off to prepare a dish to take to a Christmas party/potluck last night which was great fun! The party – not the prep! The weather reports were daunting, didn’t know if I would be able to go, but as it turned out it was not bad at all. A few snow flakes on the way home.

Yesterday’s progress:

I’m seeing things that need to be changed, it’s an on-going challenge. The underwings are white, but there are nuances and shadings to keep it from looking flat, so it’s tricky.

The People’s Choice voting for the Inspirations show at The Classic Bean in Topeka is over and Tammy and I won again this year with her Rocky Mountain Elk photograph and my rendition of it in fabric, “Majesty”. Click on elk in the sidebar to see that one! We also won the Staff’s Choice award once again. Her wonderful photographs make it easy!

Oh, goody! Tangerine Tango is Pantone’s new color of the year, and it is IN my new Seasonal Palette top! How’s that for luck and serendipity!

Our daughter from the Phoenix area came for a quick visit so I have not been doing any sewing lately. Yesterday I finished up the drawing for the Harrier piece and started to transfer it to the transparency film for projection to enlarge for the pattern. Then I got sidetracked and had to go to town.

Cindy is an avid reader and had brought with her a Nook. I had dismissed the idea for a book reading device but after her demo, decided that it was going on my Christmas wish list. My husband decided what’s the point of waiting, therefore, the trip to town and now I own the Nook Color and  a download of the newest Stephen King book which I started last night. It has many settings for text color and brightness so I am able to read in bed with no lights on to disturb the husband! I was amazed at the vast possibilities of reasonable, even free, books available and things it can do that I don’t even know about yet!  There will be classes after Christmas.

new color of the year

We made it through another Christmas, what a great day! First Christmas with our first great grand son! What a cutie!!

I love to do jigsaw puzzles, so no surprise, I got three new ones and we have finished two of them since Christmas–here’s the latest:

It is on a black felt like material that has an inflatable tube on which you can roll the puzzle in progress if you need the table space.  Cool idea, but for the most part we do not need to move a puzzle in progress.

Needless to say, they are such a fun diversion that they do take away from the sewing that I should probably be doing!!

This is the piece that I am currently working (or not) on.
Prairie fire quilts – this will be my fourth-  have been been popular. The first three sold quickly. I am making this specifically for my living room but will show it as long as I can.

The sun is not even up yet, but I can tell Christmas is canceled! This is the view from our front window.

We are snowed in with old fashioned drifts. I guess Christmas is postponed here!! By the looks of the drifts by the front door, I think our dead end country road will be impossible. I guess too many people prayed for a white Christmas! The churches have even canceled and the plows are only doing emergency routes.

The photo shows the view out the front window, snow caught in the screen and the drift beyond. Couldn’t open the front door so you can see where the dogs broke through the drift from the garage door.

Merry Christmas, everyone! I hope you are all safe and warm, especially the travelers…….

I resorted to the forbidden – the unthinkable! – and messed with the bobbin case tension, but it resulted in success and I was finally able to complete the quilting on “Spring Burning”. Things are still not right with the machine though. After blocking the piece I proceeded to the trimming and making of the sleeve, documentation tag and bindings and got those sewed on. My plan was to get all of the machine work done and take the machine in for a tune up on Monday. But it sewed perfectly. Could it be it just doesn’t want to do machine quilting any more!?! Now I don’t know WHAT to do!

I plan to put the work aside for now, all that is left is the hand work. Sewing down the binding, sleeve and documentation tag, and the hand beading. I really don’t want to complete this piece until the new year so it can have a 2010 date for competition purposes.

Now I can turn my attention to Christmas preparations. The tree is finally up, the cards sent and the gifts are wrapped but there is still the cooking and the cleaning before the big day.

Unfortunately there is no progress on the fawn quilt to report.  Yesterday we went to town for lunch and the Potwin Parlor Tour. Potwin Place is an area of Topeka that is on the Historical Register and is a community very active in Holiday happenings throughout the year. At Christmastime it is essential to drive through in the evening to see the lights but they also offer the Parlor Tour one weekend where ( for a fee, of course)  you can walk through the lower level of some of the homes to see the Christmas decorations.  It is always an inspiration to see the many ways folks decorate for Christmas.  These old homes with their beautiful staircases, fireplaces and high ceilings are perfect showcases and it gets me in the mood to come home and do something about my own house!

So yesterday when we got home we put up the tree, wrapped some gifts and generally got a little Christmas happening.

Many of my ornaments are handmade, like this purchased Komondor one, the beaded ones that I made and some gotten as gifts.

My husband made the walnut bowl That holds the poinsettias, the snowman plate was a gift from a friend and the little unicorn is a souvenir from the year that I made about 100 of them to decorate a tree for the Festival Of Trees fundraiser.

Today I MUST get back to business!

I think replacing the lighter background with this darker grass helps to make the fawn stand out better.  I was able to use several of the hand dyes that I made last month, in the sky. It’s hard to find leaves on sky color and sky colors to coordinate with the leaves that I DO find!

I was very flattered to be nominated for ‘Kreativ Blogger’ recently, but unfortunately don’t have the time to try to figure it out, technologically challenged as I am! I did have the computer guru out to calibrate the color in my monitor so that is hopefully better now.  I have not found the time to change any of the pictures in my website yet, though.

Christmas cards are starting to come in and I have not even started yet! Can it be that Christmas is less than three weeks away?  I guess my blog is about a year old as I was in the throes of last year’s shopping when I started it. All I need is more time, like everyone else!