Dusting Girl

This morning my daughter told me she wanted to dust something, so I have to show this photo I took of her dusting.  She looks so grown up, at least to me.  Her school is having a pumpkin decorating contest and even though I tried hard to convince her to use other mediums she stood stoutly by her markers.  That is until I suggested using glitter for the inside of the mouth.  Yes those are my beloved PeeWee Glitters.  I think next time I'm at the store I get some of the "kindergarten kind", so I don't panic quite so much over the sheer volume it's taking.

Pebbles

I myself have been busy.  I mentioned a while back about buying a darning foot for the Elna because it's such a good little machine and the brother is clearly the rebelling teenage sister.  I found a great deal on Ebay for a Big Foot to fit Elna and it arrived a couple of days ago.  I quickly caught up with the quilt-a-long by doing zigzags, these ribbon candy wiggles, and I did pebbles because I've done loops before, as you can see I struggled the most with those.

Ribbon Candy Loops

ZigZags

Then I still wanted to quilt and as the machine was loaded and ready to go, (the spirls hadn't posted yet) I went on to sew over the lines the the butterfly.  I'm having a bit of trouble with getting the tension just right as I've never freemotioned on the little Elna before, and I feel like my stitches are way small but these by far were my best tracings in the history of my attempting to trace.  I just love how it lifts the butterflies.  Connecting them I have use alternating loops as though the butterflies are flying to each other.  I'm not certain how much the quilting should be filled in.  What do you think?

Butterfly freemotion trace

My Christmas kittens are all done!

I finished up my little Christmas Kitties last night, you know the ones with the crazy button eyes?  I only added one loop at the corner for hanging to allow them to keep their bit of whimsy.  They make me smile every time I look at them.  The pieces are cut and machine sewn.  They they are flipped and ironed.  I hand stitched the faces.  I hand stitched down the white sock patches.  At my DH's suggestion I ran a thickness of four cotton threads through the needle, then I made the big obvious stitches both in green and the a line of gold which is more subtle at the bottom of the top white ruff. When I had the kittens attached to their stockings I felt the desire to machine sew the stockings down to the background fabric, but I resisted and hand stitched those down too.  So if you don't see the stitches they simply aren't there to see.  I love these two little cats, but I have to admit I crumbled up the template pieces I used and threw them away.  I can't imagine willing myself to do so much handwork, it's lucky my tendonitis didn't flare up.

I've of course been working on my knitting, not to much as I don't want my DH to ask me what I'm doing but I did start another little dish cloth.  I've used this type of yarn before but never on a straight edged project so it's interesting to see it progress.  I did spend a minute dreaming of those knitting machines, but then my mind drifted to other things as often happens with knitting.

Dish Cloth Progress 3 of 4

Sunny has taken to sleeping here in the living room since we had those two or three pretty days when the windows could be open.  I think he's dreaming with his eye open about the thrill of the wind in his face.

Sunny in the window