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 |
