Monday, January 02, 2017

Starting The New Year


I spent yesterday evening talking with a dear friend and drinking a bottle of red wine instead of eating dinner.  We shared the bottle.

Today, I spent time managing my bills, addressing envelopes for my son's mail, looking, again, for black wool yarn upstairs, bringing down the remaining little black frames (I have been putting pretty 2 inch square gift enclosure cards in them) for small family photos.  I have my favorite small photo of my grandmother in one and placed it on the wall behind the stove.  She can lend loving support to my cooking efforts.

This is part of "tidying".  Putting things you love where you can see them everyday.  Where you can wear them more often.  Where you get rid of the tight, itchy, ugly colored things you keep for no good reason other than it cost good money once...along time ago.

I also brought down a very large bag of squares of "French" fabric and the circles of other "French" fabric I was/am appliquéing onto the squares.  I am thinking January 2017 would be a good time to sew the squares together into?  Placemats? Pillow covers? An apron?  I certainly don't need them to be a quilt.  I say "French" because these fabrics have never existed in France. But they have a French feeling about the patterns and colors.  Tuscan blues, golds and reds.  I never was happy with the greens I found.

I rather enjoyed handstitiching the little patchwork squares for the job of un-swastika-ing the quilt I am hand quilting.  Rail fence blocks made incorrectly (color values in the wrong places) create  this offensive symbol on the quilts.  Once seen--can't be unseen.  G says he can still see the symbol on one of the blocks.  More patching.  The stitching is easy, repetitive and it always a delight to run my fingers over the seams.

I am planning to use January 2017 to tidy up the unfinished projects I have been neglecting.  It may take more time than just January.  I'll show and tell regarding the progress or lack thereof.

Longmire is finished until next year.   G and I have to find something else on Netflix to watch.  Last year it was River and Jessica Jones.  We could watch Luke Cage.  We also watched Hinterlands. Any suggestions?

Oh and the vegetable chopping picture up top---I am making the first pot of chicken soup (for G) in the new year--as soon as I hit post.


1 comment:

  1. I sure do miss hand quilting, did it for many years and loved it. After a fall and a broken shoulder, no more hand quilting...too painful. I'm a lousy machine quilter,but persist to get the job done. I only do small projects these days.

    Right now I'm doing jig-saw puzzles,and challenged myself to turn the puzzle pieces to the plain back side just to see if I could do it....now that is difficult! Thank god it's a very small puzzle so I will finish it.

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