End of January

This new month of the new year has flown by, so this little flying fairy I made is very appropriate.  She's my January finish for the Smalls Stitchalong.  I'm well underway on my small February piece, which will be an ornament for Christmas.

I failed completely to have a finish for my Lovely Year of Finishes!  Next month I hope to do better.

I did contribute to my scrap jar for Daffycat's Totally Useless Stitchalong.  I saved the papers from a handful of floss I purchased, and there is some wool mixed in with the floss from a needlepoint project I've been working on.  I'll post pictures on Tuesday.

The kids all went to the high school Winter formal last week.  I didn't get pictures of the girls but I did get a quick not-so-great picture of Jungle Boy with his cute girlfriend.

I'm still in denial that everybody's growing up, but I do think he's a handsome young man.  I treasure the interesting conversations we have.  He is thoughtful and philosophical and can be very interesting to talk with. 

Since the twins had to take a "practice" Preliminary SAT (PPSAT?), they are already starting to get mail from colleges.  Just as the mail for Drama girl is finally starting to taper off.  Our dining table often looks like a high school guidance office.  I tell the kids to look at each one so they can start to figure out what they might want in a college.  I can't believe this whole cycle is starting up again.  I'm finding everything about this process stressful. There will be a day in the not-to-distant future when I will have three kids in college. 

I call it...new sewing room day.

New Goals for 2014

 

This year I'm joining in "A Lovely Year of Finishes" hosted by Shanna of Fiber of All Sorts and Melissa of Sew Bittersweet Designs.  The plan is to post one goal a month, and then check back at the end of the month to see the finished result.  

I'm going to try to keep my goals rather small, while I work on some larger projects at the same time.  I still have a stack of quilt tops that need to be basted and finished.

January goal:  Baby quilt for a friend.  She just had a little boy.  It's been a while since I've made a baby quilt so this will be fun.  Not sure what fabrics I might have in my stash that will work.

December was so busy with parties and performances and this:

that not a lot of crafting got done.  That's my goose Christmas dinner.  It was all divine.  I'm still exhausted from all the preparation that went into the holiday.

Here are the three bookmarks I made for my kids:

Drama Girl got a dragon.

Wasabi Girl got a treble clef.

Jungle Boy got this nod to his love of video games.  Notice that it's being used in a big fat book though.  Everyone got books for Christmas and they've spent a good part of vacation reading them.  That makes me happy.  You can find links to these patterns on my Pinterest boards.

I'm also going to try to keep up with Daffycat's Totally Useless Stitchalong.  Each month we show the snippets of threads we've saved from our projects.  This was due on the 1st, so I'm late, but I do have some threads to show from some work yesterday.

That was hours of work.  I hope to finish the piece today and show it to you.  It's pretty cute.  Which brings me to my next Stitchalong:

The 2014 Smalls Stitchalong is hosted by Stitching Lotus.  Very easy - one small project a month.

We still have Christmas up around here.  The season was over so quickly this year that I'm still enjoying the last bit of it.  The poor tree needs to go soon though.  Probably a project for Sunday.

I hope your New Year brings new exciting goals and projects.  Now that I've finished that epic Santa's Village from last year I feel like I can tackle anything.