Christmas is over...

We had a nice Christmas weekend, starting with friends on Friday evening. We did our annual ornament exchange/Chinese auction style.  Above is the glow-in-the-dark snowflake that I made for the event.

Ethan, Hope's boyfriend (below right) ended up with it.

After eating & exchanging ornaments, we played Pictionary-man. Much fun & silliness ensued.

The crowd left about midnight. We blew out the candles & crawled into bed until... (I'll finish this story at the end of the post.)

I wanted to share other things I've done for Christmas first. I got a blank PFD white silk scarf for one of my gifts from Jan at my Calendar Girls group. I used it to make a gift for my friend Kathy, who always exchanges with me.

I finished up a customer quilt for Tracy Trasky. This bear who I think should be called "The Guardian", because that's what he felt like to me, when hanging on my studio wall, waiting to be bound.

I also quilted the top that I gave to my DH for Christmas last year. I was a day late fining it, because of the rest of the story....

At 4 a.m. on Christmas eve morning, we were awakened by the electronic voice of the fire alarm screaming "FIRE! FIRE!" along with it's obnoxious alarm that even the hard of hearing can't ignore. I grabbed my robe & ran up the stairs, & found we indeed did have a fire blazing on top of the bookcase where earlier there had stood a candle. It was burning the cotton batting that was snow for the nativity. My first stuporous impulse was to smother it with my robe. Well, I found out that fleece burns quite well. Now I had a fire right by the Christmas tree, that was burning a package & a robe along with the cotton snow-batting... I ran to the kitchen & grabbed my tea kettle & a pan of water, & ran back pouring it over the fire, putting about 2/3 of it out. I think this is when I carried the flaming robe, & burning foot stool, which were melded together, out on to the snow covered porch, & got more water to put the rest of the fire out. Warren was working on damage control at that point, & I think that's about the time that I realized my hands felt like they were on fire. The right hand fingers got the worst of it. We went to the ER where they gave me drugs & attempted to bandage my wounds, but I couldn't stand having my hand out of a cold bucket of water for any longer than a few seconds before I had to plunge it back in again. It was about 24 hours before the fingers no longer felt like they were still in the flames. We felt very fortunate that so little was damaged, & we are safe, & healing. My hand no longer hurts.

The final photo that I am posting is another piece of silk that I dyed when I did the scarf. I think it looks like fire.

Calendar Girls Party

Last Thursday our annual Calendar Girls party was at the Bivins’ house as usual, & Dean, Betty’s DH, the extraordinary woodcarver stayed in his garage /studio, away from all us crazy women. I took a few shots of his finished pieces.


Jackie Carley, & Carol Wight Jones showed us their latest pieces that will soon be Christmas presents for family members.

We did our usual Chinese auction, with “white elephant gifts”. It’s always fun to see who ends up with the most junk!

Some were having trouble rolling doubles, so they used the fabric that I had wrapped my calendar gift in, & wore it each time they rolled the dice, to help improve their luck. It seemed to work!

Poor Mary P. Lee, didn’t need the “lucky fabric hat”. She couldn’t seem to quit rolling doubles, so ended up with more elephants than the rest of us. It’s always a laugh filled game, & the elephants weren't too bad. I ended up with a handful of fossilized shark teeth & a few small Christmas decorations. I intentionally stayed away from the large packages. My house is too crowded for large elephants!

Betty served a lovely lunch.
At home I am trying to study for ACLS tomorrow. I have been working on Kathy’s small quilt, & was having stitch-skipping issues with the long curves & feathers in the borders. It was getting very frustrating, until I realized, that if I just 'needle punched’ my design in first, then went back & sewed with the thread, it solved the problem. Then it went much faster!
I’ve had this problem in the past , with tightly woven fabrics, like good Batiks, & fabrics that have the rubbery textured prints on them. They tend to drag on the thread & cause skipped stitches. So what I did was unthread the machine, ‘sew’ the design without thread, then went back & sewed again with thread, & no more skipping! This is the easiest solution I’ve found yet!

Yesterday I went to my new Doctor. I really liked her. We went over all of my weird symptoms, & she suspects I may be dealing with allergies. She gave me a couple of inhaler samples, & set me up to see an Allergist. Of course & won’t see her until February, but it’s nice to know that I am working toward a solution to my annoying symptoms. The hand pain has been minimal lately, but I haven’t spent much time here on the computer either. She suggested I try hand splints for that, & see if it’s of some help, since I’m not anxious to sign up for nerve conduction studies!
Wish me luck tomorrow for ACLS, & say a prayer for my friends Jan (who just found out she has breast cancer), & Ed ( who was just diagnosed with prostate cancer).
Happy holidays!!

Merry Christmas

Christmas has sped by so fast. It's been fun having the kids here, Brandon & his sweet wife Laura. We've gotten to know her better, & she's such a funny girl, I really love her.

My DH was razzing me for not refilling the paper towel. I hate my paper towel holder , I have trouble screwing it back together.
I got a case & these lenses for my camera from my DH.
& I took pictures of this neat basket from the kids, & them relaxing after our gift exchange,using my new lenses. Laura in her new fleece top, & Brandon playing with the X-Box that Laura gave him.

The owl came back this evening, while we were eating dinner. Brandon & I tryed taking pictures, shinning a big flash light on him. It was fun, but this was the closest thing to a picture that we got. Looks like Ghost Owl!

Merry Christmas to all!

Christmas Eve 2006

I hope you're all having a wonderful holiday time. We're enjoying our company, & fresh snow (we've gotten a couple of feet of the white stuff). Brandon & Laura went snowboarding at Alyeska Resort yesterday. It was Laura's 1st time, & she did great. They had a great time.

I wanted to show you a couple of the things I made as gifts this year, now that I can. This 1st is a quilted clock that I made for my friend Judy, whose name I drew at work. I was glad to get her name, as she is my closest friend at work. I used a piece of my hand painted fabric, & stamed silver cups on it, & little sayings for the number places. I thread painted a teapot for the center, using Holoshimmer threads & bits of red wool.

For our feast last night, I finally tried Naomi's pie. It was from Allie's Thanksgiving . Thanks Allie, we all loved it. It was a little something different from the usual apple pie. We only ate about 1/2 of it because we were so full from the Smoked Salmon Pasta & pear salad, & rolls that we'd had .

Everyone was stuffed after the meal.
We exchanged gifts. Here's a couple details of what I gave Mindy.

She loved it.The girls liked their rotery mat, cutter & rulers too. Both of them quilt (I started hope when she was 4 years old. We had to set her on the big dictionary & put the machine pedal on a box for her to reach. She doesn't have to do that any more.)

Mindy fuses glass. This was the snowflake ornament she made for me this year. I have quite a collection of them from her. I keep them in my kitchen window.

Here's the fused glass plate she made for me, from clear glass & frit. I love it.

She also felt compelled to add to the chickens in my kitchen, with this cute wooden plaque

& this metal chicken, who has already found a roost in my chicken coop.
So this is only the begining of my Christmas & it's already been great. I am very blessed to have my good friends & family.

Happy holidays to all of you out there.

Client's quilts

I'm on call this weekend & had to work the last 2 days, but I did manage to work on some of my client's quilts thismorning. she did 3 dogs, for gifts for friends for Christmas. Here are 2 of them. Dory does her own designs, & likes to do applique', but doesn't want to quilt them. The 1st image is the back side of the 2nd image.


& look who was standing at the top of the stairs when I came home a few days ago!