WOW !!!!!!

I can't believe it's been almost 2 months since my last post. Where to start? Well, we've been to Florida and back. Found some lovely mobile homes in a great park to buy or rent, but unfortunately, we came to the conclusion that we can't even think about wintering in Florida for at least another year, possibly not for a couple of years. Of course since we made that decision, the weather here in Upstate New York has been freezing and blustery, and DH has come home every night shivering and saying, "Let's go to Florida; I'm cold!" What a Wuss! 'Course I've been thinking it myself, but I can't let him know that, lol. Oh well, I'm sure the time will go fast--it always seems to now that I'm older. I have my quilting groups and my embroidery group to keep me busy.

I mailed out my gift in Chookyblue's Secret Santa Christmas Swap before we left for Florida. I know it's been received, so I can't show pics, but maybe a peek.
And here's Katie doing her quality control inspection. Fortunately my gift passed her rigid standards, or else I would have had to re-do it. Boy, she is one tough taskmaster!


We finished up our Happy Blocks for the year at Block Central and will be starting something new for next year. That means I need to get my 4 quilts done that I have all the HB's for. Plus Kim (the BC owner) has designed a beautiful new BOM called Sentimental Journey that starts in January. Isn't it gorgeous? I have to do this one and I want to get started right away on it, so I won't get behind.

I also want to make Heather Finnell's new BOM over at Burning the Midnight Oil Quilts. It started December 15th and I don't want to get too far behind in that either. It's really pretty and should be very challenging for me. My friend, Mary, wants to make it, too, so I know she'll help me if I have any problems.

For my fellow redworkers and embroiderers, Alex Anderson is sponsoring a 12 Days of Redwork on her site starting December 25th. She'll be giving us a free redwork block from one of her earlier patterns until January 5th. Make sure you bookmark her site, so you don't miss out.

We've been doing HB's over at the Quilting Sisters Yahoo Group, also. Here are my December and January blocks ready to swap. December's block is black and white and January's block is red and black, so I'm going to make some more blocks of each and combine them into one quilt. It should look really nice.

We also did a Bug Jar Block Swap at the Sisters, and I ended up really liking my blocks. We made the larger jar this time, but I think I'll go on and make some of the smaller jars and combine them into a quilt for a little boy. The patterns are free over at Janet Wickell's site, About.com . Janet has loads of other free patterns on the quilting part of the site and wonderful simple directions that are very easy to follow. That's important to me, since I'm not getting any younger, lol. I purchased all my "bug" fabric at Bug Fabric dot Com. I think they carry every type of bug and animal fabric ever made. Every fabric I bought from them was wonderful quality and they shipped really fast! Be sure to check them out if you're looking for some unusual fabrics.

Debbie Mumm has some beautiful new free desktop wallpapers/backgrounds on her site, in addition to her monthly free projects. Stop in and download a few to brighten up your computer. She is such a talented lady. I love everything she does. I'm using this one right now.

If I don't see you before the holidays are over, be sure to have a very Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year, Happy Kwanzaa, and Happy Boxing Day. Until then....

Happy Quilting from Katie and Sharon