Happy New Year Everyone!

  I was just sitting here trying to decide on my favorite make in 2018.  And my favorite make for 2018 has to be the long Christmas stocking cap I knit earlier this year.  I really enjoyed wearing it during December.  I wore it as often as I could on the weekends when it wasn't too warm out.  I had one comment from one young lady who thought it was cool.

    I already have projects started for 2019.  I've got pajama pants cut out to sew up, the black hat I'm knitting is almost done and I have an idea for a couple of Christmas table runners that are waiting for additional fabric and then will be ready to be cut out.  All of this should keep me busy in January.  And I still have to finish my Grandmother's Flower Garden quilt.

   I'll be spending New Year's Day cleaning my oven and refrigerator, and taking down Christmas decorations.  I think that's a good way to spend the first day of the year.

   HAPPY NEW YEAR!

WELCOME 2019!

From T-shirt To A Great Fitting Hairband

I love this hairband and it's so easy to make.  Here's the LINK to the video tutorial on youtube.  This hairband doesn't take that long to make and it looks great and fits even better.  I had an old black t-shirt and make this one in about an hour (maybe less).  I don't use the glue gun to secure all the ends and attach the cover, I sew it by hand.  I just think that sewing it makes it more secure.  I don't trust glue on fabric that I want to wear.

Merry Merry Christmas

I spent Christmas Eve with my daughter.  We had a wonderful lunch.  I made a lasagna, and my daughter made salad, bought wine, and chocolate for our meal.  I also supplied the last of the gingerbread men to have with coffee in the afternoon.

We watched two Christmas Carol movies, the version with Albert Finney (musical) and the version with Patrick Stewart (make it so, Bob Cratchit), we took her little Cairn terrier for a walk through the neighborhood and then we watched Frosty the Snowman.  I got a my last chance to wear my long red and white stocking cap in public.  I've been wearing it on my weekend shopping trips all month long.  I love it.

Today, I'm spending Christmas at home alone doing some organizing and sewing.

I hope everyone has a wonderful holiday, whatever holiday you celebrate.  I celebrate Christmas, so Merry, Merry Christmas.

Pleated Christmas Trees

     I made some pleated Christmas trees with a different background fabric.  The pattern is here:  Pleated Christmas Tree.  The original model in the pattern was made with white background fabric, and I have made two of these with white background fabric.  I wanted to do something different with the background and I found this gray fabric with white dots.   I think this looks like snow falling at night.  I still want to enlarge this pattern and make this tree bigger, so I can make it into a pillow cover or something, but I haven't tried that yet.

     Here are the two I made last night with the darker background fabric.  The first tree is a little lopsided because I was sloppy with my trimming.  The second tree came out much nicer.  I love that green plaid fabric.  I'm giving the second one to my daughter.  I put it in a dark wood 8" x 10" frame.

         

Christmas Cookies and A Christmas Decoration Fail

    I made gingerbread men today.  I used the Ree Drummond (Pioneer Woman) recipe I found on line.

    This is the first time I have ever made gingerbread cookies and it will probably be the last.  It was tough mixing all that flour into the liquid mixture because I did it manually.  The recipe calls for a stand mixer, but I don't have a stand mixer and I didn't want to borrow my daughter's mixer just for these cookies, because I wanted them to be a surprise.

     These took a long time for me to make, between mixing the dough and letting it rest for two hours or more, then rolling it and cutting it out, I spent a good 3 hours hands on making these cookies and I didn't really enjoy it. 

      I didn't decorate my men.  I'm not supposed to eat a lot of sugar and these will be sweet enough without any extra icing or candies on them.

     In the future, I'll stick with sugar cookies or butter cookies put in a cookie press..

 

    I don't have a picture of my Christmas Tree decoration fail, but I will describe it for you.  I drew a Christmas tree shape and I cut out two pieces of fabric.  The idea being that I would sew the two pieces together and stuff them lightly with some polyfil, put a dowel stick in the bottom and put it in a small tin pail with some floral foam to keep it up right.  My pattern for my Christmas tree was not right and the finished tree looked awful.  I scrapped this project.  I'm looking for other Christmas decorations to sew.

    Here's a picture of some of my Christmas decorations.

Paint, Modge Podge, Fabric and A Christmas Card

    I got this odd size free piece of wood a couple of years ago from Lowes or Home Depot when I was shopping one day.  I've been trying to figure out what to do with it since I got it.  I found this card a couple of weeks ago and I started getting the idea of using it on this piece of wood.  I painted the board, decoupaged a piece of pretty light blue polka fabric on the front and then I decoupaged the card on top of that.  It was fun to make, but I don't enjoy painting because it takes so long to dry.

Christmas Kitties In The Kitchen

   I found this cute, cute, cute dishtowel at Hobby Lobby last weekend and had to have it.  I think it was 40 or 50% off.  Score!  I love the cat on this one.

I was going to cut it up into two hanging dishtowels then I got an idea.  I decided to keep it as one towel and make a hanging dishtowel that is doubled.  I folded it in the center and pleated it so the cat would show up real well on both sides.  Then I added a cap of the fabric below with two ties.

I love this old fashioned toile Santa/Christmas fabric.  It's so turn of the century, 19th/20th century.  Here is my finished hanging dishtowel.  I made this one with ties so I could tie it onto the refrigerator and I love that it's doubled so my hands will dry quicker.  I may make all my hanging dishtowels doubled from now on.  This took me about 30 minutes to make from first cut to last stitch.

I hung the kitty from the freezer handle so I could get to it better and see it all the time. 

Deathly Hallows Fabric

This is a project I couldn't share before.  For our trip to Universal and the Wizarding World of Harry Potter I made my daughter and myself a water bottle holder and a small zippered purse out of this fun Deathly Hallows fabric.  I added a wrist strap and a small loop to the zippered purse so we could hook the purse onto a carabiner and attach it to our belt loops.

When we planned this trip my daughter had announced that she wanted to carry as little as possible into the park so a small purse for cards and water bottle holder would be all she needed.  I worried about how I would do this and decided I could stash stuff in my jean jacket pockets.  Being late November I thought it might be cool enough to wear a jacket in Orlando.

 But two days before we left for our trip, dear daughter decides that she can't possibly travel to the park without a big backpack and all manner of emergency items.  She had decided that she was going to rent a locker for the backpack each day.  She was much happier with this plan and I just wanted us to have as much fun as possible no matter what we had to carry.

The first day we were in the park we bought an small backpack (fanny pack size) because it was way too warm for me to wear my jacket and I needed something to put my cell phone and lip balm in.  We also bought a ticket lanyard, because you have to show your ticket all the time when you go from Universal to Islands of Adventure or to City Walk.  I ended up buying a Slytherin ticket lanyard because I am in Slytherin house and I'm owning it.

Here's a picture of my water bottle holder and purse.

The Black Lace Knit Scarf Is Finished

   I finished the scarf this morning before work.  It's a little over six feet long and it took about 1.5 skeins of Vanna's Choice yarn,  I love this.  It will join others in my wardrobe.  I made one in white, blue, and grey this year.  I will be making more in different colors.  It's an easy pattern and it is really nice doubled up when I wear it.

Heading To The End Of The Year

I haven't posted for a while.  After my last post, I was busy getting ready to go out of town for the Thanksgiving holiday.  My DD and I drove down to Orlando and spent the weekend at Universal Studios/Islands of Adventure riding rides and have a lot of fun.  The four day weekend is a perfect time for us to drive five hours to Orlando.  It's a little crowded at the parks at this time but I don't have any vacation time left at work.  The parks were decorated for Christmas and Christmas music played.  We stay at the Doubletree within walking distance of the park and we had a blast.  We rode all three Harry Potter rides (Escape from Gringotts, Hippogriff roller coaster, Secret Journey at the Castle), had butter beer, lunch at the Three Broomsticks in Hogsmeade, saw the dragon in Diagon Alley, we rode rides at Dr. Suess Land, we rode the Men in Black ride (twice) and I even rode the Hollywood Rip Ride Rockit roller coaster (my eyes were closed almost the entire ride).  It was an awesome weekend.

I missed cooking a big meal for Thanksgiving, so this past weekend I made myself a homemade Thanksgiving dinner with roasted vegetables, homemade stuffing (just the way Mom used to make it), baked chicken breasts (because that was just as easy as a turkey breast), and homemade cranberry conserve.  It was wonderful.  I got up really early on Saturday morning, made everything and had Thanksgiving dinner for breakfast that day.  I'm still eating leftovers, but they won't last too much longer.

I'm knitting my scarf and my hat with the Vanna's Choice in black.  I decided to make the hat into a stocking cap and I bought another skein of yarn to add to the hat.  The scarf is more than half done.  Here's pictures of my knitting progress.

Hat

Scarf

Last night I played with some 5" felted wool squares that I bought.  I made some Swedish heart Christmas decorations.  I thought they would be cuter and I suppose if I used prettier colors they would be.  I made these to give to DD if she wants them for her tree.  I used the Missouri Star Quilt Company youtube video tutorial to make them.  Here's a link to the video:  Link here.  Jenny even provides a pattern you can print out.  She used 5" squares for her hearts as well and that's where I got the idea to buy the squares.

Lots of Snowmen

    I made the rest of the snowmen ornaments and used up every inch of the white felted wool I bought.   Very little waste on this project and I love these guys.  There are twenty three of them.  I made two banners of ten snowmen each with some bakers twine and they are hanging in my living room.  The other three are standing with my trees in my dining room.  So much fun.