Hello - well it has been another week where I'm not sure what day it is... or what I should be doing...but I muddled through. Stayed home on NYE as I've done for years and years... and 2026 was ushered in by a ton of fireworks from my neighbors... as I anticipated... somehow he had some left over and fired more off on January 2 too... nothing I can do about it as they made fireworks legal in Ohio a year or so ago.
I did fulfill my New Year's Day routine to the letter... I started with knitting a little after midnight... then after the fireworks concluded I went to bed... woke up and did some online work puzzle games... I love the Spelling Bee in the NY Times... started my Blessings Sampler. (more on that below) .. went out to a nice lunch... came home and sewed for a while... my older son stopped by for a bit ... and then I took a little nap... spent the evening knitting and stitching and watching videos on my laptop... it was a very very enjoyable day... the kind of day I'd like to repeat over and over and over and over and over and you get the idea.
So before New Year's I got a bit weary with knitting and picked back up some cross stitch. I went to look through the bag that has SNOWMEN in it and found that I had started 3 little pieces from the Prairie Schooler No.143 Button Up... one was complete... one needed just few stitches ...and the third was barely started... but I got all 3 done!
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Snowman...
Now to FFO them and some other little snowmen pieces I found in that bag... and perhaps I might even stitch a new snowman this season... it would also help if I got out my snowmen... but alas the motivation to put Christmas away has not yet materialized... maybe today... tomorrow... Wednesday... it will happen... I looked back at my displays in January/February last year and I do LOVE LOVE LOVE my snowmen stuff. Snowmen were my first foray into collecting stuff as an adult. It started when I was living in Modesto California... a place that doesn't really have cold... okay one year when I was there it did get below freezing for a couple of days... people went nuts... lots of outdoor sprinkler systems froze, burst and ended up icing all of the landscaping in the yards. I lived in a neighborhood of newer homes, built on a slab with the PVC plumbing coming straight up out of the ground and into the house. Being from the Midwest we realized these pipes would freeze and burst so we placed a cardboard box over them with a mechanic's utility light over the pipes and we kept the faucet dripping in the kitchen as that sink was on an outside wall... ours was the only house in the neighborhood that didn't freeze. For days there was no PVC pipe to be found in all of Modesto... anyway... where did I wander off too ... oh yeah the lack of cold had me homesick for the Midwest and I started collecting snowmen.
As planned, I started stitching on my Blessing Sampler for 2026 Alpha-bits ... I painted the 32 ct linen with Apple Green and Aquamarine Rit Dyes... here's a look at the painted linen... this piece is 42" long...
and decided to use DMC 501 as the floss... the color is appropriately called Dark Blue Green ... here's where I am on Saturday as I typed this...
I'm using 2 strands for the letters but some of the decorative stitches I'm doing with one strand if there is a lot of thread involved... like the Double Leviathan stitches under the C... now I know this chart was done in 2004... and that technology has improved... but if you stitch this be aware that the scale of the charts changes from page to page... in other words you couldn't make a working copy and paste them together, as they wouldn't line up. There are 3 letters to a page and when I moved from C to D I was going to paste a copy of the pages together... but the scale of the page with DEF is smaller than the scale of the page with ABC and I can already see that GHI is different scale than DEF... just a heads up. Anyway I think this is going to be so pretty hanging out on my sunroom porch... there is this narrow little space beside the door that will be the perfect spot and it will pick up the turquoise blues and apple greens I have out there.
As for knitting I got this pair done...
and I did start a pink pair...
this is coming out kinda Fair Isle ... I didn't expect that... and I'm not sure I'm liking the color of that heel... need to dig through my bin of solid colored yarns and see if I find something I like better...
As for sewing, I got a nice amount of those Momo hexagons sewn together...
I've gone back and forth as to whether this should be a throw ... or a bed size quilt... or a throw... right now I'm leaning towards throw... need to get the hexagons on the design wall and see how big it is.
I also played with some charm packs I had... now these are Chez Moi by Sentimental Studios.. and it is old... I'm thinking it came out in like 2009... anyway I found 4 of these charm packs on eBay ...
and why is it that fabric that is OOP is so alluring ... this happens to me with regularity... when the fabric is easy to obtain, I like it, and think I'll get that soon... but then some other shiny object comes along and I forget ... and by the time I do remember it is no longer available anywhere but eBay or Etsy and it costs way more... sigh... I think there might be some genetic cause of this as both my son and my grandson have fallen victim to this behavior. My son has spent the last year scouring eBay for Lego Mixels for Elliott... Elliott discovered them through old YouTube videos... they were only produced from 2014 to 2016...5 years before Elliott was born. There are 81 of the little Mixel creatures and as of Christmas Elliott is now the ecstatic owner of ALL 81... and now it appears that he's gotten into Lego Bionicles... a collection that was started in 2001 and ran through 2016... I foresee my son spending more time on eBay...
ooops...where was I... wandered off again...Oh... I want to make something out of the stuff I already own... and I found some Grunge in my stash that has the taupe-y brown splotches along with a smudge of pink... but I only have 2 yards...
so while I wanted to make those center parts into stars I don't have enough to do that ... and do the sashing strips and do a bit of a border ... so they will just be plain squares...
The plan is to make 16 blocks... and boy did it take a long time to get to my point... lots of wandering off today...
I tried to figure out how many quilts I completed last year... and it depends on your definition of completed... several were finished except for the binding ...which took a year (or more) for several of them... I think I sewed about 7 quilts and I "finished up with the binding" on another 6... an okay year... I'll chalk it up to not being able to sew at the beginning of the year because of my fractured knee ... and a general quilting malaise the rest of the year. I'm definitely seeing a pattern where cross stitching and knitting are occupying more of my attention than quilting... and that is okay.
Next year I'd like to make one, maybe 3 patriotic quilt for the 250th anniversary of the United States... I have a FQ bundle of Lori Holt's Americana collection that I want to use for a bed size quilt and a layer cake of Americana that I want to do this star block using these papers...
Here's a link to a video showing how you use these... you stack up the fabrics, cut them according to the paper and then shuffle them so each star will be different... sounds like fun, and that one is going to be a throw size... Like my cross stitch I'd like to finish up some stuff I started in previous years... the Dorothy quilt with the Momo fabrics... and the Fresh As a Daisy quilt with the American Jane fabrics... and perhaps a really scrappy quilt... I haven't done one like that in a while... one where I end up pulling tons of fabrics off the shelves and out of the bins and then only cutting a small piece off...sigh... and there will be a Christmas quilt or two as I do every year. I never got around to doing one with the Fancy That Design House Old World Yuletide collection and I definitely want to make a quilt with these fabrics... and go back and finish up the Cathe Holden hexagon Christmas tree quilt... I know I won't run out of things I want to make... just time and motivation... it is what it is...
So first full week of 2026... starting off with taking a family member to a doctor's appointment on Monday, Elliott is back to school on Tuesday so I'll go pick him up... working out on Monday and Wednesday... dinner with a friend on Thursday... lunch with another friend on Friday...at the moment the following week looks a little calmer and we will be celebrating my older son's 41th birthday in the middle of the month... times flies swiftly, doesn't it?
I'll link up with Kathy's Quilts... might be able to sit out on the sunroom porch for a while if I crank up the space heater... temperature is going to be back up into the 50's this week... woo hoo... I know we will probably pay for this in February or March but I'm happy sitting out in the sun... hope your 2026 is off to a great start!!
happy stitching-
carol fun
