On the Ninth Day of Christmas Vacation

...I spent a lot of time trying to learn about my Christmas present!

Jack bought me my very own embroidery machine for Christmas. (Isn't he a keeper?) It is a Brother SE400. It has a 4" x 4" stitch area and in addition to embroidery, does everything a regular sewing machine does. This means that I no longer have to constantly swap by sewing machine from a quilting set up to a garbing set up. Let the peasants rejoice!

Shiny!

Up until Christmas eve, I spent a lot of time working on the Penguins. I think I only have 1700 or so stitches to go.

They are almost done, but I decided I didn't want to spend all of my vacation working on WIP and I started both my AOTH quilt and World Travel Bookshelf. Gandalf is also now in progress, but since there isn't much to show on any of those three projects yet, you'll just have to wait for updates.

On the Fifth Day of Christmas Vacation...

... I didn't get a lot of sleep the night before. Got my crabby self up and went to the dollar store for some stocking stuffers and found that the rear window on Jack's car (which had been damaged by a magical flying rock on the expressway a few days ago) was threatening to fall off the car. I called the auto shop and took it in for repairs, not even finishing my Christmas shopping because I was worried that if I went over a bump, the whole thing would fall into the street.

However, on the Third Day of Christmas Vacation, I was able to spend the entire day finishing the ornaments I had cross stitched. Jack was busy being Germany and Taking Over the World, so it did leave me plenty of time to craft away. I'm very glad these are done and stuck the rest of the unstitched ones away for next year. I will need six more for next Christmas but I don't plan on starting those until July.

On the Fourth Day of Christmas Vacation, I worked on my penguins. Oh so close to a finish! 2400ish stitches to go. Mayhaps I will devote the rest of today to trying to finish it off. I did finally take this one off the scroll frame and put it on a Qsnap and I wish I'd done that ages ago. Its going much faster now that I'm not fighting constantly with lousy tension and the stitches are coming out much neater.

And that brings us back to the Fifth Day of Christmas Vacation, or today. I'm torn between starting a new project to relieve a little of the sleepless crabbiness and trying to finish the penguins,. I still have to go pick up Jack's car when they call and say that it is ready. Tomorrow I get to spend time with Astrid. And Wednesday is Christmas Eve Day!

On the First Day of Christmas Vacation

my computer gave to me,

three hours of headaches, two hissy fits, and one finally resolved issue that turned out to be a setting in my firewall. It was preventing me from viewing ArenaNet's webpages, of all things. And yes, it took me most of the morning and part of the afternoon to finally figure out what was going on. Not how I was planning on spending my first day of vacation but at least the problem is solved now (and was thankfully not caused by unremovable malware).

I didn't get a whole lot of crafty on this Thursday due to that "little" hitch, but I did make it downtown to grab lunch with Jack on his last day of work before vacation. And in the evening, we went to see The Hobbit: The Battle of the Five Armies. Very good movie, but it really felt like they cut a lot of scenes at the end. There wasn't much resolution for the Epic Battle and the Fifth Army was barely present. I'm thinking we're going to see a lot of extra minutes added in the extended edition.

In between scolding my computer and trips outside the warm confines of my home, I was able to finish one ornament on Thursday.

This ornament originally had all orange decorations on the tree and I thought that was rather boring and mostly annoying (orange is possibly my least favorite color), so I swapped them for red, blue, and yellow. I'm very happy with how it turned out.

On the Second Day of Christmas Vacation, I had a bit more time for craftyness, in between cleaning up the house a bit to give myself a more relaxing Christmas Vacation. I made good progress on my last ornament and am hoping to finish it today and start gluing them together.

I also put some time in on Kona Sunset. I have all the blocks sewn in rows and while the quilt top isn't complete, when I move it off my design floor in preparations for World Domination, I will be able to keep everything in order.

I have so far been good and resisted the urge to start any new projects. I'm still hoping to get a finish or two first.

Thus begins The Third Day of Christmas Vacation.

Linking up to MOP Monday@Tweety Love Quilting

Christmas Vacation Day Zero

It's here! I'm trying to revel in the moment, because I know my vacation will be over far to soon.

I made some progress on the penguins. Baby Penguin has an eye and a neck now.

I really want this project DONE, so it will probably be the focus of my cross stitch efforts over the next couple of days.

The Kona Sunset Quilt is about half put together and I decided what to do for a border. I pieced together some of the trimmings, squared it up, and cut it into 2.5 inch strips.

I will put a silver/white border all the way around, and then the fractured border, and finally another white border. I'm kind of geeked about how it will look. This quilt needs to get off my floor before Saturday, or it will have Axis and Allies players tromping all over it.

Future vacation day plans? Find time to see the Battle of the Five Armies, spend a day with my favorite niece, and drown myself in crafty projects!

AotH Test Block

Here it is! It was an experiment in monochromatic blocks, machine applique, and contrast stitching. It doesn't satisfy my OCD for color arrangement, but it taught me a lot and I think I can now tackle the Affairs of the Heart Quilt some some degree of confidence.

Next up are the last two ornaments I need to finish, my ranger hood, and then I'm going to try to finish Penguin Family. It would be nice to get a few things off my to-do list before the New Years!