Production Day

Alyssa stayed for a few days after Christmas. We both read quite a bit -- she read The Help by Kathryn Stockett and started The Lacuna by Barbara Kingsolver, both of which I heartily recommend. I finished Half Broke Horses by Jeannette Walls, (O.K.) tried One Day by David Nicholls (after 100 pages I just couldn't get into it, so gave it up), and started Olive Kitteredge by Elizabeth Strout, (grabbed me in Chapter 1). There are not many Christmas breaks that Alyssa misses reading at least one novel, not only because everyone gets books as gifts, but because it's her down time from work-related reading and grading. Me? I just hop on that reading train because I enjoy the ride any time.
We also got some crafty production in. On Tuesday, we got down to business. She did block printing on kitchen towels. Learning to cut linoleum blocks as a 4-H project turned out to be a valuable lesson. The leaf blocks shown here were especially appealing to me. Then again, this design was pretty cute, too. Of course there were other designs and colors -- stars and circles and birch bark in silver or blue. Alyssa went home with a nice stack of designer gifts for her friends and I managed to reap the benefits of her talents with a few towels too.After the towels it was on to quilting. I meandered a baby quilt Alyssa and friend Rachelle had pieced for another friend. Nice bright blocks surround by a cheerful green dot. It took just a couple of hours to meander the entire quilt before handing it back to Alyssa to complete the binding.While she did that, I moved on to a project that's been churning in my brain for a few weeks. It's not quite finished, but it will be by the end of the weekend. I'll be back then to share.

A few of my favorite things

It's December 23 and I'm working on my annual "Do I really need to do that?" list. The absolute musts of Christmas preparations grow fewer every year.

This year's absolutes includes these wonderful little Chocolate Covered Cognac Cranberries from Oprah (I used Grand Marnier ... yum!).

This morning's first order of business was to finish these pillow covers for our solid green sofa pillows.
The pillows are resting on the turnover quilt that gave me pause a while back. Well, it's finished and it's absolutely beautiful with elaborate feather quilting done by Yolanda Sanchez who said she would do a "simple feather" design (O.K., I'm still working on the binding, but it will be finished by the time it's given to my mom tomorrow night).

My other favorite decorations of the year are these jars filled with simple things. I sprayed some pine cones with glitter to give them a little spark, added some ribbon to last year's pomanders and filled one of my favorite jars. It's simple and sparkly all at once.

And now it's on to some serious work. There's Irish stew to make, cookies and breads to bake, more cranberries to coat with chocolate, and gifts to wrap in time for a Christmas Eve trip to Racine followed by our own family celebration back here on Blueberry Road Christmas Day.

Here's to your own simple and sparkly Christmas. Enjoy!

Sister time

Notice the view outside my sister Jane's living room window. It's green. It's in a land where people place poinsettias on the porch in December like we'd put geraniums out in June. I was there last week. In addition to Jane giving me a private banjo recital, we did things we love to do.

We made Christmas cookies using our grandmother's 90-year old cookie cutters.

We sorted through Jane's extensive collection of beautiful silk ties.

We started working to bring to reality a vision Jane has had for these ties since working on her interior design internship in San Francisco many years ago. This will be a spectactular piece when it's completed. I'll be back again next year to help get it finished.
We admired some of our previous collaborations, like the quilt Jane is showing off here. And, of course we planned more future projects than either of us will ever live to complete. And we went to a concert and out for lunch and for dinner and did a little bit of shopping (a yarn shop, naturally) and talked and knitted and talked and laughed and reminisced and dreamed. In short, we were sisters together again after far too much time apart. It was wonderful.

Even the reality of coming back to Wisconsin's absurd amount of snow and cold for the beginning of December can't take away the warmth of a week with my sister. It was just what I needed to warm my soul for the cold months ahead.

Look at my quilt!

It's titled "Christmas ... at last" and it is finally finished and hanging in the living room. And looking as good in its holiday spot as I imagined it might. It looks better than in this photo and I'll blame the camera for that because I have to hold the batteries in place with my thumb while trying to aim and shoot a decent picture. It's even more annoying than it sounds.
The first of the little plastic latches that hold the battery cover in place broke off the weekend that I spent at Tim and Julaine's cabin to work on this quilt. A piece of Scotch tape helped the camera get through that weekend (although the pictures of my hand from those days will testify that I had come up with a pretty wimpy fix).
The rest of the little latches broke off over Thanksgiving weekend. Now it's a two-handed maneuver to snap a picture. The right hand holds the battery cover in place and steadies the camera while the left reaches over to press the shutter button, jiggle the camera and sometimes shoot itself. Even though I really don't want to do it, I'm going to have to break down and dig up some duct tape.