we go around in circles 'til we're very, very dizzy

I'm working on a quilt project

last night I finished the first step of these, so they now go to the sewing machine to have some decorative stitching done with lovely, "glow-y" rayon thread

last year for Christmas I made my daughter a pair of boot socks -- the first socks I had successfully knit

a couple of months ago, she mentioned that it would be nice to have another pair so there would be one to wear and one to wash

I had yarn left from the first pair -- the pattern was fairly painless -- why not?

so now she has two

the second and last pair

 the DH has been working in the garage workshop

as sometimes happens, our projects spill into each other's area of expertise

he built this awesome display box to hang on the wall that holds a modern icon of St Nicholas, Tsar of Russia and a brass key to the Kremlin

but he wanted those pieces to be on a velvet background

he did the wood working -- I covered the background and figured out how to mount the key without damaging it

pretty cool

he just rebuilt this table too

I had used this in a corner, tight between a desk and the wall to set a printer on in my old office set up

he's building me a whole new printer stand for the new, larger, heavier printer, but we couldn't see tossing the old table just because it wasn't stable on it's legs anymore

he took off the old wobbly screw on legs and put on new permanent legs and restained the whole piece

COOL!

my birthday was over the weekend

my friend from California sent me this amazing box -- it had these great fat quarters of fabric in it and this wonderful hand painted card

I think she originally bought these fabrics when she made a trip "down under" a few years ago, and they are very cool

the card will be added to my collection of her art -- I need to get a few small frames so I can hang them all on my studio walls

this was the computer that I had been using for a number of years -- the screen was starting to get very difficult to work on, and it was running on Windows XP -- a dinosaur!

this is my new computer -- and part of the reason that it has taken me a whole week to get a blog post done!

this one runs on Windows 8 -- which meant I needed to get new versions of many of the software packages that I work with -- especially Adobe PhotoShop which I use to "tweek" all of the pictures that come out of my camera and my cell phone so I can use them on the web

but the new stuff has new "features", making just enough of a change that it has taken me all week to figure it out

I think I'm going to like it a lot!  and I should add, a huge big THANK YOU to my sister for making this possible right now -- it would have taken me another couple of months to make this happen if it weren't for her generosity

so, now that we're back to normal, it's time to get back to work -- errands and packing and hopefully some time in the studio today