Celebrating -- and the great Christmas Reveal

even though we had worked on a lot of things ahead of time, there is always a project or two that we're still doing the week of Christmas

on Tuesday my daughter and Mr Cute came to spend some time so my daughter could work on some sewing projects -- she brought her sewing machine, but because we couldn't figure out the bobbin issue on her machine without the manual in hand, she did a lot of the work on mom's scary machine -- and survived it!

while we were working on sewing, Mr Cute did some art work

this piece was my favorite of all of them, and is now hanging on the wall in my office

   

we had snow and fog and cold and a beautiful sunrise on the first full day of winter

I took these pictures from the comfort of my front porch -- and I think there may be a piece of art that comes out of them

Christmas Eve meant there was more baking to do -- the pumpkin pie and the angel food cake

and as a nod to the San Francisco Bay area, where we spent many Christmas Eves, we had cioppino and cannolis for our dinner

Christmas day, our daughter, son-in-law and Mr Cute were here for Santa socks and presents and dinner

and on Saturday we had all of my side of the extended family here for gift exchange and all ten of us around the table for a mid day meal

we know how to set up a great buffet!  thanks to the two feet of snow that stacked up on our back deck and the cold that followed, we just opened the back door and shoveled a big basket of snow to use for keeping the drinks cold!

because we were in transition from house to house this year, I needed to work on projects that were portable

knitting was a big thing under the tree -- my original plan was to knit the hat that was black with the key board for my daughter, and I ordered what I thought was the right amount of the lovely cotton/bamboo/silk yarn -- but after I knit that one, there was more yarn, so I decided to make one in the reverse for my sister -- and still there was yarn, so I knit the one with the sasiko patterning for my nephew -- and there was STILL yarn, so my brother in law got the wild patterned hat

since the first pair of Ninja mittens I made for Mr Cute were a "just fits", I knit him a second pair that will last a while longer

and this year's sweater for my daughter is purely "fashion", not at all for warmth -- all this lace work and it came out beautiful (don't let that picture fool you!)

 

it's sort of a tradition that I make some sort of critter to put in the top of the Christmas socks

this year I did BobGoblin, an big ear bunny and Norville the dragon

and a self standing mouse nutcracker for a friend's collection!

 

once my studio was finished there was a lot of sewing that went on -- the usual pj pants, and a number of aprons, but this was the hit of the bunch

the remake of the dinosaur costume from two Halloweens ago that Mr Cute had outgrown -- I carefully removed the tail and spikes from the old sweat suit then attached them along with some additional spots to a new sweat suit that I make for him

his mom's challenge will be getting him out of it long enough to wash it!

and the new quilt for my daughter and son-in-law has gone to live at their house now -- it's all good

I've started working on the edging of this piece -- it has now become the priority to finish next as I want to enter it in an online challenge that the deadline for is Jan 4

and the barn is ready to be attached to the background of the Out to Pasture piece

this is what this project is heading for -- except this week I also decided that those darker pieces at the bottom are too distracting, so I've been picking them out and putting in lighter colors

and the original plan for the truck was to put all of the underside in shadow so you couldn't see the tire on the left had side -- but I just didn't like that whole look -- trouble was the original picture was that way, so I had to create something for that space so it didn't look like the truck was in danger of falling over -- so I drew a cinder block to sit under there -- I like that!

yup, it was a busy, BUSY week!