The Christmas Hang Over

We had a wonderful Christmas.

A lovely dinner on Christmas Eve with our daughter and son-in-law. Followed by a low key Christmas morning with presents and an easy to do luncheon tray before they headed out into the ugly weather to go home.

As I have been saying during the month of December, I had been finishing projects at a good clip, but a good many of them could not be detailed for fear of spoiling the surprise on Christmas morning.

Now at least part of them can be revealed.



As you may recall, I had knit up 3 turtles -- 2 that were toys for a friend's children and one as a stocking stuffer for my son-in-law.

This is the rabbit I knit for my daughter. For years she has had a collection of rabbits, and this was just too cute to pass up.

(and so we had from the top of the Christmas socks "the tortoise and the hare")



This is the sweater for my daughter.

The picture does not do it justice, and I am particularly proud of the appearance of the zipper in the front since I had to "wing it" putting that in -- the original pattern did not call for that (or for the decorative cable around the bottom edge either!)

The yarn I used has a lovely soft feel, and I think she will enjoy it.

(So now I'm planning the next sweater adventure!)



This is a piece I did for my son-in-law.

His dog is about the same color as this, and has one brown eye and one blue eye.

Earlier in the year I had made one of these for a show, thinking it would never sell and I would end up giving it to him for Christmas. Wouldn't you know it, it sold at the first show I took it to!

So, I made this one just for him. Hand painted eyes, suede mouth and foot pads and inner ears. And may I say, this fur is not fun to work on in this size -- but the results were spectacular -- and he really liked it.



This wall hanging was designed by the DH, executed by me.

Each figure having a significance for my daughter, her husband, their pets. I told them more figures of animals can be added as need be!

This was the first quilted piece I have ever done that the quilting does not just echo the pieces on the front. Instead I quilted snowflakes across the whole field.

I'm thinking to use this technique on the next quilt I'm working on so that the front and the back can each tell their own story



And this bright and colorful fleece vest was made for my husband. We keep our house very cool, so sweaters, sweatshirts and vests are an everyday item of clothing.

A couple of years ago I had made him a vest with a zipper, and when the cold season began this year he couldn't figure out what had become of it.

I decided a new one was in order, but because we had put ourselves on an extremely small budget for Christmas spending, I decided that I would see if I could make him a new one from things I had on hand.

This is the result -- bright, colorful and warm! (and with the bonus of partly cleaning out some of my stash)

And so today I'm doing some laundry and just moving along slowly as somehow I managed to hurt my back and certain movements are painful today.

Tomorrow I promise to have pictures of some of the great goodies I got from Santa and others (give me time, I'm still reading the manual!)

Hope you all had a great Christmas too!

Ho Ho Ho!

It looks like the jolly ol' fellow has been here already!

the stockings are ready
the cookies are baked
the presents are wrapped

it must be a mistake

this can't be my house a whole day before Christmas -- where is the rushing, the frantic wrapping, the flour and sugar and eggs making glue on the still unmopped kitchen floor?

Somehow with the whole idea of making Christmas simplier this year a lot of the stress went away too -- its a nice side benefit -- who could have thought?

M E R R Y
C H R I S T M A S!

what the well dressed Cati (or Pilar) would wear.....

Ok, just a little sample of the costuming going on for the paper "dolls".....

Its my contention that the little girl caterpillars dream of dressing up as beautiful butterflies......

This is the first of 6 outfits I have created...the drawings are done and now I'm doing the coloring





and I did this as a background

I still have several more pages of drawings to do and the coloring (which I am doing with a combination of very fine point markers and colored pencils -- my friend suggested water colors would make nice backgrounds, but that is TOTALLY beyond my abilities at this point -- maybe later!)

Once I get all the seperate components drawn up I will be trying to figure out the "layering" abilities of my printshop software so I can combine the images and do the print outs.

Today will be full of baking and cleaning. Yesterday I got all the presents wrapped and under the tree. I can tell you there were a couple of items that were a real challenge!

Meantime last night because I was just too wiped out by a sinus headache to work on the drawings or start anything else I cast on the first afghan square for 2008's charity knitting.

Time to get moving, the Yule Log cake awaits being frosted and decorated.....

Just have to share

this would be Cati and Pilar

the beginnings of the set of paperdolls I'm drawing for my mother for Christmas -- I know its safe to post these 'cuz she doesn't do computers much

I've done some background drawings and the first costume, so we're moving right along on these --- its kind of fun to play with colored pencils,

meantime, all of the other Christmas projects are now done and have been dutifully photographed for me to show off AFTER the big day.

Today there will be cleaning and baking and more drawing

Dashing through the projects......

my sewing machine is humming, my knitting needles are flying, the needles are stitching

it looks like Santa's Workshop South

Yesterday I completed one particularly auspicious project.

I have 3 others at the "just one more thing" stage, and 2 more still in the "slogging along" period of mind numbing repetition, but there is a light at the end of that tunnel.

There is one more sewing project to work on that hasn't been cut, but that entails making toys for the dog, and will be a very quick do (not much detail, just sturdy stitching required!)

And then it will be on to the kitchen projects -- dog biscuits, kolaches and a first ever attempt at a jelly roll cake (that is a whole story of its own, to be photographed and detailed on Hattie's Kitchen soon)

time to get a move on.....

Lovely lilac light steppers......

Nice, right!?

Finished these off last night, another item crossed off the "finish it before Christmas" list!!

These are not a Christmas present, just something I had in the works for my daughter that I wanted to have finished before she arrived -- slippers in our house (after all its that tropical 62 degrees!) are pretty much mandatory in the winter.



onward and upward!!

another day another project -- COMPLETE!

and yes, its another of those Christmas things that I can't talk about or show pictures of yet.

Let me say, however, that it came out really well, so I'm pleased with the efforts.

I was tempted on Saturday to add yet another Christmas project to the mix, but I have decided that the project I have in mind I can't start until after Christmas, so the person I had in mind to get this will get an "I. O. U." for this one so I can get proper measurements for the item. (ok, if you understood that ramble, please explain it to me!)

I made especially great progress on one item yesterday too, so hopefully it will be complete today.

Today being Monday means I'm hangin' out in the laundry room, shuffling dirty clothes from the basket to the washer, wet clothes from the washer to the dryer and then clean dry clothes from the dryer to the basket -- all very cyclical -- oh yes, and next week we repeat it all again!

time to go shuffle!

The creative solution

All in all the solution to yesterday's "Oh No" is quite acceptable!

I finished stitching all of the blank spaces on the piece of fabric and now I'm actually ready to cut into the yardage -- Hurrah!

Meantime yesterday I finished 3 other projects on the Christmas list, and made progress on 3 others -- on the whole a pretty productive day.

I'm kind of at the "I want to be finished so I can do something else" stage of projects now, something that happens frequently when I near the end of a project (or I get to the "slog along" stage of anything!).

Today there will be more knitting and sewing and beading and hopefully a couple more finished projects to report about tomorrow.

Its the "OH NO" factor

As I was moving right along through the next step in my Christmas projects I suddenly realized that I had a real problem with the dark blue embroidery project.

What was supposed to be a mirror image pair was in fact an identical pair -- the equivalant of having 2 left feet! Somehow I hadn't noticed that the patterns, while marked left and right were actually both faced to be the left. What to do? I didn't want to start all over again, I'd already done all that stitching....hmmmmmm

After some thought I turned the piece back to the white side and filled the entire space around the pieces with more lines to be stitched on. I'm about 2/3 done with filling those all in, then I will just use the fabric as if it were just a piece of yardage to be cut into.

So the result of the project will be different than originally planned, but the work is not lost.

I got the most amazing card yesterday from a friend in California. He works in multi media collage art and does some truly amazing (and very large) pieces. This card included a photo of just a piece of a triptych he had done for a show that is blues and greens in the most amazing layers and patterns -- I would just love to do a version of in in fabrics -- truly a place to use a fusing technique.







Yesterday's doodling produced these.....with a little work the girl could become a paperdoll. And how about these Byzantine style birds?!

time to get back to working on Christmas presents!

Wined up musical toys?!

No, I did not spell that title wrong -- someone else did!

Let me preface this whole story with a bit of background. We live about an hour away from Denver. After years of being in California where San Francisco and Stanford Shopping Center and all their joys at Christmas were about an hour away, I admit I miss the glitter of this season's decorations in those places. That being said, we have gone every year at Christmas time since we've been in Colorado to the Cherry Creek Mall in Denver.

Not that we actually buy anything, but its an outing that we can do that we enjoy.

After watching the weather (and having had 2 snow storms in a week), we decided yesterday morning that we would make the excursion.

So off we go. It must have been meant to be, we had no traffic problems (a minor miracle in itself), arriving in a bit less than an hour and finding a very close in parking space (I must admit here that the Handicap placard in the front window of the van helps here!).

Our plan was simple -- walk around in the mall, look at all the Christmas decorations, maybe purchase a few things not easily available to us in our area, have lunch in our favorite place to eat lunch and come home.

And so we began.

Having seen the commercials featuring Martha Stewart decorating the store for Macy's, we went in to take a look.

Back in the corner of the second floor was a display of ornaments and trees and musical toys -- WINED up musical toys -- according to the sign -- wait, WINED? don't they mean WIND? Or perhaps they would play "how dry I am" or some appropriate inebriated tune. Evidence that someone didn't proof read, only spell checked!! It was too good to just chuckle and let it go. So, I decided to have a little fun with the clerks. Fortunate for me these were 2 ladies at least my age and with a sense of humor -- I pointed out the sign -- we all had a great laugh! (we're still wondering if Martha knows about those Wined Up Musical Toys)



We have collected Christmas ornaments for many years. Now days we haven't the funds for the many additions to this collection that we used to make every year, but we always look for something that will be a good addition to part of the collection. (Part of the fun of putting up the trees every year is the "remember where" of the ornaments as they go up).

This little "onion dome" was our addition this year. The picture really doesn't do it justice -- its a lovely purple-y coco brownish color with gold glitter tones. Nice!



One our way down the mall we passed the Sees Candy kiosk and had a nice chat with the gal that was working there. Not wanting to haul our purchase for the entire trip, I told her we'd be back on our way to the car. I'm thinking she hears that line a lot (I know I hear it at shows too).

But I really meant it, on our way to the car, we stopped and bought a very small box of chocolates for ourselves and a couple of small gift items too.

For whatever reason, she chose a large shopping bag for our purchases and as we were leaving she said "I put in a few samples for you". These are the FEW samples -- it was adult trick or treating at Christmas!! What a hoot!!





Now days I spend more time looking at things in the stores that I would have never looked at before.

In one of the stores I saw some of the work of a guy named Jay Strongwater.

Obviously influenced by Faberge, the pieces on display were AMAZING!! The bunch of asparagus is a hinged box and inside is another smaller bunch of asparagus and a tiny butterfly. The bumble bee is a pin. He uses lots of tiny swarovski crystals (some of his pieces must have had HUNDREDS of them on them).

WOW! and WOW again!!

And so while we were having our lunch at Johnny Rockets (LOVE their hamburgers and onion rings), I did some doodling in the little notebook I carry with me.
Have you seen the decorations in the Nordstroms stores this year?

They inspired these little bird like creatures














And while we were eating, a lady came in for a cup of coffee. Wearing pants with a large black and white herring bone pattern and a BRIGHT yellow oversized sweater and some of the pointy-est shoes I've ever seen, she was limping right along.

So, I drew this...



And this little (?) bear was doodled in the car -- I think he's kind of cute. Now I'm wondering if I can use him for some larger purpose -- note cards? a Christmas story? maybe a whole new bear design? We'll see....

And so, our Holiday Adventure complete, today we return to other things (got to fetch dog food and a printer cartridge), and perhaps some more doodle time later....

A hill scene and more finished projects

I did this little piece while I was talking to my mother on the phone last night.

It started off with the wavy lines on the right then just sort of emerged from there. I kind of like the snail on the fallen log, but I think the mouse is a little "iffy"....more mouse works later...perhaps like that clip I saw on TV the other night of that newly discovered mouse with the HUGE ears and the VERY LONG tail (with a furry tuft on the end, no less) that sort of hops like a bunny....odd, very odd

Yesterday I completed another "Project Which Can Not Be Named" ... not to worry folks, I am taking pictures so there will be full disclosure -- just not 'til after Christmas!!

A "what is it" picture

Stare at it for a while and the pattern will emerge.....this, by the way, is but a tiny portion of a white thread on navy blue fabric project I'm working on.....

Lovely isn't it? Its all done in just a running stitch, so aside from needing to turn the fabric this way and that to be stitching in a direction that was comfortable to me, its not difficult.

More on this project later!

Meantime, one more "project which can not be named" is nearing completion, and another one in in process.

Moving right along toward Christmas!

Yesterday we put ornaments on the family room tree and I found the box with the Christmas socks in it -- that one was important!! In a couple of days we should be done decorating.

There has been baking going on, and today there might even be some package wrapping!

time to get going.......

Christmas trees and snow and teddy bears

After 2 days of fog, icy drizzle and snow, we woke to this beauty yesterday morning.

All of this shot from my patio

The trees are especially nice as after all that ice, the soft, diamond dust looking fluffy snow was just laying gently on each and every branch

Every little movement of air would sift some of the snow off the branches so it was like walking about inside a snowglobe -- very cool indeed!





And indoors the tree in the living room is up and the teddy bears have taken up residence under it.

Usually there are a number of other things under the tree too, but since I'm not unpacking all 926 (ok, 35) boxes of Christmas stuff this year, the bears will probably hang out by themselves this year.

Yesterday we rearranged the furniture in the family room and put up the tree there. We got as far as lights on the tree before we both decided we had done enough physical work for the day.

I admit it was nice to not feel guilty about turning on the lights on the tree -- we converted to LED lights in the family room this year, and I strongly suspect from everything I've read about them that they will pay for themselves in electric bill savings THIS YEAR. The other very cool thing about them is they do not get hot. When I turned them off at 10 pm they had been on for about 6 hours and they were still as cool to the touch as they were when we took them out of the box. Yes sir, I can tell you that pretty much all of our other lights will be switched out to these (just not all at once).

And so today is the day for laundry and sorting out of the rest of the stuff I took out of the family room....ordinary stuff....its a dirty job, but somebody's got to do it (oh to have a cleaning service!!)

Downhill Shreddie is on Ebay

I originally put this little guy together for a 2005 show (where he won the Best of Catagory in the Professionally Costumed contest).

I decided it was time for some of my bears to return to Ebay, and this one is the first "test ballon"

If you'd like to see more pictures and read all the cool stuff about him, use this link to take a peek!

(I need to add here that I owe a great big THANK YOU to Shelli from Potbelly Bears for helping me out with the design of a new auction "look")

Yesterday afternoon, in preparation for today's furniture rearranging in the family room (got to make room for a tree!), I spent about 3 hours culling through a year's worth of magazines -- things like Belle Armoire and Teddy Bear Review and Lapidary Journal and 5 different magazines on beadwork. Some of these we keep whole, some of them go to the recycling bin and some of them I tear apart to keep only the parts I want.

Anyway, as I was working my way through the stack on beadwork, a couple of things occurred to me. One was a design for a totally new piece of jewelry in a style I've never tried before. The other was that here are at least 5 places that I should be bombarding with pictures of my new work -- constantly!! So, I ripped out the front page of the magazine that tells where to mail pictures to, and we'll have a go at that too (now that I've gotten my feet wet - so to speak - by sending stuff off to Belle Armoire).

Progress continues on Christmas projects, and I'm starting to reach the "are we there yet" stage on those as new ideas for bears and jewelry are starting to perk in the back of my head......

Onward!

Yes, I'm still here.....

just busy, busy, busy! ('tis the season ya know!)

As you can tell by the UFO ticker, I'm slowly finishing up on projects ... I was considering splitting the list in two -- one for Christmas, one for other projects, but have decided to just wait until the Christmas projects are all finished then just revise the whole thing

We've been decorating the tree in the living room and should have that all finished today. Then I'll be rearranging furniture in the family room to make space for a tree there.

Usually we put up 7 or 8 trees, but we're not doing that this year (we also usually have most of this done by now, but we were both not feeling that well around Thanksgiving, so it just "ain't happenin'" this year)

I've just about completed all of the out of town presents, tho', so I'm doing pretty well!

The last couple of days I've been trying to get an auction of a bear written for eBay. I don't like the way it looks when I try to just type it in to their forms, so I talked with a couple of other bear artists and got some pointers for this one. I'll be putting it up tomorrow, and of course I'll include a "sneek peek" here in the morning, so stay tuned!

time to get moving!!

"Buggy" Bear, slippers and fall doodles

As you may recall from a post last week, I did marker drawings on a chunk of corduroy that I was making a bear out of.

Here then, for your consideration, is the completed project (everything but his bow, that is, but I wanted pictures where we could see all the drawings!)

Don't you love the caterpillar crawling across the nose?!

This pattern is the very first pattern I ever made a bear from (the first one being made for my nephew), and I still occasionally get a request to make it. The funny thing is that no matter how long its been since the last one, I can still just about build one of these in my sleep (I've made over 100 of them!)

So, I'm hoping the requester will be pleased, as this is one is very unique



And another item crossed off my UFO list!

Another pair of slippers to warm the toes, even tho' these are a somewhat cooler and more sedate color combo than the sunrise pair were.

I have one more pair of these to do. (That number may go up as I noticed last night that the pair I knit for myself last year are starting to get thin on the bottom, but I'll finish other things first!)



The doodling continues......I admit that despite my best intentions (Ok, we all know the road to hell is paved with those!!), I can't seem to manage to do these in the sketch book because its never right at hand -- perhaps what I need is a sketch pad and the drawing pencils (in a case of course) on an "idiot string" like we used to have our mittens so they didn't get lost and we could find them at all times.....

anyway, I started this one while I was talking to my daughter and finished it during a conversation with my mother......

I'm starting to think that I'm much better at doing drawings that I just "make up on the fly" than at drawing from life.....the up side of this is that no one can tell me "that's not what's in the picture"!!

So, now what do I do with these? Perhaps a story will suggest itself -- nothing like doing the process backwards!!

Last night, since I had finished the slippers, I put another knitting project "on the sticks" -- this one should be fun as there is only a very loose instruction and I get to create the patterning as I go along -- I am taking notes as I go, in case I want to build another of these.

I've been working on this year's Christmas letter. You'd think for someone that babbles on online almost every day that this wouldn't be so difficult....guess there's something about trying to compress a whole year into no more than 2 pages that is difficult for me.

Time to get to work!

The show season is over (and the project that can not be named)

I for one am rather glad of the fact that we're done with shows until next year.

The economy has really put the skids to the kind of happy shopping that folks were doing a couple of years ago.

At this show the saving grace for me was the fact that I keep an extensive mailing list and send out postcards to my previous customers and invite them to return. All but one of my sales yesterday were from return collectors -- YEAH Collectors!!

Now it's on to inventory and tax paperwork before I get full swing into creating new bears for next year.

This show did have one other very amazing feature to it however.

A couple of weeks ago the show promoter had sent out an email announcing that Charles Phoenix would be "in the building" doing one of his slide shows the day of the show. (For those of you who don't know about this guy, use this link to check out his website -- the clip of him with Martha Stewart is especially fun). Of course I had to check this all out when the promoter sent it out, found his website fascinating and wished I wouldn't be working my table during the time his show would be. Then on Thursday of last week, I saw him on one of the morning TV shows out of Denver.

Well, all that said, around 1 pm, as I'm hanging out in my booth, the guy zips in the back door and some unknown entitiy possessed me and I said (as he has his BACK to me) "hey, its the slide guy!" What ensued was a conversation about my critters and how we make them and a number of other topics in about 15 minutes. WOW! Nice guy, very complimentary about my work. This is what comes of sometimes being BOLD!!



You may notice on the side bar that I have labeled the Christmas countdown (ie: The Project That Can Not Be Named) as complete! I finished it up last night after the show.

This project has replaced it....this is a piece of white fabric which has been fused to a piece of dark blue fabric and all of these pencil lines were drawn right on the white fabric before the fusing. These will be my guide lines for stitching these patterns onto the fabric with white thread.

The "buggy" bear is coming right along too, I got all of the machine work on him completed on Saturday, so now its on to the stuffing and closing and putting on the face.

Today there is the usual Monday laundry and emptying the van from the show (I didn't feel like doing it in the cold and the dark last night) then its off to do a bit of shopping, mail some packages, etc., etc. (the usual ordinary life things!) Then hopefully back to working on projects!!

more fairies, "buggie" cloth and boxes of goodies

A prime doodle fantasy this one....in fact I'm looking forward to getting to color this one in --

And it seems that each one I do gives me more ideas to play with for the next one....

such fun!




This is a chunk of cream colored corduroy that I'm going to be making into a bear for a gift.

But, I didn't want just plain fabric -- so after all my excursion yesterday doing research for the fairy paper dolls and pulling up pictures of bugs and butterflies and caterpillars and fungi and flowers -- I sat down with my fabric markers and drew right on the fabric.

Today (now that I know the ink is dry) I will heat set the colors then I can start in on the bear.

These are some close ups of the individual bugs -- all done free hand with permanent markers -- sort of the equivalant of working the NY Times Sunday crossword in ink (although I did have some additional fabric I could use if I messed it up)

I think they are pretty neat tho'




And this lovely box of goodies (there were other goodies too) came from my sister -- wonderful colors of WOOL yarn to do a specific Christmas project with (wool is a foreign fiber in my knitting bag as most of my knitting is done for my daugher and try as she might, she just can't wear wool next to her skin, so I don't knit with wool for her)

Aside from the pleasure of the colors and knowing that I can now get on with that project, the fun of this box was watching my 75 pound labrador try to figure out where the 5 kitties were. (Now there is evidence of cross cultural co-existance in a family if ever I saw it -- my sister has cats, we have a dog -- it works out fine thank you!)

Tomorrow we have a show in the Denver area, where we will be exhibiting our bears. We will have our new items, some Christmas themed pieces and a table of End of Edition bears at reduced prices. If you'd like to come and visit, you can see more details about the show by using this link.

So today I will be working on projects and getting ready for the show!