Many of us have had (and will be having) personal experience with winter scenes like this…

(Thanks to George for sharing the link with me!)

I've said it before and I will say it again: Falling down is BAD! Don't do it!

Tomorrow, Saturday 12/21 marks the winter solstice. Steve and I are celebrating the day with friends—food, drink, and a polar bear plunge. Well… some will plunge. I am going to watch and appreciate their bravery. Steve says the water really isn't that bad but I'm pretty sure that I won't be jumping in until June :-). But no matter what, no one is going to bounce off of our water!

I am going to sew, sew, sew today. My hope is to have three quilt tops made by January 1. That may not happen, but at least I have a plan! 

And by that, I mean that at least I can come up with a post that is funny :-).

I've been busy sewing and getting ready for Christmas. Lorna has been really busy shipping orders.

Side note: For any of you who have been waiting on an order, refer back to the ice storm a week or so ago. Our UPS facility is so backed up people are threatening to riot to get their packages. Well, not riot exactly, but there are some unhappy people. We are now waiting on one box of thread and then we'll be caught up. Yay!

I ran across this site with 'The 50 funniest faces in everyday objects' and had to share. It is absolutely true that we find faces everywhere. I see them in the accoustical ceiling tiles at the dentist's office!

These are better than ceiling tile faces :-). [You know, emoticons work because we do see faces in everyday things. What else would explain why we see people in punctuation marks!]

Thank you to Karen Stone for sharing this! I hope you enjoy…

I have been pounding away on my my keyboard for days, weeks, months… sigh. I applique at night but other than that I haven't had time to work with actual fabric. Happily I can say that I'm just about typed out and ready to make some more quilts for the color book. Yay!

With three quilts drawn, I chose colorways and have pulled fabric for them. The colors are separated into stacks and then sorted by value. 

I did something I haven't done before… I took the fabric stacks off of the table and pinned it all to my design wall. Better! When I took a photo, the colors worked together the way I hoped they would. I love it when that happens!

This fabric will be in a quilt that is about complementary colors, in this case blue and orange. Off to the right you can see the edge of the applique quilt that is waiting for a border. Below, you can see part of a black and white quilt that will be in the book. Steve is hand sewing the binding on it for me. I love that man!

The next photo shows the mostly blue fabrics that will be in a quilt that is all about clear colors vs. gray colors. 

The yellows, greens, and that purple print on the right don't exactly fit but I like them with the blues. I may use at least some of them in very small amounts.

I am making progress—oh happy day!

Lorna reminded me a couple of weeks ago that Bear needed a stocking! I couldn't help myself—his name is 'bear' after all…

Bear's actual name is Moses Beren. Lorna and Chris are not sure what version of his name should be on his stocking but honestly, does it matter? This is obviously Bear's stocking :-).

If any of you want to use the polar bear drawing, I've attached it below. Merry Christmas!

Download PolarBear-Bear copy

This is what I do when I'm snowed in…

As pies go, it's not that bad for you. Cranberries and apples are healthy. My pie has 3/4 cup of honey and the butter in the pie crust… really, not that bad. Unless you eat the whole pie :-).

The recipe is below. Click here to read my recent post on pie crusts.

Download CranberryPie