Merry Christmas

Just want to wish all of my friends and family a Merry Christmas and a happy healthy 2011!
Here are my 2 trees for this year. The tree with the white and silver tree features the annual Wallace Silver Bells. I have 27 of them that Russ gave me for each year of our marriage. This is the first year I displayed all of them together.

The other tree has many handcrafted decorations on it that I have been given or made over the years. Each year as I unwrap the ornaments I think back on the person from whom I received the ornament. The memories are priceless!

Christmas Holiday Needlepoint & Quilting

About 30 years ago I decided to make my family needlepoint stockings. I started with Mom(Jeanne) & Dad(Cliff). Each stocking was choosen with their interests in mind. Next was my husband's. Russ had always wanted to live at the shore and so I had a stocking designed of Santa feeding the gulls at the beach. We finally made it to live at the beach a few year later. Now all 3 of them are gone and so I put their stockings up in their memories.

I also made stockings for a sister, niece and nephew which they used every year. But I actually never got one made for myself. Maybe it's time to make one for me.
Over the years I have made many holiday wallhangings that I bring out each year to enjoy. I have also received a couple as gifts from penpals that I have in Australia and New Zealand. The Christmas Tree through the Window was made by Philippa from NZ in 1994 as my Christmas gift. The Poinsettia is a pattern by Eileen Sullivan that I used and altered to make it larger. I really love her patterns. I have also made her Daffodils and Iris and plan make more. The Happy Holidays wallhanging was made not long after my purchase of combination sewing/embroidery machine. I enjoy what the machine can do but remain a quilter at heart! I machine quilted both tops.

Kayaking

In October I decided it was time to learn how to kayak. I have a friend who kayaks in the back bays and on Nummy Island to get close to the birds and gets some great nature photographs. My sister, Jenny went with me. First we tried a 2 person kayak. She paddles faster than I do so we went in circles some of the time. But we had fun and laughed a lot. Next we tried one person sit on kayaks. That works better for both of us. we were able to go out about 4 times with each time a different height of the tide. The first tide was a high tide at the full moon which meant the tide was higher than all of the salt marsh so you really couldn't tell where you were supposed to paddle. In November my sister Leslie came down for the day and we went out also. Here's Leslie and there are some Brant at the bottom. They saw us and took off!

Where does the time go?

I really can't believe how fast time goes by. I had every intention of posting to the blog weekly but I just haven't been able to post. Oh, for more time in my days! Now the end of the year is looming upon us.

This summer I participated in ALQS4 which is an exchange of art wall quilt tops that follow rules the organizer has set up. She is an internet friend whom I "met" through a group of fabric dyers. Kate lives in England though she is originally from the US. I made my quilt and sent off the photos to be posted to her blog http://anotherlittlequiltswap.blogspot.com/ .


Then when the date arrives for all the quilts to be in to her we each get to chooose several we would like to own. Kate does the hard part assigning a quilt to each person. I love the quilt that I received from Cathy whose blog is http://cmwinter.blogspot.com/ .

See the June postings for the details on what she did to make her quilt. Her quilt is called Big Foot, Framed. It is about 15" by 20". It is a really neat piece and I am proud to be the owner of it. Now there is ALQS5 which stands for Another little Quilt Swap. I haven't signed up yet but there is still time so what to do....



Then this fall I received a bulky package from The Netherlands. A while ago I had been in a quilt swap using a spring theme with another dyer from our group. At the time Cobi wasn't able to finish her top for me. That happens sometimes because life interferes with our hobbies and pleasures. Imagine my surprise when I opened the package and found a fantastic quilt top measuring about 15" square called Spring in the Valley. Cobi has far surpassed any expectations I had about receiving this top and she put a lot of love and work into the quilt. Both quilt artists shared a love of doing unique tops. Art quilts are so interesting and the materials used are great. Both quilters used silk flowers in the tops. There is yarn and beads on the one Cobi made. So a big thanks goes out to both of them for brightening the walls of my house with their art work!