For many years Stacia and Deloise have hosted a get-together for all the McKnights and their children and grandchildren. I’ve been lucky enough to attend one of those events and it is lovely to see everyone (from every generation) and catch up on family news.
With Covid in the air, this year could not be an in-house event so Deloise moved it virtual for the wiser generation (as in oldest). Although there were some technical difficulties (we’re wiser but further away from technology) and we weren’t able to see Willa and we only saw Ken for a few minutes it was a lovely event. Many thanks to Deloise for arranging this.
I passed Warren’s series of animal jokes on to Alex. He managed to get the answer to who was missing the meeting but I got him on all the rest!
This is about my usual time to post a journal entry but since I’ve been mainly cleaning, decorating and doing laundry all day I thought I might just skip the day. But as I was clearing up a pile of scraps in my sewing room I heard an odd noise from downstairs or outside or from somewhere not obvious upstairs.
I ignored it for a moment or two but decided I had better investigate. Nothing upstairs or outside my windows but I could tell it was coming from downstairs.
I was about half-way down the stairs when I knew what it was. The sunshine was hitting the Christmas mouse and he was singing! Love that little mouse.
My UFO for December is That Fairy Tale Quilt. I bought the pattern in 2018 when I was at Quilt Canada and I started it on a sewing week in 2019 with Stacia and Deloise. Although I knew I had made a mistake in putting Red Riding Hood together I thought I could live with her being so far away from the house.
But when it came up as the last of my UFO projects for the year I decided I needed to fix it. Although the fix was more challenging than I thought it would be I’m happier with the results. It still isn’t exactly like the pattern but, as we say in the Guild when we make a mistake, “the pattern is just a guideline”.
I set up the tree this afternoon and I have it decorated. I set out a few of our decorations and I’ll get out the Christmas linens this afternoon. I will still have a few more boxes to empty before I’m done but it is looking a bit festive.
I was too tired to embroider or knit last night; I just sat in my rocking chair and rocked while we watched a movie. Hopefully tonight I’ll be more productive.
Let me just say that the carrot/pineapple cake that I made yesterday (from Mum’s recipe book) is absolutely delicious. Pat occasionally (many months ago now) purchased a carrot cake from one of the local grocery stores; mine is better! As good as the cake is, I wonder if I made it just because of the cream cheese icing. On the downside, I only used one carrot from the huge bag we got from the store; there will be more carrot-themed items to come.
Today was a card making day even though all my December cards were done and the reminder for the January cards hasn’t come up but I got a head start. I have two cards ready for some hand stitching over the next few days. I pulled three tickets (for three January birthdays) from my tin and one of them was perfect for one of the January birthdays. One of the other ones is suitable for another of the birthdays and I made the third one to store away for another time.
Happy Willow
I’ve seen a few samples of this block and I knew it was going to be a difficult one to get right. At one point I thought the pattern was wrong but I just cut more of the pieces that I needed. At another point I thought there was another pattern error but when I looked more closely I realized I had read the pattern wrong. It was a tricky one but I’m good with the way it turned out.
I’ve started the next card for January but I’m not sure I’ll get it finished today. There wasn’t anything that interested me on Netflix last night so I read my book. I might be in a different frame of mind tonight and if we find something I’ll continue with some knitting.
