Distraction 2010

Happy New Year!

And none too soon, if you ask me. 2009 was not a good year - full of vet bills, hospital visits and stressful events for friends and family. I'm definitely ready for a fresh start. How about you?

I met very few of my 2009 project goals, though I did accomplish a lot of other things. I've upped my goal on my Dear Jane quilt to 2/3 done. I thought about leaving it at half-way, but where's the challenge in that? I hope to make it to two UFO weekends the year so that should help. If I don't take anything else to work on, I should be able to make good progress. Don't quote me on that, though. :)

We spent New Year's Eve at home, as usual. We actually fell asleep on the couch and managed to wake up just in time to see the ball drop. We had a toast and went to bed.

Party animals:


Notice Max's extra long tail wrapped behind his shoulder

A few minutes later, they were joined by Runt:



Yesterday I spent all day in my sewing room, but not sewing. My goal was to organize my beads and craft supplies, get some of the newly-acquired yarn put away and generally dig out my sewing table so I can use it for it's intended purpose. Once again, I was distracted by shiny objects.

I found some more beads that I thought would make good stitch markers, so....



I'm not in love with the larger ones, but I couldn't really remember why I bought those red beads and I wanted to get them out of the bead stash. The small gold hearts were in a mixture of beads, like the purple ones from a week or two ago. I put them on smaller rings for use with smaller needles. One of these days I might take my friend's advice and open an Etsy shop. We'll see.

Then I found some old beads and a couple of snowflake charms that I really didn't want to store anymore. The beads have an AB coating on them and are pretty, even though they're plastic. I figured they'd work fine for Christmas ornaments that won't get much action.



The red and green beads on the smaller, center one were leftover from some old ornament kits. Yes, I am a pack rat, which is a good thing, since I needed more beads for that one. Let me tell you, those snowflake wires are a *LOT* harder to bend than the stuff I'm used to working with. Also, an arm (leg?) broke off one of them broke part way through so I had to start that one over. My hand is sore today.

This spool ornament was a make-and-take project from my December guild meeting. I skipped the make part at the meeting, and just took the supplies.



I finished it yesterday so I can put it in with the Christmas decorations.

After spending all day standing on a hardwood floor and bending over my sewing table, I curled up on the couch to watch an NCIS dvd. Emma decided to join me.


"I crawled under the quilt all by myself. It's warm under here...."