An Update

I'm a sort of boring blogger tonight. Hubby and I haven't felt very well for the last couple days, and I stayed home from work today and slept quite a lot, so there's not much to talk about. Both of us have had some kind of body ache/upset stomach thing but I think we're starting to feel better. Sometimes I think it's just our bodies' way of telling us to stop for a minute, when we're much to busy to slow down otherwise.

This evening I finished making five of these bags to hold potpourri and Christmas gifts.

I was thinking about making more, but five is enough. There's a certain boredom threshhold that is reached when making the same thing over and over and I've hit it! Any other "containers" will need to be different.

A couple people asked me about the "roll thing" in the center of the holly leaves. I tried to make it look a bit like a cross between a peppermint and a bloom--I hope it looks something like it. To make it--and you're welcome to make some too--I took strips of red and white wool that I cut 3/8" wide. (You could also use felt, I suspect, as long as you didn't plan to wash your project because I'm not sure what would happen to washed felt.) I doubled the strips so the red and the white showed up better and, using a fabric glue to hold the strips together, I rolled them into a "roll." Once they dried, I was ready to attach them to the background. To do that, I used a white thread and brought it up one side of a white strip and down the other. I also sewed from the bottom across several layers. I kept going around, sewing the "roll" to the background until I felt it was secure.

You may well wonder what this next photo is. It's actually Stitch underneath my acrylic sewing table. Spike used to do the same thing when she was little and it's the funniest thing to see a kitten squeeze itself underneath! Unfortunately, there's too much glare and reflection in this shot to see him very well.

I tried to get another photo of him, but the camera batteries went dead and I didn't get them replaced until long after Stitch got bored playing at sewing.

And speaking of Spike and Stitch--well, they're starting to get along a little better, although Spike still goes after Stitch on occasion. Not long after that last photo, Stitch had fallen asleep on a small table next to my sewing machine, and out of the blue, Spike came up and gave Stitch a couple slaps. Of course, she has no idea that he'll be as big or bigger than she is one of these days. In the meantime, though, he's FASTER than she is--but not so much when he's sleeping!

At other times, she just seems curious and will sneak up and sniff him a bit. Then there are times like this--

Times when they're both too hungry to care who they're dining with.

Time for bed--and back to work tomorrow, I think. Happy stitching!