Merry Christmas!

 Hello, everyone! 

A few pictures for the day:

A few of the angelic choir on the door with trumpets

And another one inside with a violin

Ornaments old and new, with the memories they bring of friends and family

And gifts in honor of the One whose birthday it is.

I wish for all of my readers a wonderful Christmas.

The project completed

 Hello, everyone.

It's been busy around Ye Olde Homestead these last few days--is it ever not busy at Christmas time?--and some of the busy was finishing up the embroidery project from the last post.

This is the front of the tote bag. There are a variety of different skills that were used to finish the embroidery. The new one for me was the multi-hooping technique of embroidering something that is too big for the hoop. The program came with a step for match points, both on part 1 and part 2, which were later picked out as not part of the design.

I elected to box the lower corners. The bag as set up was basically flat and it didn't seem as useful as a bag with boxed corners. So I added that at the end. This bag broke 2 needles, and stalled the motor on my regular-duty sewing machine. It had to be finished on the HD-3000 with a size 16 topstitch needle. 

I think that, while the bicycle as digitized is more conceptual than realistic, I might make another tote bag with the design. Possibly omitting the cute words at the bottom. There is a good sized chunk of beige twill cotton in the stash and it might work out well as a tote bag.

(Of course some of that twill is already going into another bag. But there's a lot left.)

We had a day of Grandma Camp also in the last week, and DGD wanted to make a Christmas ornament.

We did a felt one, using freezer paper to get the cutting reasonably smooth, and she chose beads and stitched them on to the felt. 

This was her first time stitching beads onto a piece of felt, not in an embroidery hoop, and she designed her lines by herself. There are two kinds of seed beads here, a pink/clear blend and a gold.

We glued the back to the front as time was running short that day, with some Tacky Glue. 

A new embroidery project, almost completed

 Hello, everyone.

My local quilt shop has classes, both quilting project classes and embroidery project classes. I have been going to the embroidery classes to learn how to work with my Janome embroidery machine.

Yesterday we worked on a tote bag project. It was a Kimberbell class, so we had a tote bag to embroider on. Today I finished the stitching on the decorative design.

All it needs now is soaking, to get the dissolvables out, and finishing the bag.

There is a bit of colored chalk to come out. After the chalk is cleared up, I will drip dry the fabric and complete the bag.

It was fun to  learn new things and try something different. This one was a multi-hoop project that was designed to be sewn in stages.

From the garden

 Hello, everyone.

Yesterday some radishes were pulled from the garden. These are icicle radishes, so they take a little longer, and possibly were in the ground longer than the usual time, but still:

Holy cow.

I have been watering almost every single day, as there has been precious little rain this season. 

A small walk report

 Hello, everyone.

We went for a walk at Bentsen State Park and enjoyed it very much. We went later than usual because the morning woke up very chilly--so it was around 9 am. 

My favorite of the pictures we took (so far) is this shot of the Rosa de Montaña vines near the entrance:

Also it looked like the painted map sign had been redone.

We found a new bird blind (with roof and seating) along the Kiskadee Trail which runs in a straight line and crosses the center loop. (Hiking only, shown as a pink line.) Saw cardinals, titmice, orioles, kiskadee, of course chachalacas and green jays. Also javelinas at the older bird blind hut near the resaca. And a pair of coyotes along the road while driving over there.

The La Coma were in bloom and smelled wonderful. (Yes, for those excessively picky people: "la" is the article. But I think that when using a word from another language there's nothing wrong with going with that language's convention of attaching an article to the front. "Las Tules", anyone? And a lot of people refer to La Coma trees not Coma trees. Which sounds in English like a medical condition: coma. Disambiguation is a good thing.)

It felt so good to walk again. Probably did around 5K but didn't really calculate.