Snoctober!

Well.

I took some photos of our beautiful leaves last Thursday night.  The yard and the trees were so beautiful!

And then Friday came.  And so did the snow.  

This was just the beginning.  We ended up with about four inches.  And it's still here!!  I feel like it must be December.  (I have refrained from playing Christmas music, however!) Five days of snow and cold in October.  Tomorrow is supposed to finally be above freezing and then maybe the snow will melt.  

We stayed in and cozied up to the fireplace and I've been knitting away on those brown socks.  Good news!  I should be done tomorrow.  I was able to get away with undoing just the toe of the too-short-sock and I'll be the first to say how amazed I am. I'm just glad it worked!  Time for a new color of yarn!

I'm also getting the Christmas wall hanging quilted, a little at a time.  I finally decided to just stitch in the ditch using my Bernina 830 and a walking foot.  I'm so thankful for a machine with a large throat space and my nice sewing cabinet so that everything is level with room to spread out.  Spoiled, that's what I am.  

Well, that's the latest here at the Resort.  Just trying to stay warm and get a few projects done. I made a yummy ham and pea soup in the Instant Pot this week and that's kept our tummies warm, along with muffins.  I do love winter cooking!  ♥

Feelin' Swanky

Swanky:  stylishly luxurious and expensive

Yes, that would be how I'm feeling after my latest embroidery project.  I'm just sorry it took me so long to do it.  What?  What's that you say?  What did I do? Well, I monogrammed our sheets!  Yes, I did, and I love it.  Or them.  Whatever...

I've made many, many machine embroidered pillowcases over the years, starting back with my little Deco 600 sixteen years ago, and I love them.  But lately I've wanted to up the swank, so to speak, and have a set of sheets that spelled (haha!) luxury.  Every time I washed our sheets, as I put them back on the bed, I'd think, "I should monogram these right now," but then I'd decide to wait to a better time.  Turns out yesterday was the day.  

The above picture is of the band on the top sheet, monogrammed in the center.  The letters come from OESD's Sterling Monograms and are absolutely gorgeous!  I resized to fit the sheet band and they stitched out perfectly.  I resized again for stitching on the pillowcase bands and again they stitched out perfectly.

When we bought our first queen mattress about twenty-five years ago, I made a decision to have all cream linens and blankets on our bed.  They seem so restful, and I still just love having everything match.  I'm also a huge fan of tone-on-tone for monograms, so that's what you see.  I do indeed feel swanky!  ♥

A Little Sewing

Hmm, I should be down on the NordicTrack, but I'll make this fast.  I teach embroidery club at the shop this week and amazingly enough, I came up with a project (a potholder) two months ago and made up a sample.  But I didn't write the instructions.  Bad! I needed to get those instructions written up, but I couldn't remember exactly how I made it.  So, on Saturday, faced with a diminishing time frame, I headed down to my sewing room and commenced to recreating my project.  

Actually, it was a good thing because I was able to try a couple of different thoughts, so now I have two samples to share and participants can see the difference and take their pick of methods.  Here's a picture of my two.  

The one with blue batik binding is my first sample.  (An interesting geometric truism is at play here:  I assure you that both potholders are exactly the same size, but the one with brown binding looks long in the middle as your eye travels up the center, and the dark binding around the outside edge seems to make it contract and look smaller around.  Thinking of you, Mrs. Towles!!)

I've had a circular sewing attachment for my Berninas for years and I was pleased to be able to use it on this project.  Worked like a champ!  

And now, I'm off to huff and puff!!  ♥