Quilts and Books

One of my UFOs was this holiday candle pattern called Candles Aglow by Castilleja Cotton designs. I'd purchased a yard of a beautiful gold star fabric for the border when I bought the pattern. Even though the guild UFO challenge for 2009 officially ended last month I decided to work on this anyway because I wanted something new to hang on my front door as part of my Christmas decorating. The hard part was selecting the fabric. Believe it or not, I do not have an extensive collection of Christmas fabric. But once I got past that it took no time to trace and iron on the applique pieces. There are only 9 of them. So I got the top made and quilted the background and candles. I used a gold metallic thread to quilt flames in the background. I had to fool around with needle sizes to prevent the thread from shredding and then it was pretty smooth. This is how far I got by Saturday afternoon: But when I went back to work on it on Sunday I looked at my leftover gold fabric and realized I ...

All-in-all, November was a pretty good month. Thanksgiving weekend was extremely quiet with only 3 of us here at home. I left the house for no more than 20 minutes on Black Friday, just long enough to pick up my Daily Diet Coke. Bring on Christmas. I'm ready! 5.5. I have to give a shout-out to "Christmas Promise," a novella by Carla Kelly appearing in the anthology A Regency Christmas (2009). Another wonderful story by the awesome Carla Kelly. Not everyone can pull off the format of telling a complete story in 100 pages, but Kelly can. A war-weary naval captain reunites with a woman he had always loved and never thought to have. 5. Broken Hero by Anne Whitfield . I started the month reading this ebook that I'd had on my PDA for ages. The book is set along the Yorkshire coast of England during WWII and involves a family that is allowing their home to be used by the British Army as a convalescent home for soldiers suffering from what we would probably now label as PTS...