Unexpected Residents

Like many of you I am cleaning and organizing.  I am often in a creative funk at this time of year, so instead of whining about it I decided I would tackle the basement storage area in the month of January.  As most of the days are gloomy, it is a good time to be down there and I don't feel like I am missing out on any significant vitamin D intake.  I gave myself the whole month to do the job, and I feel pretty optimistic that I can finish.  Thankfully all the purging I have done over the past year has made it much easier!
Not expecting much creative mojo to happen, imagine my surprise when I was able to browse through my books, pick a project without excessive agonizing about it, and complete not one but two things in as many days!  Meet Maisie and her baby, Sugar:

Sugar is from issue 11 of Mollie Makes magazine.  I wanted to make three baby mice, but the pattern  was so fiddly I stopped at one.  Since I didn't want Sugar to be an orphan I made her Mummy using the small rabbit pattern from Tone Finnanger's Crafting Springtime Gifts. I made the face a little longer and made mouse ears in place of rabbity ones.  I would love to crochet some little sweaters for them, but I don't think I could make up a pattern just yet. 

Last Saturday I again headed to the basement with my big mug of tea and made a few more cards and some gift tags.  I had just received some new stamps and an embossing folder the day before and was anxious to use them:

I really enjoyed making the gift tags and will probably make more of those.

Today I get a chance to try something new:  I am going to install a new kitchen faucet.  Ours started leaking before Christmas and now it's so bad we have to shut the hot water off under the sink each time we are finished using it.  Silly me thought I could just replace the washer in the handle:  I didn't know they don't use washers anymore, it's all ceramic cartridges - which, incidentally, they don't make a replacement for our discontinued Ikea faucet.  So, brand new faucet it is.  This time I made sure to buy one that I can replace the cartridge if it breaks in seven years.  Slowly but surely I'm learning!

Have a great day!

First Finish

Here is the first chart I stitched for the Stitch from Stash challenge:  JBW's Fleur de Lys.  I found this box while putting away the wrapping paper and decided to mount the stitching on the lid. Cut, shape, glue and in fifteen minutes I have a finished finish, that's not a pillow!  I stitched this over one thread on 28 count linen:  brutal on my eyes but it does make for a better size.

One of my New Year's Resolutions was to implement 'Card Making Saturdays'.  I have been wanting to do this for years.  Basically it involves me going down to the basement in my pyjamas with an enormous mug of tea and cutting and pasting away: ending up with a nice variety of home made cards for sending.  This past Saturday I finally did it and made five cards which I quite like:

Today was the kids first day back at school.  It snowed so much last night we were sure the buses would be cancelled.  Much to their disappointment they weren't, so I had the house all to myself for the first time in three weeks.  I didn't do too much other than putter around and drink tea, but it was nice.  In a few minutes they will be back and the house will be noisy and full of life once more.

Thanks for visiting!!