Friday's Activities

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This morning I walked with my friend Sue.  Sue and I always exchange small gifts at Christmas.  Sue likes pigs, and so I gave her a pig Christmas tree ornament.  She knows I'm a cat person, and so she made a mighty attempt at a cat-related gift.  Here's the little good-intentioned tag attached to her gift.

And she gave me these comfy cat slippers.  Hm.  Only one problem...

I absolutely adore these slippers.  They are so cushy and comfy, and I think it's a riot that Sue had in mind cats when she bought them.  She didn't realize until she was wrapping them up this morning that there was, hm, something strange about these cats.  They are all the more precious to me because of the hilarious story that goes with them.  And now, Sue will need to endure years of ribbing about her choice of animals.  It has already started.  

For example, we were discussing the intelligence of crows.  She thought that possibly they weren't as smart as people give them credit for.  I suggested to her that she could be right, but that I imagined they knew the difference between a cat and a rabbit.  Ahhhhahahahahahahahaha!!!

And we discussed the merits of Christmas and other holidays, and I allowed as how her advanced age might have had her confused about what holiday we celebrate in December.  Ahhhhahahahahahahahaha!!!

You see?  It's the gift that keeps on giving.  Don't you wish you lived closer so you could be my in-person friend?

Edited to add this picture Sue took with the self timer on her camera.  That's Sue on the left.  I don't know who that other woman is.

We saw the most interesting things on our walk today too.  We found a crawdad in the middle of the trail and quite some distance from the creek.  Sue was very brave and picked him up and returned him to the water.  Also, we saw a great blue heron and some ducks who were sure if they could just get close enough to us, we might have some potato chips or other junk food for them.  In addition to the new trees the beavers had chopped down, we believe we found their dam.  Sue wanted to see it up close, and in her quest to get ever closer to the creek, she slipped and fell in the mud.  It wasn't a good morning for Sue.  Sue, if you're reading this, you know I love you, my dear friend.

So it seems this Christmas has been more hectic than others in recent years.  Maybe I'm just trying to do more.  I've done a lot of cooking and baking, and having Matthew with us for nearly 10 days no doubt had me distracted (although I treasured the time he was with us).  I haven't had any time to sew for the last three days.  I have been keeping up my embroidery, however.

I finished the stitcheries for the first block of the Gardner's Journal quilt.

These will all be pieced into a scrappy block.  That will have to wait, however.  I want to finish up some other things first.

With those finished, I traced out the next block for the Love Me, Love My Cat quilt.  Now this one seems especially appropriate for our household.

This is the 7th of 8 embroidered blocks.  There are four sawtooth stars to make after that and then I'll be ready to sew this quilt together.  I can add it to the other two quilts that are waiting to be sewn together.  And when those are all sewn together, I can add them to the two quilts that are waiting to be quilted.  Oy.  I'm trying to decide whether to quilt the quilts that need quilting, or whether to sew together the ones that are ready to be sewn together.  

Which would you do first?

Edited to say that I'm linking up to a new-to-me linky party at: