Trees, Tails, and Triangles

The third of the 12 Trees For Christmas was finished yesterday. This one was kind of fun.

The tree trunk and limbs are all stitched in a dark green chain stitch. The trunk chain was whipped on both sides with a lighter green, and then backstitched with a dark brown. The tree limbs were whipped just on the bottom side. The base of the tree was stem stitched, and then there was the red running stitch between the tree limbs. I used a cross-stitch needle to whip stitch the light green. It has a blunt tip, which makes it easier to get under the chain without catching bits of fabric.

These are the three trees I've finished so far.

Now I've traced out the fourth tree, and I'll get started on that today. It's pretty simple and straightforward. I don't think it will take long.

When I made my way into the sewing room, I finished off the second side border for Semper Fi. The 15 Friendship stars were finished the day before. I just needed to sew them together and then sew them to the quilt. It's getting so big now that I don't have a large enough space to lay it out for a picture. Thus, the really terrible picture you see below.

I probably won't take another picture of the whole quilt until it's finished, and I have my handy quilt holder-upper to help me get a better shot of it. It's going to take one of those shots where I set the camera on a tripod and use a remote shutter while Mike and I stand on chairs to hold the thing up.

From there, I got straight to work making the next round of half square triangles for the top border. I was very lucky to have my little cat nearby to create a little "cradle" for the half square triangles as I trimmed them.

We made a game of it with him swishing his tail into the danger zone while I tried to miss getting his tail under the rotary cutter.

By the time I needed to leave to pick-up the CSA share, they were all trimmed and ready to go.

Now I have all the sections laid out for the next side of the border. Today I'll be making 14 more Friendship stars, and then there will be just 13 left to do. I'm starting to see the starlight at the end of this tunnel.

There was really no rush to finish it since I'd ordered another yard of the fabric below to finish off the 15th and final border. It arrived yesterday, and so now, the race really is on. Not that there's any race. No. No race. None at all. Sometimes I have to keep reminding myself.

So here's something. Himself deigned to climb onto his window perch all by himself last night.

Finding it acceptable, he settled in for a long winter's nap. He stayed there for several hours.

Feeling energized by this, Mike and I went out again to look at the options in the RV, and there aren't many. The plan is to put it in this corner where the couch is. You can see that the lower portion of the window there has some screens, and so the suction cups have to go above that. It doesn't leave enough room for the supporting cables to attach to the window above. Instead, we'll attach some eye bolts to the bottom of that cabinet and hang the cables from those. (By "we'll" of course, I mean "he'll".)

We weren't going to get another one for Sadie until we saw how willing Smitty would be to share with her. (Sometimes the cat can be very territorial.) But then an ordering snafu from Amazon meant we got another one whether we wanted it or not. No matter. There are two sides to the couch and so we can put another one on the other side.

In the image below you can see the window where the catio goes. You can also see the "cold screen" hanging out from below the window shade. Mike is going to do something fancier there before we head south. He has a good idea about this. More to follow.

Okay, so the fourth tree is waiting for me downstairs.

Best to get going on that right away. It's going to be a mostly sewing day. Our sunny weather seems to have come to an end. We might get a few more sunny days before the Big Dark sets in, but it's coming, my friends. Get ready.