Winter Begins!

Good morning, my friends. We're counting down the days until D-Day, one week from today. This coming week is going to be very busy. Happily, we'll get a break when we join the rest of the family for Christmas Eve dinner at Erik and Mae's house. I offered to bring something, but I'm told they have it handled. There's still a little bit of Christmas baking on my list. Aside from that, my holiday cooking responsibilities are complete. 

My yesterday started with Tiny Treasure #32. This one has stem stitch and straight stitch.

Next on my sewing to-do list was to sew the binding on "S" is for Sew. Sadie helped with the machine sewing. She really likes this quilt.

With her help, that was a pretty quick job.

When I took it upstairs, I found Smitty guarding the territory, watching for any invading forces.

Eventually, he decided the coast was clear, and so he took a more paws-on approach to helping me with the quilt binding.

Of course, any job worth doing when you're on a purrtection detail is best done undercover.

With him ensuring my safe sewing experience, I was able to finish all four corners of that binding in record time.

Then I had myself a finished quilt. It finishes up at 27 inches square.

Here's how it looks from the back.

With one week left at home, I can probably finish one more little quilt. I took a look at My Embroidered Garden. It needs to be finished off, and then I can probably quilt and bind it before we leave. So I gazed around my sewing room and first laid eyes on this colorful piece cut from the edges of My Whimsical Quilt Garden. There is plenty of fabric for a border and a back for this piece. I could add a narrow stop border.

Also, I found a leftover end of a binding strip that might be long enough to finish this off.

I went pawing through my fat quarter bin to see if I had any more fabric in that same color, and I noticed this fabric. This is kind of fun. I could do a narrow border, then a solid in some coordinating color, and then finish it using this fabric as a binding. That could be kind of fun. 

I'm leaning toward the first choice, but I haven't made up my mind yet.

So, as I mentioned in yesterday's post, I'm ticking off tasks I need to complete to be ready to go on D-Day. Yesterday I made up a bunch of lists: one for clothing, one for food, one for sewing stuff, and one for general stuff. I'll probably take my lists out to the RV this morning and figure out what's there and what still needs to be packed. Except for that, there are no trip preparation tasks on today's list, but I do have one housekeeping chore to do. At some point, I'm going to need to do laundry. I'm trying to put that off until the last minute, so I don't have to do it again before we go.

When I go downstairs, I expect to find this:

With the rainy weather, the kitties aren't getting a lot of outside time these days. They spend their time gazing out the window at the falling rain and puddles. And let me just ask you, is there anything worse than wet paws? If there is, I don't know what it is. Smitty complains loudly about the inconvenient environment in which he finds himself.

So I guess I'll go see if I can open any doors for anyone, and I'll get busy with the newest Tiny Treasure. There are just a few more to finish up this go-round for the Tiny Treasures. When they're finished, I'll start on one of the take-along projects I have packed up. There are several on my list. I might have to ask Mr. Random to help me decide.

Oh yes, and it's the Winter Solstice today! As I write this, the north pole has crossed then line over its maximum tilt away from the Sun. It's officially Winter, my friends. It's the shortest day of the year for us in the northern hemisphere. The days will get longer from here, and that's something worth celebrating.