My Valdani 3-strand Embroidery Floss

Yeah!!! My package from Valdani has finally arrived. I was so happy last week to find out that they have a designers program for people who publish patterns using their products, that I placed an order right away to get the complete set of colours in the embroidery floss. Their balls of 3 strand embroidery floss are AMAZING for doing punchneedle, and I have done a few designs using them which I have yet to publish. Now I have even more ideas for new designs! But their are two problems - how to store these little balls so they are organized and don't get all tangled up AND how to keep my cat away from them. Allie, our cat has already taken off with at least two of the balls (which I have found in weird places) so she has officially lost her pass into my sewing room. To solve the other problem I bought a tackle box!! It works great - and the best part is that there is room to spare!

Brrrr it's COLD!!

Well, I braved the cold this morning (20 below celsius) and went to the "Y" for Aquafit. It was wonderful to be in the pool with the sun coming in the windows, but it was quite a shock when I had to go outside again. I often say that I was born in the wrong country, because even though I LOVE being a Canadian, I HATE winter!!! Snow is nice to look at, but I hate being cold. Having the fire on and drinking hot chocolate is nice, but I'd rather be floating around in our backyard swimming pool.

That being said, my kids LOVE the snow and, to make them happy, I did consent to go sledding at a nearby hill with some friends over the Christmas Holidays. I've adding a little slideshow here as proof that I actually did go outside!!

Finding time to work

I left the house this morning at 8:30 to go to aquafit with Nellie and Dyane, had errands to do and groceries to buy, so now, 5 hours later, I am finally sitting down to do some work. Nellie and I have LOTS of quilts made that we will be publishing as patterns, we just have to do the actually "writing" (which is way less fun than the designing and sewing - but necessary). So this afternoon I am planning to do some work on our Barnyard Boogie pattern. Here is a picture of Nellie and I with Barnyard Boogie and our viewer's choice ribbon that it won at our guild show last June.

Spending time with my Fibre Friends

Since January first, we have had a huge snowstorm, above average temperatures, a windstorm (that snapped my little pear tree in half and stripped off many of our shingles), power outages, a small flood in our basement and today, freezing rain that cancelled the school buses! So it was very nice to be able to take my two boys, Aidan who is 9 and Carson who is 6, to their Nana's house for the day so that I could spend the morning at our local quilt shop and the afternoon with my Fibre Friends Quilt group. Today our group met at Cheryl Swanson's house where we had a lovely lunch and did our Christmas quilt fabric exchange. We have been doing this exchange for 5 years, and every year I have received a beautiful quilt made by one of my friends using fabrics that I picked out. I am already inspired by the fabrics that I received today in that little paper bag - I can't wait to start - I only have 11 months to figure it out! I have posted some pictures of the quilts I have made over the past 5 years.

Welcome to my blog

Now that the holidays are over, it's time to get back to work. Monday, after going to aquafit at our local YMCA, Nellie Holmes and I spent the day doing some writing work for Camelot Cottons. Their fabrics are very cute, and over the past 6 months we have designed some quilts for them to use as free downloadable patterns on their website. They were so impressed by the quality of our written directions, that they have hired us to write up patterns for quilts that other designers have made. Although this is not as much fun as designing and sewing the quilts ourselves, I'm sure it will be a good learning experience for us.