Card Trick

As I sit down to write this it's about five in the morning. It's unusual for me to be up at this hour. For whatever reason, I woke up at 3:30 and haven't been able to get back to sleep. I'll surely need a nap later today!

When the after-effects of the exposure finally wore off yesterday I was able to finish those Christmas stocking ornaments I showed you a few days ago (last week?). I'm pretty happy with the way they turned out:


DD and her daughters are scheduled to come over today for a Christmas photo shoot. DH will transform the living room into a photography studio, probably using the sheet off our bed as a backdrop. It would be nice to have a decorated tree in the background but we don't have ours yet. Depending on how the photo shoot goes maybe we'll go out and get one afterward and DD and the girls can help us decorate it. Oh wait, I forgot. By then I'll be needing that nap!


I believe I only have one Christmas gift left to make for extended family members. This one was optional but I think I'm going to go ahead and give it a try. It will be sort of a practice run for a challenge I'm participating in with fiber artist friends in the area. The challenge involves embellishing a pre-constructed tote bag. This gift will be another of those tote bags, embellished for my aunt instead of with the challenge fabric and requirements. We'll see how it goes.

Speaking of challenges, I've committed to participating in Sharon B's "Take It Further" monthly challenge for 2008. Essentially, Sharon will post a key concept on the first of each month and the challenge will be to take the idea, develop it, and push it towards a resolved design during the month. To quote Sharon, "The actual thing you design can be any thing you like in any medium or format you choose. It can be a crazy quilt block, a postcard, a journal quilt, a piece of embroidery, a sampler, a fabric book page or whatever sparks your imagination. It can also be visual journal work. In other words pages spreads of designs worked in a visual journal will be seen as a valid entry and included as one of the formats acceptable for the challenge." I don't have a clue at this point what format I will use. I probably won't be able to make that decision until I see what the first challenge actually is. If you're intrigued by this or just want more details, click on the link above to be taken directly to the page where she introduces the challenge.