A Very Merry Christmas

Between my cold and Christmas I haven't been at the computer very often lately. But we had a very merry Christmas indeed, in spite of my cold. And I'm almost over it now. :- )

DH loved his new quilt.

There's no way I could photograph it to show you the quilting. It's black on black most of the time. Besides, I can hardly get it away from him! Suffice to say that it was well done and perfect for the quilt.

Reilly was happy with what he found in his stocking.

I was THRILLED with what was under the tree for me! This was a complete surprise:

But I knew this box of fabric would be there. ;- )

Chaos reigned when the younger generation made their appearance.

But they seemed to enjoy their gifts too.

Another gift that was sort of under the tree (there were a few packages that wouldn't fit!) was a new light fixture for our dining room. DH is off of work this week so he hung the new fixture and we tweaked the arrangement of things in the dining room. The kitchen may be next since they are adjoining rooms, only separated by a peninsula counter. Long-time readers may remember that at the beginning of this year I had my eye on the smallest bedroom of the house, thinking I would turn it into a sitting room. That has not happened and probably won't in the near future. But the changes we made in the dining room may make it possible for me to use it as my "studio annex" from time to time. I'm hopeful. It would be so much easier to get pastel chalk dust off that hard surface floor than out of the carpet in my Nest.

I have a few goodies to share with you that I completed before Christmas. Stay tuned!

Merry Christmas From the Magpie's Nest

I haven't been at the computer much this week. Been busy helping Santa put the finishing touches on Christmas for the granddaughters. Apparently I've also been coming down with a cold, courtesy of my husband and/or son. I don't have a lot of energy at the moment but I wanted to be sure to send heart-felt wishes to all my cyber friends for a warm, loving, and joyful Christmas.

Reilly is a little confused about which tree his presents will be under ;- )

I hope all your wishes come true!

A Couple of Quick Projects

A Creative Dreamer's challenge for the month of December is "Home." I'm not sure anything could be more appropriate! As usual, at first I was flabbergasted at the range of possibilities, especially since there are no rules as to how we interpret the challenge. It didn't take long for me to think of the orphan house blocks in my stash however. There aren't a lot left at this point but there were a couple that I had designed and sewn up several years ago. One seemed particularly suited to this challenge. All I had to do was add a bit of landscaping.

There's something magical about the twilight hour, that brief space of time when day and night co-exist. Lights come on in houses, giving them a warm and cozy appearance from outside.

Around here at this time of the year the trumpeter swans are making their commute from the farm fields where they've been feeding during the day to wherever it is they spend the nights. It's a special joy for me to hear them as they pass overhead. They may have been the inspiration for the title of this Priority Quilt for the Alzheimer's Art Quilt Initiative: "Coming Home to Roost."

I was tempted to add some beads for sparkle in the night sky. I decided to keep it simple this time around though. Instead I used chalk pastels to create smoke coming out of the chimney and a bit of Micron pen ink to add a nest in the tree.

This quilt has already received its' registration number, 6280, and with any kind of luck will be on its' way to AAQI's quilt processing facility tomorrow. ;- )

When I could no longer go to the beauty school to get my hair cut every 6-8 weeks I found a gal who makes house calls. She's very diligent about coming over as scent-free as she can manage. I made her a pair of potholders this week to show my appreciation.

There are a couple more little projects I'd like to get finished before the end of the year. I may get a burst of creativity after Christmas and get a back made for my "Play Group" friendship quilt but right now I'm not feelin' it. I may have to spend some time playing in my scraps or with orphan blocks while everyone else is away at Christmas parties...

I've Been Here Before

Regular readers may have noticed that every once in a while I seem to drop out of Blog Land. This was one of those weeks. Part of it was holiday madness, but only a very small part. Most of it was due to my chronic health issues. They can be such a drag sometimes. Today I finally had to bite the bullet and tell our newspaper to stop delivery. I wish I could convey what a blow this is for me. It's like losing yet another battle in a long drawn-out war. I can read the paper online but I'll miss the color and the advertising supplements and just everything about a physical newspaper (except maybe the ink coming off on my hands). It's been about a month since I realized that by skipping the morning paper in its' physical form I could also skip the daily morning headache. {sigh}

Since "Monkeyshines" there has been another finish but I'm not going to show or talk about it yet because it's a Christmas surprise. Well, I will say that it was not part of my New Year's Eve UFO challenge. As far as the two remaining items on my UFO list are concerned, I'm not thinking about them this week. They may or may not get done before the new year makes its' debut; at this point I don't really care.

With the exception of that one finish for Christmas there hasn't been a lot going on in the Magpie's Nest. I finally got disgusted with the drawer overflowing with scraps of batting. I took out the pieces that were suspect of having polyester content and cut them into narrow strips, essentially shredding them. That didn't take long and before I knew it I was pulling out and cutting up the skinniest strips of cotton batting too. This is what I ended up with:

I'm thinking that eventually I will piece together some of those crumb/liberated log cabin blocks that are piling up and make at least one dog bed, using the shredded batting as filler.

I do have something I haven't shared previously that might make it worth your while to have stopped by today. I've been catching up on my Bead Journal Project for this year. Back in May I was thinking about the cycles of creativity we all go through. I cut my diamond shape, layered it with a piece of cotton batting, and seed stitched all over it with embroidery floss. My goal as I was stitching was to create bands of color to represent the various levels of creativity or inspiration we experience. It may not show well in the pictures but I used magenta, navy blue, sky blue, yellow, and Kelly green. Once I had that step done I set the ornament aside and didn't touch it again until last month. I knew what I wanted to do but wasn't quite sure how to go about it. Then I had that influx of beads and sequins when our local store closed its' doors. That was enough to get the juices flowing again.
. I knew I wanted a representation of the spiral path Julia Cameron talks about in The Artist's Way. It was just a matter of finding the right beads or sequins to create the path. Back in May I was thinking about couching a line of seed beads or back stitching some other small bead in a spiral. Apparently that was too daunting. In November these flat sequins came into my hands and seemed the perfect solution.

I changed out the color of the seed beads I used to tack the sequins down as I worked through the bands of embroidery. The white heart is the pinnacle of our journey up the mountain. As we walk the path we slowly climb the Mountain of Enlightenment. We pass the same "scenery" with each circuit but hopefully at a higher level of understanding each time.

I have yet to mount this ornament on the watercolor paper backing I've been using. There are two other ornaments at this same stage of completion. I'll have to show them to you soon. :- )

More Sunshine!

Woohoo! Did you see Michele's comment on my Monkeyshines post? Quilters have made a real difference in the fight to fend off Alzheimer's disease. My brain is a little muddled from a toxic exposure this morning but my interpretation is that the $30,000 that was raised from our little quilts was given to researchers at the University of Michigan. To quote Michele:

Because of our funding, Dr Lim and her team were able to create new
molecular tools that show promise for cleansing the brain of amyloid plaques.
These plaques, a hallmark of Alzheimer’s disease, are clumps of misfolded
proteins thought to cause cell death leading to devastating memory loss and
cognitive decline. Finding ways to cross through the blood brain barrier is
something I have been reading about for years and here this team has worked out
a means and a method that might significantly alter Alzheimer's research from
now on!

I couldn't be happier that I have in some small way helped contribute to this breakthrough. And now I want to go make another Priority Quilt!

I just found the AAQI blog post telling the good news. Go check it out HERE. Hooray!!!