Ornaments finished

It has rained and snowed and iced. Mostly rain and ice. The kids still had school - except for the sniffly one. But yesterday and today were pretty productive.

I ended up finishing my Golfing Chick as an ornament as well as the 'Chris' name tree. They both came out pretty well. Lacing is not fun on funny shapes.

My younger boy has asked for a knitted afghan for Christmas. Here's my start on block number 2 of the Great American Afan Afghan. I finished block 1 last week but I really don't like it at all. Its not like I have tons of time before Christmas, but I won't be using my first block unless it becomes absolutely necessary (and it probably will).

Also, I finally found a way to finish the ends of my braid so that they don't look crummy and they don't continue to unravel. Remembering back to my mother's macrame planters and such, they usually had this knot at the top where all of the cords were wrapped. I tried this on the ends of the cut braids with Kreinik braid and it worked out pretty well. I can't seem to get a good picture of them. It kind of looks like a sparkly version of the doodads on the end of shoelaces.

Christmas Biscornu

As part of my Christmas ornament stitching, I started on Just Nan's Christmas Biscornu design. The embellishment pack for this design has a whole lot of beads - certainly more than I expected. This will be quite sparkly. I still have some smyrnas to do and all of the beading on the trees side - then I'll start on the Snowflakes side. It stitches up pretty quickly. We have this design and Just Nan's other new Christmas designs available at Needlearts Gallery.

A quick note about the Mirabilia design, Seaside Kingdom. Silkweaver has, in the past, dyed an opalescent fabric just for this design - sand colored on the bottom and sky colored on the top. I understand from Tracy at Silkweaver that they will have more of this fabric soon - so if you've been waiting for it, keep an eye out on their site. The Seaside Kingdom design has been discontinued but we still have a couple of charts available. We don't have this design on the Mirabilia page of the site since we can't order more, but you can send us your request if you are looking for this chart and we'll be happy to help while we still have some.

Its finally cooling off here and feels more like fall. And its rainy too. Tomorrow will be a good day to make a nice soup and some hearty bread. I love sweater weather!