January Wrap-ups

It's been a good month, but I can't pretend to enjoy January very much. The only thing good to come out of an otherwise gloomy, cold, bitter, unpredictable month was a baby born at the tail end of it back in 1978, and she was even supposed to be born in February.

I worked hard on my UFO yesterday. Besides the usual meaning, UFO means something unfinished to the crafty world. I've always thought Unfinished Object, but I'm sure it must have a cuter name. Anyway I finished the quilting on the Simplicity table topper and didn't much enjoy it because I was kind of in a hurry, but I nailed that border. Putting the border on a quilt is probably my favorite part of quilting, mainly because I learned from a wonderful quilter in Greensboro in my first quilting class and secondly because it means I'm finishing something! The mitered corners are fun to do (usually) but I was never happy with the way it looked when I joined the beginning and end of the binding. I found these instructions not too long ago here on Heather Bailey's blog and found the answer to a neat finish. With me, nothing is ever really neat, but it's sure an improvement. As I was basking in my beautiful neat (to me) borders, I decided to trim the seams a little. For some reason, all common sense left me, and I trimmed the corners, thinking they would be less bulky. Well, when I went to press and pin, I discovered those beautiful mitered corners were, well, just not there. Just gone. I stomped around a little and muttered about it but just went over and stitched them together, and they'll do but are just not as pretty. I've now taken it to my finisher (Mama) for the final stitching. This still counts as a finished UFO for me because the hard part is done. Mama just needed something to do today and asked if she could hand sew the border. No argument from me.

Back to the real world, I need to work 4 hours today, sometime. Tomorrow is Emily's birthday, and I want to find some pictures of her for my Jan. 31 post. I lost more pictures than I thought when my computer died, so I have to go looking through all those CDs I saved pictures on or scan some. I may not have one of her in the past year unless I can get her or Ryan to send me one. Probably not though. He is going to Warm Springs, her friend Meghan from Atlanta is going to meet them there, and then they're going back to Atlanta Saturday to spend some time with Meghan's parents and see a few more friends. What a nice birthday. I'll try not to worry too much about her being in Atlanta, but that's what mothers are for - and grandaddies!

Today was a another sort of milestone. I managed to get rid of my last Christmas stamp. Whoever opens the Wells Fargo and Dixie Electric envelopes should be cheered by those nutcrackers grinning at them, but I also used return address labels with bright yellow sunflowers, so that shows I'm looking ahead.