Happy New Year!

Best wishes for wonderful things in 2018.  We would just settle for no more floods in our house......hopefully it will be a better year for us than 2017 was.

How many of you made it to midnight last night?  We didn't, we were in bed by then, but we did hear some loud bangs at what was probably midnight.  Perhaps someone had managed to get their hands on a couple of fireworks.

Something to report:  I have been sewing hexies!  Me!!  Who normally finds sewing hexies unutterably tedious!  Early last year the New South Wales state guild visited our town (they have an annual 'away' meeting, when they venture out of the Big Smoke and dip their toes into the country) and at the fun part of the meeting I was lucky enough to win one of the lucky door prizes, a kit for a large pin cushion complete with precut 2-1/2in squares, hexagon papers, and pattern.  First one makes two hexagon flowers each using 19 hexies, these become the top and bottom of the cushion; the rest is assembled by machine, so this part makes an easy project for stitching in front of TV.

 Hexies for the centre of one flower laid out but not joined, the outer ring fabrics will have a brown background.

While we were staying at our home-away-from-home I started cutting 3-1/2 in tumblers from 19th century reproduction fabrics for the next hand-pieced project.  Each fabric had a 3-1/2 in strip cut, then that was cut into tumblers; the number from each strip varied according to whether it was a fat eighth, fat quarter, skinny quarter, or larger piece.  There are 20 tumblers in a clip, so that makes 240 tumblers in this pic. 

There are also some warm gold fabrics to be cut, although they are not repros I think they will stop the quilt looking too dark and gloomy - some of those repros are dark, because fabrics way back then often were.  Once the hexies are done, the first stitches will be taken on this project. 

It will need a name......'Tumbling Tumbleweeds', perhaps?  Nearly all my quilts have musical names.  Drifting along with the tumbling tumbleweeds......

Forgot to say, the last block in my Flower Basket quilt is finished too!  It took months to do the last one; I was in no hurry, because once it was finished there would be no take-along portable project until another was prepared.  The first 24 blocks are packed in a box somewhere in the garage.  Still haven't decided if I will join them and have it quilted by a long armer, or quilt it as I go (can't say 'quilt as you go', because you're not doing it - I am) one block at a time myself.  It's quite large, it would cost a fair bit to have quilted, so perhaps I will Do It Myself.  Eventually.

We have had a fairly warm start to the new year, while over there in Canada if our son wasn't in hospital he would be freezing.  His poor partner certainly is; at least he has now been moved to a facility very close to where they live so she doesn't have to travel too far.  His operation went well, tumours were removed, bone was grafted from his hip to his hand.  I believe hip bone grafts are incredibly painful and he will require a lot of physiotherapy and rehabilitation.  Walking, even standing, was out of the question for several days.  He has lost his index finger; the alternative was to have it fused at a 90 degree angle to his hand which would make using the hand very difficult, so he and the doctors decided on amputation.  Fortunately it's his left hand, which isn't his dominant hand.

Canada is so very far away.......

"Be careful always to dry the hands thoroughly, and rub them briskly for some time afterward.  When this is not sufficiently attended to in cold weather, the hands chap and crack.  When this occurs, rub a few drops of honey over them when dry, or anoint them with cold cream or glycerine before going to bed."

Extreme cold is not good for one's skin whether on the hands or elsewhere, and right now Canada is extremely cold.  Record-breakingly cold.  Coldest temperatures for over 100 years cold.

Enjoy your days!