Winter Stitching and other Happenings

I've been as busy in the sewing room this month as an active puppy will allow me to be! Never a dull moment around here. I've begun cutting out all the pieces for "Stars and Snowflakes" by Wendy Sheppard. 

The trial block is shown here, under construction. I hope to have this all cut and prepped to take along for stitching together at an upcoming weekend retreat. While preparing all the pieces for this one I managed to finally gather enough folded triangle leftovers to constitute a 9" block. I can't throw any of these triangles away, even the 1.5" itty-bitties! 

Yet one more block for the bulging, overflowing, orphan block bin. I need to get all of these blocks out and stitch them together soon! Something I keep telling myself. 

This donation quilt for a child received a mini Cloud Stipple quilting design to bring it to life. It's really sweet with the small character panels, and quilted up quickly; I really loved working on it. 

Augie has become quite the little sewing room companion. He sits in my chair with me whenever he can. 

He also has his bed and toys in here, which helps when I'm at the longarm! 

He's grown quite a bit in the past 6.5 weeks!

He thinks that his job is to prune all of our houseplants! The training is going okay; he's slowly learning. We didn't attend puppy class this past week due to a reported case of Giardia; I didn't think it was worth it to risk him being exposed, just in case. So, he's learning new things as a home schooler right now; first lesson: time out for tearing up plants! That's a tough one!

Speaking of plants; this beauty, an Amaryllis bulb Christmas gift, is putting on a show in the kitchen right now... 

... while these forced forsythia branches are brightening up the family room! A harbinger of things to come!

Our youngest grandchild finally had her "official" birthday celebration last week. 

They're all double-digits now. Sigh. I'd better hang on to our Augie baby as long as I can! 😉

Life is Good!

New Year, New Goals, New Milestones!

Happy New Year! I've given up on any guiding words or resolutions for 2023; I decided that I didn't want to set myself up for any disappointments or failure in that arena. Instead I have set some goals, both short and long term.  With an active, growing puppy in the house, it seems right to set the biggest long term goal for this year as one that sees Augie growing into a well behaved and obedient companion. With a LOT of patience and firm, consistent, training we should be able to accomplish that nicely. He's already been training us, now it's going to be his turn. He begins classes in Puppy Manners and Socialization in a week and a half.  The plan is for him to graduate into basic obedience classes after that, as the year progresses. I've begun having him sit with me at the sewing machine. He's fine with that as he has quickly become my little shadow and enjoys being wherever I am. Even in the chair while piecing!

Leash training has been seeing good progress, he's less interested in biting the leash now and understands the concept of walking while tethered. One step at a time. 

Mr. G celebrated a milestone birthday during the "in between" week of Christmas and New Year's day. We were discussing this week how when we were in high school we were all  reading George Orwell's 1984 in English class. Politics of that science fiction book aside, we thought that sounded like such an outlandishly futuristic date at the time! Now here we both are, all these many years later, celebrating birthday milestones we couldn't even imagine back then, and ringing in a New Year that we would have only laughed about back in 1970!

I did accomplish a small quilting goal last week; another donation quilt pieced by the mother of a friend, for our son-to-be Quilt Ministry closet at church. "Popcorn" pantograph by Willowleaf Studios; it's one of my "go-to"s and never disappoints on any straight/angular patterns, I believe it is a nice combination for quilt tops pieced that way. I have another on the frame right now; one more small, achievable, goal. 

One more goal: I am looking forward to becoming much more

 blog-active again this year. 

In the meantime, I have my hands full. 

❤

You know, it's referred to a "puppy love" for a reason. 

Happy New Year!

Life is Good!

Meeting New Friends

As you know from the last post, we have a new family member, Augie. Nothing else has quite the power to connect with people of all ages than a new puppy. Augie's been on a "getting to know you" tour over these last few days and making friends of everyone he meets. It's absolutely exhausting being that cute! 

The very best part of introducing him around has been the happy reaction of our grandchildren. Here are the Capital City two learning about little Augie via Face Time:

And here are Gregory and Lynnleigh being surprised to be greeted by a puppy at our house!

  Augie is a nine week old miniature dachshund, he has silky long hair, is one of a litter of five, weighs 2.6 lbs. and, as you can see, is settling in around here quite nicely! We're endeavoring to crate train him. That's taking time, lots of patience, and occasionally turning a deaf ear to his pititful cries; that's, by far, the hardest part. But, every once in a while, he will sneak into his crate on his own now to grab a quick nap. We leave the door open so that he can come and go and we're counting this as a huge success! 

It's hard work, but he's decided that we're trainable!

You can expect more Augie posts to be sure, 

I hope to get back to quilting one day soon!

Life is Good!