Not looking back!

Last day of the year. I am ending this year with another cold and body-wrecking coughs. Ugh. A fitting ending of a very emotionally hard year. I am immensely glad to finally have gotten a job after 23 months of unemployment. So instead of ending the year with a look back on the last year (no thanks!) I decided to look forward. Here is my list of to-do's:)

Great hopes to get this handquilted - at least started.

Belated Christmas gift for my sister-in-law.

Charleston for my friend in US needs to be quilted, soon.

Another belated Christmas gift that needs to be quilted soon.

This is one of my dreams now that the Dear Jane is almost done. The Civil War Bride Quilt. Isn't it amazing? I bought the pattern from Threadbear and I keep following this blog to get inspired. I struggle with finding the fabric, though. Not sure how I want it to look. That was what took me the longest with DJ, too, finding out what look I wanted. But that is half of the fun, too! Other than that, all these baby quilts - and more - needs to be quilted.

Happy New Year.

All I want for Christmas...

is warmer weather. It has been cold!!!! Icy cold! Car-wont-start-even-in-the-garage-cold!
Anyway..... can't do much about the cold. Christmas eve and gift giving is over. We celebrate Christmas eve. I have never understood that need to celebrate it Christmas morning. The story says he was born at night, with stars out and so on. Why would you celebrate the day after?

Now I can show some of the gifts I made and gave away at least. The rest will have to come later. My niece, the one who wanted a quilt with pictures, embroidery, buttons, sequins, lace and everything else, please! - had seen some of my Bareroots pictures I had made for other people, and told me she wanted something like that. With quotes. Please.
So I took one from Bareroots,

and another patterns I bought years ago,

and then made an original because I haven't found anyone else stitching it. This last one is a quote from Christopher Robin to Winnie the Pooh, and I thought about my niece the minute I read it. She struggled with school for years, suffered from depression and thought herself stupid. Until she finally got a diagnose and the right medication at an age of 21, started nursing school and received top grades since. She still think of herself as stupid. How hard it is for us to get rid of those negative thoughts we have about ourselves. I hope some of these words will help her in her daily struggle.

And then I knitted a couple of pairs of these. God jul - Merry Christmas.

Light is coming!

It might not seem it at the moment, but tonight is wintersolstice (23:38 tonight) and the days will gradually become longer and longer. Oh, how I long for it to be still light when I get home from work!
In the meantime - full moon (I can feel my teeff lengthen.....)

Christmas lights downtown Oslo

and on the castle.

If Christmas wasn't a holiday in December, we Norwegian would have found something else to celebrate with lights galore, because this month is one of the darkest of the year even for us in the eastern part of Norway. We still have daylight a few hours a day, up north they haven't seen the sun for months!

This country is for specially interested - at times....

Flimsies!!

I like that word - flimsies:)

I have finished the Charleston flimsy!
And the Zenquility flimsy.

Now for the quilting....

Getting there

I realise I haven't shared a lot of my quilting lately. Mostly because I have been working again! Though I love to have a job again, after 23 months of unemployment, I feel it is encroaching into my creative time at home. Add to that the fact that we only have daylight from 10 am until 3 pm every day... I find it is harder for me to sit down by the sewing machine when I get home at 6 pm and it is pitch dark outside. So machine sewing is delegated to weekends and knitting and handsewing done on weekdays.

Biggest problem - get done before Christmas!!!

This weekend I worked on Charleston, a quilt I am sewing for a friend. She bought the fabric and my gift is to make it for her. It will not reach her in time for Christmas, but hopefully not too far into the new year.
Only the border missing now. And the quilting of course..... Sigh.

Red light... district?

Having a star in your window is the first step to Christmas in Norway. It is supposed to depict the star that the three wise men followed to Bethlehem. For four weeks we celebrate Advent, the waiting period, by having the star in the window and by lighting purple candles each Sunday until Christmas eve.
I got a new star this year. Beautiful dark red. What I did not take into account is that the redness of the star bleeds into the rest of the room. I feel I am living in a red light district.... not quite appropriate for a countdown to Christmas, I can't help feel....

Still.... I like it:)