Four Fat Friends

 You may have guessed from the blogging from the phone thing, that I was away from the computer. The dude and I had a quick trip to New York. He went to see a match in the World Chess Championship. (I went shopping that day.) On Saturday we went to the Met. All.day.long. It was awesome!

After dinner, I put my feet up and stitched, I worked on this freebie from Drawn Thread, Four Fat Friends. I started this for Debbie's Ultimate Crazy January Challenge in 2015, and I don't think I've shown it to you since then, though I have indeed worked on it. The branches are growing!

Days 13 & 14

I think I'm going to have to start recording my new starts in my paper diary because of the whole lack of blogging. Projects I've started are piling up, and I can't remember which day I started which. Also I just pulled out the four projects I have in my bag, thought to myself "Tuesday Drawn Threads, Wednesday Love Bird, Thursday Mill Hill, and Friday Vermont" and wheeled myself back over to the computer and could only remember that I started the Drawn Thread on Tuesday. I have got to work on my memory. I used to have a dazzling one. On Tuesday, I started Drawn Thread's Four Fat Friends freebie. I think I may have kitted this up for some of my stitching buddies, who I hope don't think I just called them fat! Anyway, I have had this kitted up for ages and have finally started it. I am stitching with the called-for colors on a random piece of fabric.

On Wednesday, I had a meeting that ran much longer than I expected, and then I had to walk the dog. I was literally sitting on the edge of my bed putting in a few stitches before I turned in for the night. You can see why I am starting to find the pace a little hectic. And this is even after I prepared all my kits last month! I fell in love with this bird when I saw the wool version pinned on Pinterest. I spent a while tracking it down and even longer just waiting for the right time to start it. This project is being stitched with the suggested colors and fabric.

New Year's Day Flashback

Yesterday, I started--and finished!--my first project for Debbie's Ultimate Crazy January Challenge, in memory of our friend Debbie. That makes two finishes yesterday! This is Bee Keeper, a freebie from Drawn Thread. Indeed it is very small, but they say you should "start as you mean to go on" and I do want to finish more things this year, so I thought it couldn't hurt to start small!

I started another new project, but I am going to keep working on it today since we have a friend coming over for dinner and I've been cleaning all day. (Must call cleaners!) I'll show you that new start tomorrow.

 I did promise also to share with you some interesting nineteenth century ideas about the new year. We were perhaps wondering where all the presents were on Christmas...but we find them instead on New Year's Day.

On New Year's Day not only the children, but ladies, young and old, receive presents, not only from their relatives and friends, but from all their acquaintances. And these presents are not merely fanciful trifles, but articles proportioned to the wealth, refinement and taste of the persons who receive them. They vary from Brussels' lace and Cashmere shawls to a simple but elegant bonbonniere--a beautiful paper box, filled with sugar plums. "That is a matter of a few cents," think some of my readers; but they are mistaken. They cannot buy a decent thing of the kind under a Napoleon--and some costs as high as a hundred francs... 

The day is nevertheless a great gala, and serves to rekindle many a feeling that lay dormant during the year, and would have died entirely but for their resurrection le jour de l'an. Friends and acquaintances remember each other, and shake hands; women are pleased to look with complaisance on those who make them presents and men are made aware, (if they forgot it during the year,) that women are dear creatures, who expect to be made happy at our hands...The French, like all southern people, are eminently a people of the senses; their impressions are vivid, and received directly from nature or the things that immediately surround them, without passing through the magnifying lens of the imagination. The northern people of Europe may keep Christmas eve, and feast the living and the dead; the French have "a happy New Year." They express their wishes to each other in direct language, shake hands, kiss, embrace, and make merry for the rest of the evening.  "Christmas and New Year in France and Germany," Francis J. Grund. Godeys' Magazine and Lady's Book. January 1848; 36 p 8

Still No Finishing

Last night I had important socializing to do. Do you ever wonder why you so rarely read about me socializing? It's because I just moved 3000 miles, and I have no friends! So when I get a chance to make new friends, I jump at it.

Still, on the commute, I finished this little fob that I started when I went to the stitching weekend in Maine...with my friends. The days get shorter, and the photos get crappier.

Drawn Thread
Pumpkin Keeper

unknown 30+ ct fabric
DMC floss, with substitutions for the pumpkin and the flowers