Christmas Is Not Over!!

I have wonderful friends, really sweet and generous friends.  Two of them - Kerri and Michelle sent me some fabulous presents last week.

Since Kerri's arrived first, let me start with hers.

A wonderful travel set sewn out of French General fabrics.  They are so beautiful.

So much effort and time went into making these - I am so thrilled to receive them.  They will be put to good use while we are over here.  Our next trip is scheduled for mid-February.  My DH has a business trip to Normandy for D-Day planning after which we will spend a few days in Paris where I am planning to visit the big needlework show Aiguille en Fete.  

Then I received my package from Michelle who stitched me the wonderful Workbasket freebie which was released at the last Nashville Market, which incidentally was the market Michelle and I attended to help Milday's Needle with her booth.  Michelle was so thoughtful to stitch this beautiful piece for me to as a momento of our trip together.  I just love it.

One of her joy birds also winged his way over here, and is currently guarding my dishes. 

She also sent a can of fabulous decaf expresso, since I love strong coffee and lamented months ago when I had to ditch caffeine, that I could not find any decaf expresso here - yes, Germany, the land of strong coffee, go figure.  Anyway, she remembered, and voila, right now I have fabulous expresso with frothed milk for breakfast - yum.  Thanks sweet friends for all you thoughtful and beautiful gifts.

I have made some progress on Ann.  Sorry for the photo, but its a foggy, rainy, dark and grey day here, so I had to use flash.

I have set her aside to work on a Merry Cox piece "Tend Thy Sheep" that is currently being run by the Shining Needle Society.  Its a fun piece, and I am just about done with the band, but  I need better light to photograph it - the pictures I took are horrible.  The next semi-sunny day I will snap some.

I am off to a quilting class tonight learning some more advanced quilting techniques.  Here are the batik fabrics I chose for the quilt - its a 4 week class, so it will be a bit before I have a completed quilt.  If you notice, its in my favorite colors - pink and green ( see Michelle's pretty pillow a few pics up)

I leave you with a few photos of our New Year's Day fun.

Olivia coming down the hill

Watch out dogs - Adam is about to wipe out!

Parental Units giving it a try - Mia is trying to catch up.

Until next time.

Sylvia