Happy New Year!

Happy New Year lovely friends. I hope you were able to ring in the new year in a fun way, and that you spent New Years Day doing things you'd like to do throughout the rest of the year. We had a very late night celebrating, and so slept in a bit late on January 1st, but I made sure to spend some time in the sewing room, some time tidying (don't want to be a lazy bones on the house front in the coming year) ... and honestly because I've slept since then, I can't remember anything about what I spent the rest of the day doing ... Oops!

Before I get busy sharing the (very little) stitching I've gotten done this week, I want to catch up some mail things. Late last year was hectic for a bit and I was pretty laxe responding to comments from lovely readers. Sorry about that. There were a couple that needed responses, and I had no way to contact the person that asked the question, so I'll endeavour to do that here:

On the checking things of the long list post, a reader (I think) named Alla asked about the tree skirt that I made and whether it was crazy patchwork. Your comment came to me as an anonymous one, and there was no email address supplied, so I couldn't get back to you. Anyway, thank you for the nice comments on my work, the tree skirt isn't crazy patchwork, I think it's probably just called 'patchwork' and then the patchwork top is quilted. Thank you for your interest!

Last week Terry commented asking about the rectangular placemats, thank you so much for your note. It didn't have an email address for me to contact you, but I'll be happy to send you the details. If you pop me an email, I'll be able to get that done for you.

Also, I am still having trouble leaving comments on some blogs, and I don't really know how to fix the problem, so to my lovely blogging friends, I'm so sorry I can't leave notes for you. Okay, I think that's the major part of email tidy up done for now. After I'm done here I should probably check to see that I haven't missed any that need moderation too!

In the sewing room, I didn't get much actual sewing done this week. I've been working in the evenings on a little hand quilting here and there, and even managed to get out to the border in a few areas:

I love hand quilting in quiet times. My stitches and marking aren't always even and perfect, but in the big scheme of the quilt, I love how it comes together in the end. This picture isn't where I'm working right now, but it was the last one in my camera and gives you an idea.

I've been working on some placemats too. It's so much fun to have a quick finish. I'll share more as I go along. I have some ideas about where I'm headed with these.

And a gratuitous Rowley pic - he's growing into be a big boy. But with that size is a gentle heart - he has a big bark, but I've never seen him be a grumpy dog - ever!

Today was a busy day, I took down all the Christmas decorations and dismantled the tree. And put all the Nutcrackers away for their eleven month slumber. The house always feels very bare once this is done, but I do like how clean and tidy it all feels. All that up and down, bending and stretching has me feeling really quite tired, so I won't be long out of bed tonight.

Last of all, I just wanted to mention one thing if you're still with me. I do tend to post pictures and a video here and there on Instagram a little more frequently, so if you're interested, follow the link at the top right of the page and follow me there. I know not everyone is into Instagram, and that's totally okay, I'll still be posting here. But I will say there is a wonderful quilting community there, and because it seems to be much faster to post on Insta, there is so much to see. 

And on that note, I'll end off here - hope you've had a lovely week, chatter soon! xox