Wool on Sunday...

My Wool on Sunday post this week is about my new ( and very appropriate for me!) Christmas ornament  that my friend De made me. De was my Secret Santa at the Sunday Stitchers Christmas party last Sunday. 

It just so happens that I was taking random photos of Sandi, who had stepped up for the role of Santa's helper at present unwrapping time...and she was actually carrying my gift at the time.

And here it is and I love it!!

De has wound yarn over a styrofoam ball and made knitting needles from skewers cut to size, with beads glued on the end and then sprayed. Such a thoughtful gift. 

Our Secret Santa gifts this year at SS were an ornament ( which could either be handmade or purchased), and a bag. This is the gorgeous bag that De made for me...

So now a little bit more about our final gathering for 2016...

Setting up the room. As you can see in the photo a lot of the ladies brought along Christmassy themed projects to decorate the room. It gave the room such a lovely 'feel'.

Gifts too of course...this is my 'haul' from the other ladies...noting this doesn't include the Secret Santa gifts!! 

 The Birthday girls...each month those who have celebrated a birthday receive a fat quarter from everyone. Last Sunday we had both November and December birthdays. 

After the birthday parcels were unwrapped, the Secret Santa gifts were put on that small table ready for distribution after lunch.

Mentioning lunch...this year we used some of the money in 'the kitty' to have lunch catered by the local IGA. It was a lovely lunch but I only remembered to  take a photo after we'd filled our plates...

And what is Christmas party lunch without bonbons and paper hats! 😉

And these wonderful friends of mine also have been very generous to the less fortunate in the community. Last month they collected and donated sweets for K4BN's mini Christmas stockings project and again this month, I was given some more lollies. And 2 of the ladies had also made some mini stockings! These, plus some stockings knitted by a friend at Sisters of Stitch, meant that K4BN received 76 filled stockings on Monday. 

Linking with Janine over at the Rainbow Hare blog for Wool on Sunday. Janine has knitted a beautiful jumper but unfortunately one of her 'nearest and dearest' has made the following comment which I don't agree with by the way...“That is horrific! It’s the worst Christmas jumper I’ve ever seen!” 
 

Not Surfing USA but Shopping USA!

I know some readers are wondering about what items piqued our interest enough to part with some money and actually buy things on our recent trip.

I've already shown a few items such as the little souvenirs I bought for our great nieces, the rubber ducks, T shirt and socks that I brought back for DD1 and her housemate, and some yarns that I bought as gifts in Alaska and a very expensive skein of yarn I bought in Seattle. 

In the Disney Theatre Gift Shop in LA I fell in love with...and bought this ( rather expensive) owl puppet for my DD2's birthday. That birthday is been and gone so I can now show this puppet...she loves owls and she loved this puppet!

I did play with this puppet to make sure the eyes did blink and the head swiveled like the label said! Lol

At the same gift shop I bought 2 of these G clef pencils; one for my neighbour's grandson who plays the violin, and this one for me!

I visited a number of quilt shops during the 5 weeks but only bought a modest ( well I think it's a modest 'haul'! lol) number of purchases and I was fine with that. I bought a number of children's novelty prints with Eye Spy quilts in mind...

I bought this bundle of US sized fat quarters of 'Alaskan themed', fabrics for DsD1 in Juneau. (hmm photos from One Drive seem to have minds of their own!)

Here are a few other items I bought...lots of socks for gifts...I think though that perhaps I will keep these 3 pairs?  :-)

These 2 pairs were for DD2 (the owls) and her partner who is a carpenter.

A few cards of buttons like these from Skagway...

I bought 3 skeins of yarn to keep, like this one from Skagway..

A number of Christmas decorations like these 3...

In Britex in San Francisco, I bought some Solvy to experiment with  printing stitching designs on the sheets of this stabilizer instead of tracing...this technique was explained here on the Wild Olive blog. (This product is a lot cheaper in the U.S.)

Some children's books from Munro's Bookstore in Victoria BC...

 DsD3 had told me about this book...it's rather lovely.  

DH bought  T shirts for the 'partners' of 4 of our girls and one for his brother. He also bought some knick knacks for his golfing buddies. He bought shorts in Old Navy and Macy's but I didn't bother with any clothes buying as I had had a bit of a spend up at Black Pepper before we left for our holiday!

But DH and souvenir T Shirts...he loves them! And he had fun adding to his collection. To fill up the collage grid, I included a jacket bought in Alaska and some souvenir caps that DH bought. Also the 'cat' Tshirt in the top right hand of the first collage, is a T shirt DH bought for me :-)...the rest are for him...the gifts to the 'boys' are not in the collage.

  It's a lot of T shirts!

Friday Night with Friends...

The first Friday night of the month in Blogland, is Friday Night with Friends (FNwF) . As the night rolls on through the various time zones, 'crafty' bloggers work on their individual projects, then share on their blog the progress on the various projects. Cheryll over at the Gone Stitchin' blog, is the organiser of this event and in this post of hers you can access the links to all those who signed on for this month.

So, what did I work on? Since I came back from our holiday I have alternated between sewing hexie flowers, and, joining donated squares into blankets. (Just before we went away I was given several lots of squares from a few sources but left the joining of them until we came home.)

And it was the latter that I worked on last night. 

I finished putting together 30 squares which used indigenous colours. One of the other ladies in K4BN had crocheted the squares for me to join, as items in indigenous colours are very popular and are so often requested by community groups that the group supplies items to, for distribution to their clients.

On Tuesday at a Knit and Natter, I was shown another way to join squares which is quicker and uses less joining yarn. 

Instead of the dc (or sc in US terms) into each space like I usually do...

I was shown this method that does, 1 dc, 3ch and then 1 dc in the space after the cluster of trebles. 

The join is strong and looks neat, so I'm happy to continue using this method. 

And I finished the blanket with just 2 rows of double crochet around the edges. 

I use a lot of black yarn joining squares and earlier this year my supply was starting to run low. I checked out a number of stores online, (as well as Big W, Spotlight, Lincraft etc) and kept 'doing the sums' with adding postage etc and eventually found a listing on EBay for 12, 100 g balls of acrylic 8 ply. Adding on the postage, the unit price came out to be $2.60 a ball, a good price for us here in Australia. And I started using this supply yesterday...using the method of joining I described in this post, should mean this stash of black yarn should last awhile.

On Tuesday I took several bags of squares along to the Knit and Natter hoping to find some volunteers to join them...I was feeling overwhelmed with all the squares that I had to join. I'm pleased to say that 2 people took all the squares and I feel a great weight has been lifted. I'll be able to get on with some other projects of my own. And there is a lot more free space in my sewing room. Also, I've found renewed enthusiasm to join the remaining squares (I only gave away half of what I had to join) and have joined/made  6 blankets since last Tuesday!
Hmm...I've had a few goes at trying to get these photos to insert without rotating...no luck!

 These are the the squares that I gave away!

 Why not visit some of the other participants in FNwF? Just use the link to Cheryll's post.