aurora borealis

Melissa decided on this panel at eQuilter.com for (part of) the backing for Santa's Tree

and after it arrived i thought

 he needs to be the FRONT of a quilt... 

so i saved my pennies and tried to order it

for me!!!

but it was out of stock

 damnit...

i kept checking back 

 often... 

so often that the algorithm demons had a field day with my searches

when it was FINALLY restocked, no time was wasted getting it ordered

there was no fabric in the stash that worked with it

and there are no longer any quilt stores nearby

 trying to match those colors off a computer screen wasn't gonna happen

so it sat on top of the Great Pile of Stuff

 wait wait wait!!! lookie here!!! lookie lookie!!!

a link to this FREE pattern with a list of coordinating fabrics arrived in my email!!! 

no guessing!!! thank you, thank you, thank you!!!

so after saving my pennies 

again?!?

the suggested fabrics were ordered and sat on top of the Great Pile of Stuff cuz i was working on the gazillion flying geese for Vintage Tin 

 i can start on Northern Lights Santa as soon as Vintage Tin/Roadkill Road is ready for the To Be Quilted pile

that happened February 6 

YAY!!!

a gazillion half square triangles were sewn and trimmed 

the strips were cut and sewn to the hsts 

the inner border fabric wasn't pressed and cut yet, but i couldn't wait to see how he was gonna look

so, so close

that panel and those coordinating fabrics look awesome together and in just a few hours they could be a flimsy 

trim the center, press and cut the inner border and sew it on, meet those gazillion points, and add the outer border 

should be a happy moment, right?!?

i dunno... 

anywho, we had to stop tripping around it on the living room floor, so the strips were gathered and labeled

the inner border fabric was pressed and cut

i was about to trim the center when i thought 

i really,  really like this Santa and i don't want to be done working with him ... maybe those vines could be highlighted with some embroidery? lemme give it a try...

ooo!!! that's kinda cool!!!

ooo!!! i really, really like where this is going!!!

  the variegated flosses are gonna be DMC 4020, DMC 4025 and DMC 4030

yeah, nothing like making more work for myself

 amiright?!?

signs from march 1, 2026

dyswis 2

 so ... do you see what i see?

wait for it ... wait for it

i see an green olive with pimento and a green ghost monster (Michael Myson says the monster is from The Nightmare Before Christmas, his name is Oogie Boogie and that he's more brown than green cuz he's a burlap bag full of bugs in the movie that i've never watched cuz it looks scary and i don't watch scary movies cuz Real Life is scary enough) 

 there are other things lurking in this panel, but i'm gonna just stitch some curves for a while - that monster is gonna give me nightmares 

dyswis?

do you see what i see?*

does this look like a closed safety pin?

okay, if i'm being totally honest, the first thing i saw was not a safety pin, but i'm not gonna go there...

and then i saw a swaddled baby...

so that's what i went with 

*dyswis? do you see what i see?

yeah, it is probably gonna be a series of posts, innit!?!

stand with Ukraine

after four years of Russia's nonstop terror, Ukraine is still standing 

glory to Ukraine 

glory to the heroes 

Hate Monger by Jean Guerrero

i don't, normally,  write anything about the books that i read ... but this one? this one had me unable to sleep at night...

i MADE myself finish reading it and these notes are to remind myself WHY...

this book is an accounting of Thing One's piece of $hit deputy chief of staff before he began the current terror that he is orchestrating ... i hoped that reading it might give me even the slightest insight into why he hates with the fire of a thousand suns ... waaaaay too many hours of struggling with his life story has convinced me that there is no plausible explanation of why he is evil ... he just is.

Democracy Awakening by Heather Cox Richardson