Don’t you just love new beginnings? The first of the month, Chapter 1, a fresh journal with blank pages waiting to be filled… New Year, of course inspires even the most unaffected of us. I have made my fair share of plans (not quite resolutions), and inspired by the freshness of everything and my co-operating wrists, I started a couple of knitting projects. Won’t it be nice if I cross them all off by the end of February?

• Mum’s socks (an unfortunate Christmas gift, due to running out of yarn while in Greece)
• Zefi’s wristwarmers (an excellent travelling project)
• Blue cardigan (just the button band and sewing in the buttons left)
• Brown sweater (began in Greece, but goes fast)

I really want to finish all of them soon, as I have great plans for an ambitious long cardigan next (involving cables. Cables mean counting, hence the element of ambition.)

The photo above is not quite relevant to today’s content, but it was a lovely morning moment for me and couldn’t resist taking a photo of it!

Remember these two kitties? it was a hint to a pair of Christmas gifts I made, but did not want to show in case my brother, one of the recipients, would wander across the photos (I might be wrong, but I don’t think he checks the blog regularly).

I wanted to make something with a kitty theme, as both recipients are great cat fans. Not knowing how I would proceed, I looked online for kitty images, and this was the one that caught my attention. I traced and enlarged it, and only after I had appliqued it on the white background I was inspired to add the butterfly (my original thought was to add kitty paw prints).

So, this is what came out. I am very pleased with it!

The butterfly movement is the only (hand-) quilted part of the design. For the quilting, I tried a couple of techniques using Japanese thimbles, and I think that by the end of it I had got the hang of it well enough. I like the slowness of the process, and its ability for great precision, and I definitely see more hand-stitching in my near future.

This was the last finished project of 2011, and since then I have worked on and started a number of projects, but not finished any. Several are very, very close to completion, though, so stay tuned for some FOs in the near future!

To those who celebrate, Merry Christmas!

It has been a happy day here, full of family, childhood memories, and food cooked and consumed with love.

I also worked on a very fun project, involving these kitty shadows below, and some butterflies. I am not showing this yet, though, as I don’t want to ruin a surprise.

I ‘ve also been busy baking, getting better at it (for the most part. We won’t mention the kitty-shaped sugar cookies that were a disaster). For this “extreme chocolate cake”, I used this recipe from allrecipes.com, and L did the expert frosting. It was a great success, a moist and very chocolatey cake we enjoyed very much.

One of my favorite holiday traditions at home is setting up the family Christmas tree: my brothers and I bring everything out, move furniture to make room, unpack the ornaments from the old box with “bacon cheese” written on it (oh, how I miss the taste of bacon cheese on white bread!) Christmas music playing, my mother watching from her favorite chair, my father tactically staying out of the way. As an annual ritual worthy of its name, things are repeated, almost verbatim, every year: the good, the fun, and even the bad.

Last year, I felt trully fed up of arguing over the tree base scratching the wooden floor, and thought we could do without this particular detail in the tradition! All our previous rugs are somehow gone, including the first one I remember from my childhood, that my grandfather had crocheted in a mustard and brown yarn (yes, both my grandfather and father had learned how to knit at one point, albeit neither with much success in their final products!) So, my goal for this year was to make a tree skirt to remedy the situation.

Here is how you can make one too.
You will need:

• Two pieces of fabric, one for the top and one for the backing, cut in a circle that will be right for your tree. They should be large enough for the edges to show, sticking outside the tree branches.
• Felt sheets in brown and grey/green (for houses), 2-3 shades of green (for trees), white (for snow), pale yellow or off-white (for windows).
• Fabric glue, scissors or x-acto knife, pen & paper for designing the templates.
• A kitty, or three (optional).

Cut your two main circles and sew them together, right sides facing, leaving an 8-inch opening. Turn inside-out and top stitch around the entire perimeter, closing the opening and giving your circle a nice thin edge.

(sorry, no photo for this stage!)
Make a template with paper or cardboard for the houses and trees. You can make them all one size, or make 2-3 different sizes. (I made 1 size for the houses, and 2 for the trees).

Draw the outline on the felt sheets, as tight as you can to avoid wasting fabric.

Cut out all shapes, including curly lines for the snow on the roofs and chimneys, and little squares for doors and windows (I used left overs from the houses to make the tree bark, and doors & chimneys for the houses.)
Make as many as you will need to space around the edges without it being too crowded or sparse (eye ball it. Or have a kitty to help.)

Using fabric glue, put together all your trees and houses before attaching them too the fabric, it will make the final step faster and more enjoyable.

Arrange all trees and houses around the edges, and glue. Done!

I am always amazed at yeast and flour, and how they turn to become something so substantial and tasty.

Serving suggestion (i.e. what I just did): taramosalata, tomato and avocado.

4 of these made, but one of them was already consumed by the time I reached out for the camera

The recipe calls for 1/4 cup of sugar, and the rolls actually came out a little too sweet for my taste (I like my bread savory or sour). I hope that little less sugar should still do the trick of helping the yeast rise, without overpowering the final taste.

ok, I ‘m off, to finish them off. Έχουν μείνει κάτι αμυγδαλάκια…

Sometimes beauty sneaks up on you when you aren’t paying attention!

They have all been assigned already, as gifts to friends. I have 3 friends who have their birthdays next week. I seem to have been gathering lots of Libras in my life!

I backed the pot holders with a plain off-white fabric, and used an old towel for filling. There was some more of the backing fabric left over, so I used some leaves as stamps and made these.

I am not sure what I will do with them yet, but I have an idea for the one with the fall leaves that will fill another need for our new apartment.

I joined pinterest yesterday, and I am surprised at how much I am enjoying it! I guess I really needed a virtual space to keep all the beautiful and inspiring things I come across  around the internet nowadays.

If you spend any time at all surfing with an open mind, looking for inspiration, then you may want to consider joining pinterest yourself.  As for me, I don’t know why I resisted it for so long, I have been reading about it for a while now. The button to my boards is on the sidebar, if anyone is interested in seeing what catches my attention.

The photo is irrelevant, but I couldn’t just post something without a photo! pretty nice, I think. I could get used to summer holidays at one of these houses

This is the view from my crafts room. The vine on the outside is pretty, and the semi-transparent glass sort of hides the buildings at the back.

I don’t have much experience (or talent?) in taking care of plants, but I do manage to maintain  wheat grass for the kitties. I like the sparkling drops!

This is our new neighbor. They are actually a couple, who like to snuggle next to each other on the ground, instead of the bushes in the back yard. They are also quite fearless: not only they are not afraid of me when I approach them behind the glass doors, they don’t even seem to care much if the cats are doing the same!

In crafty news, I have been trying (mostly unsuccessfully) to make something from this book. I hope I ‘ll get better results after I starch and block the snowflakes,  because now they look so much like sad clumps of thread, that I unravel them as soon as I finish them.