Is it Christmas already?

It's hard to believe Thanksgiving is over and Christmas is almost here. The calendar keeps surprising me. I was in Houston again last weekend to visit with Phyllis. Honey was in Houston for the motorcycle show so it seemed like a good time for a few days off. We had a lake effect blizzard in Erie as I was leaving. They got about 8" while I was gone. I think I left just in time. It was raining when I came home. Most of the snow had turned to slush.

The show in Houston seemed small this year. BMW was not there. Yamaha brought the big trucks in for their display, but did not put up their usual booth. Honey is working with Victory this year. To give you a little back ground, once upon a time I had a t-shirt business. I had a booth at these shows to sell the shirts. I have quite a few friends that still work the "Winter Tour". I'll have to wait until they come to Cleveland to see them though. They were not in Houston. I did get a chance to check out all the new bikes though. Yamaha has a 950 cruiser that looks interesting. I like the Victory Vegas in the red. Kawasaki has a new concourse also that looks pretty cool. There are times I wish my bike had saddle bags to carry things around. I have a bag I can strap to the rear seat that works pretty well. Here are our bikes on the Blue Ridge Parkway 2 years ago. We're thinking about taking a trip down towards Chattanooga and back through Nashville this summer. Let me know if there are any must see quilting places along the way!

I've been working on Christmas recently so I can't show you too much yet. I did get a few purse frames while at Market. I've been trying to design something to go along with them. Not anything too fancy, although some of the frames are pretty dressy. I'd like them to be used. If I make them too fancy they will sit is a drawer.

I also made a table runner for my cousin. A thank you for helping me out at Market. It's the first time I have worked with silk, certainly not the last though. I was thrilled with how it turned out. I embroidered snowflakes on white silk dipioni. I then made 4 patch blocks to make the center of the runner with pale blue and silver grey and placed the snowflake blocks around the outside. I had thought about beading it, but was afraid she wouldn't be able to put anything on top of it then. I used a lightweight knit interfacing on the back of the silk and stabilized it with an iron on stabilizer fort he embroidery. My designs were not very high stitch counts or very dense. I was concerned about it puckering with a more dense design. The pictures did not come out very well. Sorry. The silk just reflected back and you can't see the embroidery. I've had the same trouble photographing white. Maybe someday I'll get the hang of that.