Happy New Year!!! Are you all ready for 2017? I feel refreshed and ready to go this week. Last week I shared with you that my word for the year is ‘focus’ and I’ve also declared this a ‘year of yes’. For me that means focusing on the parts of my business that I love and want to develop and also being open and saying ‘yes’ to new ideas and opportunities.

The first project I’m working on is for a publication and it’s due in February and will be in the autumn issue. I can’t expand too much on it because as always with magazines, designers can’t show the project before it’s published. I can show you the fabrics I’m working with though and I love the vibrant colors!

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

I’m also working on other projects at night that are more for pleasure. One project is the perpetual hexagon calendar where the idea is to create a hexagon block a day. Well, being into the first day and realizing how time consuming it really is, I’ve decided to shoot for one a week. There will be weeks I can’t pull it off but that’s the goal. January 1st has a beautiful blue and purple block. It has many small fiddly bit type of pieces and those are not usually what I consider fun but….I’m really trying to enjoy the process of things instead of the end result. So, over the weekend, I busted out my new lightbox which was a Christmas gift from my mom. I love it, it’s very bright. I traced all the templates I needed for the hexagon. This is the light box and though I believe my mom paid $99 through Nancy’s Notions, I found it on Amazon today for $78.53. I thought about the more expensive wafer thin one but it’s a lot of money and it’s not something I’d use every single day so I opted for this one and I’m very pleased with it. I love the large size – 12″x18″. Here is a picture of my lightbox and then a link below if you’re interested…

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Last night I had a few hours free and I glue basted the fabric to the templates. Normally I’d thread baste but the instructions advise glue basting to save time. I got all the pieces basted and now in my next batch of free time, I’ll start whipstitching them together.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Over Christmas break, Amanda taught me how to loom knit and I’m hooked! Leah also has the loom knitting bug. I’m making a cream colored scarf and I’m about to start my second skein. Leah is making a pink scarf and Amanda is working on a blanket. This picture was taken the night Amanda taught me how to do it. We sat in our jammies and knitted all night!

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

If you’re wondering if Lindsey is annoyed with me for working more on this scarf than her mermaid tail blanket, the answer is an emphatic YES! I was hoping some Christmas miracle would take place and I’d wake up to find that mermaid tail completely finished by elves, but that didn’t happen. I’ll be back at that next week.

That’s it for me today! Enjoy the start of a new year!
Sandi