Christmas/Sewing update

It's been a while since I blogged, but not a lot of crafting has been going on.  I've been working on the house some, and just generally trying to survive the holidays.   And to be honest, seasonal-affective is a bear, y'all.

Back in early November, I went to the Houston International Quilt show and bought some Christmassy fabrics to make into table runners for the inlaws, and lo', they were done on time!

They are similar (inlaws being exes, I had to make two), but they're different.   My only rules when I was pulling the fabrics were that I couldn't do two gold/white or red strips in a row, but I just pulled randomly.   These were way wider, so I trimmed the strips off and I'll be making a table runner for myself from the left overs.  I'm binding it now, and I'll share later (too late for Christmas decorating, but that's OK, I wasn't in the "Christmas spirit" this year anyway).

And here are some close ups, I just quilted it in the ditches:

The other thing I made for Christmas were these microwave bowl holder things that seemed to be everywhere at the quilt show.  They're super easy to make and useful for using up a bunch of material that's been hanging around for whatever purpose I originally bought them for.   The kicker was to make them using cotton only.  I wanted to make Christmas themed ones, but all of my holiday fabric has metal in them (oh, and don't forget to skip the polyester thread if you're lazy AF like me and tend to not change out the threads on the machine after doing garment sewing - hah).  I used the tutorial from happyhourstitches.

That last one is using my CalamityWare bowls for measure.  These bowls are a bit smaller than I'm used to, but pretty deep, so I was very happy with the scale.

That's about the sum total of my fun-time.  I'm planning on staying in this cold, cold weekend and just reading through the Taltos Series by Steven Brust (I have not read them in a long time!) to take it easy (with some homemade eggnog liberally spiked with bourbon or rum).

I think my next sewing project is going to be the Tiles High Society quilt from craftsy.  It's a really easy block pattern using layer cakes that I'm looking forward to. I saw the fabric and knew it would be perfect for my living room.   I'll have to think about whether I want to get it finished before the really nasty cold sets into the area next week.  There nothing like relaxing on a couch with a warm blanket, fire in the fireplace, and books on the ready.

The other big project was widening the tv-niche above the fireplace so that my 55gal would fit in it.   I got a new Eheim canister filter so I could do a bit less filter maintenance on it, and I also did a fair bit of re-scaping, and I spent some time changing up the driftwood to make a statement piece.   I'll get some fissidens in the future for that,  mostly, I'm looking forward to my amazon swords growing back out (the move and subsequent 6months in a bucket was pretty rough on them - they're in the corners and behind the driftwood).

No fish, yet, as I'm letting it cycle (why it's still a little cloudy there - that was a couple of weeks ago).  It has a fluorite base capped with pool sand, and of course the plants and driftwood.   The two bags of "stuff" are my biological media from the old filters, so that the tank can cycle and settle quickly.  I'm thinking about adding in the fish (tomorrow?  next week?) to see how it's settling.  The ammonia/nitrate/nitrite levels are where they are supposed to be, so I thin it's safe, but I have a feeling my 20gal (where the fish are living now) is suffering from Old Tank Syndrome, and I'd like to get that healthy before I transplant my gouramis back to the 55gal.

So much for those stitching plans (I'll be back for the WIPocalypse round up).

Oh, and here's my Longhorn Santa on the porch after just a wee bit of snow a few weeks ago.