I have been thinking of all of you and keep thinking I should sit down and write a post. However, this week was spent entirely on making custom orders I received over the Thanksgiving weekend. This time of year always means lots of orders for Chemex and French Press cozies. I don’t mind making them but it certainly takes away from any time to quilt or make other fun items. Over the holiday weekend I had eight orders for these sorts of items and I finished up the last two yesterday. That means this weekend I get to work on other projects!
The other project I am currently working on is a Christmas gift and I don’t want to post it just in case the recipient should see the post (though the person is not a regular reader of my always-exciting blog posts!) Anyway, since I don’t have sewing to share, let’s just chat!
A big group but certainly not everyone.
How was Thanksgiving (for my US readers anyway)? Ours was pretty nice. Each year we alternate between what our family calls “Big Thanksgiving” and “Little Thanksgiving”. On the big years, my sisters and their children and grandchildren all come up here to have Thanksgiving at my parent’s house. The alternating years are quiet and each family celebrates at their own house with a smaller group. This year there were 38 people at mom and dad’s house. For us, that is a relatively ‘small’ crowd for Big Thanksgiving. The picture above was taken Friday morning with the people who came for breakfast. My parents are in the front row. Isn’t this a great picture – four generations amongst the people in the picture! I wasn’t there but it looks like it was a fun morning.
Me and my favorite guy.
As luck would have it, I was dealing with lots of migraine activity that weekend so I didn’t participate nearly as much as I would have liked. Ray and I made a second turkey at our house because my mother was nervous one turkey wouldn’t be enough. So we had a quiet afternoon and then met everyone up at Mom’s house for dinner, bringing the second turkey, stuffing and gravy. It was sort of an eat and run thing for us. When all those kids are there, it gets loud and I wasn’t really up for a lot of noise. Food was great and Mom needn’t have worried because there was enough for everyone and tons of leftovers!
Playing Sequence with Ian, Shar and Julia. Do you play that game??
My son and his new wife were at our house for the whole weekend which was so nice.
This guy can bake!
There were lazy mornings, lots of coffee and cinnamon rolls courtesy of my husband! They were so good and it was no time before they were all gone. I love this recipe from Lovely Little Kitchen because you make the rolls, refrigerate overnight and take them out for an hour in the morning before baking. Easy and so yummy.
His happy place.
My husband spent much of the weekend in his shop. He was on a tear, making rolling pins. Last year he made them for our kids and his mom for Christmas gifts. This year he made them because I asked him to! I had a lot of really nice comments on them last year when I posted about them. I thought it would be fun if he made a few pretty ones and we made them available for purchase as holiday gifts! So, he made four and they are stunning.
He collects wood like I stash fabric.
Ray has enough wood to make nine billion rolling pins but who am I to say anything? I could probably make as many quilts with what I have in my sewing room. So let’s just not go there, ok?
Rectangles of oak and walnut laminated and ready for the lathe.
Sort of like strip piecing, Ray glues strips of wood together in various widths and clamps it tight. Once it is dry, he puts it on the lathe and starts carving it. Chips fly and it is noisy but when all that is going on, my husband is one happy guy.
The very beginning, it is just starting to round.
It takes quite a bit of time to shape it, sand it and finish it. But the results are lovely. Take a look.
So smooth and glossy.
They look similar to each other but the subtle differences are there. Each one is solid, no bearings in the handles (meaning the handles don’t turn or swivel).
One of my favorites because of the light and dark contrast.
This one has some maple in it which gives great contrast with the walnut. Each one has a ‘work space’ of about ten inches.
Love the ovals of color on the handles.
Pretty stripes!
So pretty! What do you think?
This morning I am posting these on Instagram for sale. If you are interested, hop over there and grab one. There are just the four. I think they make a lovely and unique homemade gift. Pricing is $75 plus shipping. Feel free to leave any questions in the comments.
Hopefully next week I will have a sewing project or two to share. Well, actually I am to entirely sure – it depends on if I am working on secret gift sewing or other projects. Hope you all have a fantastic weekend. We plan to get our tree and hope to get the lights up outside. This is such a fun time of year.