PamKittyMorning: December 2019

Sewing

Hi there! Are you ready to say good by to this decade? Was it good? I guess like every decade or even year or day, it was filled with good things and bad things and all manner of things in between. Next year or decade will be the same. Perspective and attitude make all the difference.

I managed to get in some sewing lately. Not a lot but enough to keep me busy and out of trouble. I finished a third watering can and love it. Had some problems, I stepped away from it too long and managed to mess up the spout. It's just fabric luckily and I simply cut some new pieces and moved on. I decided to make this into a 3 watering can table runner. I made the first one in July and I'm just done with it. I was so happy with my flag table runner from last summer I wanted another runner. Its a wonderfully clever pattern by Margo of the Pattern Basket and it's not hard. You just need to pay attention which is sometimes a problem for me!

Tablerunners are not just for tables. Do you follow Heather of Anka's Treasures on IG? She recently had some interesting ways to showcase a tablerunner that has given me some new ideas. I love IG, lots of inspiration there.

When Fat Quarter Shop had it's sale on books I treated myself to Lori's Farm Girl Vintage 2. I have been in love with that zinnia block which is included, and there are a lot of nice project layouts in the book so it was a no brainer. I think a quilt filled with pretty flowers would be fun. I have some bigger tulips from Lori's Scrappy Project Planner and I could include those. Dreams. Who knows what it will all turn into, but I do get how people find big bags of blocks in antique stores! In the meantime I love these zinnias. Who can resist them.

I hope you had a wonderful holiday and your new year is filled with good things! I'm grateful for your friendship ! HAPPY NEW YEAR! xop

Ho ho ho!

From all of us here in PamKittyVille…

MERRY CHRISTMAS!!!

Drink up!

Hi there! How are you? It's just one week before Christmas, and I cannot believe how fast this year has gone. Again, so fast and at times so slow, well that's like life right?

Way back in early November I wrote about making some of the cups that Kellie designed. I think it's such a cute and clever design. You can see her cute clamshell version here and her strip pieced version here. Well actually I wrote that I planned to make them and holy crap I did.

I just picked up fabrics piled up on the cutting table or on my sewing table or any of the other places I had them piled up. I found some cute Starbucks Hot Cocoa packaged for gift giving, which sparked the idea to include some white rick rack along the top edge to mimic marshmallows or whipped cream. My cups are kind of wonky but I'm hoping it adds to the charm of them.

Adding the marshmallows in the little bag seemed like a no brainer and you need a candy cane to stir your peppermint cocoa right?

I washi taped the candy cane to the bag of marshmallows and hung it off the loop on the cocoa packaging, slipped the cup onto the loop and tied it together with some seam tape to keep it from all falling apart.

Then I sat back and felt smug about how cute I thought it was. Maybe you think its cute too? Or not, whatever! It won't hurt my feelings!

I had a blast making them. Now wouldn't these cups make a cute garland?

Happy sewing friends! xop

Authentic

Greetings! How are you? We're barely into December but the Christmas Crush is in full swing. In a bit of shocking news, MY TREE IS ALREADY UP. Bret and Frankie put it up right after Thanksgiving and its so cheerful. Christmas lights are happiest part of Christmas décor to me. Inside and out! I love having a artificial tree so I can have the lights on as much as I want. I was always so careful with a real tree.

So what have you been up to? I've been doing a lot of little sewing. Things I can't show right now as they're gifts. I can't wait though because I'm feeling pretty smug about them. I started on Ayumi's very cute Dresden Photo Frame, it's adorable. I saw it on IG and although I was worried I couldn't make the tiny petals, I ordered the pattern and kit. The kit comes with the interfacing and the pattern printed, so I didn't have to go in search of things I might not have. I have been such a fan of Ayumi's since the early blog years and kick myself that I never reached out when she lived close by. Anyway I finally started some petals and it's so fun. I'm pretty clumsy at it but you can't get better if you don't practice.

I finally dove into one of my still unpacked boxes and put a bunch of stuff on a shelf Bret hung up this past weekend. Then while I was sitting around being pleased with myself I had an idea about where I could hang the little scotty towel hanger I've had FOR YEARS PEOPLE, YEARS. I went right to where it was on the sewing table for the last decade and... you guessed it, IT WASN'T THERE!!!! I tore through the sewing room, and all the places my sewing is because I haven't moved all my stuff back into my sewing room. I do this constantly. Stash stuff and then I cannot find it. I finally admitted defeat and left Frankie a big message when I had one last thought of where I might have put it during one of my rampage cleanup sessions.

AND I FOUND IT.

I'm always losing things and searching for them. Forever tucking things away forgetting my memory isn't what it used to be. So grateful I found it. And that I still remember what I intended to do with it!

He's charming isn't he? I believe he was a gift, but I can't be too sure. Happy that I found him, (and the box of German paper mushrooms I hunted for about an hour before that.) Can't wait to hang him up, just waiting for my Command Hook to be ready!

Just another day in PamKittyVille. What kind of day are you having?

A PamKitty Style Christmas Tale

Morning friends! Welcome to December! I thought I'd start off the month with a throwback style post like the old blog days. You know the ones, the long rambly totally PamKittyMorningish style of ridiculous posts about some weird thing. Like most old people, I wax on about how it was in the olden days, you know, like 10 years ago or whatever.. but I really did love those old blog days. As much as I love our new ways of communicating, the blog is the thing that brought me the most friends, the most opportunities and mostly the outlet for all the stuff rattling around in my head.

WAY BACK in October I headed into Walmart, probably for soap or some other sundry item that I can only get there, and the Christmas stuff was going up next to the Halloween, a phenomena that was foretold by Nostradamus, (sorry that just popped into my random brain) and I saw one of those little pink ceramic lighted trees that was about ornament size.

I thought it was cute and Frankie loves pink, so I grabbed one to set aside for her birthday. It was under $10 and I thought about grabbing one for myself. I remember seeing these at other people's homes when I was growing up. Even then I was a little envious, or maybe curious, but whatever, it was kind of an icon of my childhood in the 50s and 60s, which doesn't seem that long ago BUT HOLY CRAP IT IS.

ANYWAY BACK TO MY STORY, I just thought eh, I don't decorate much and did I really want to spend almost $20 on small pink light up ceramic Christmas trees (that have timers by the way, which is my favorite) so I walked away.

**Spoilers ahead**

Anyone following me for any length of time can probably guess what happened next. OF COURSE I WANTED THE PINK TREE! Or maybe the green, whatever, and the obsession began. Except of course when I went back the trees were gone. And they were gone or never came to any of the Walmarts anywhere near anyplace I was in Northern California. I didn't drive anywhere out of the way specifically for it but I did manage to be near A LOT OF WALMARTS. Sigh.

I mean, how sweet would two of those little trees look in the cabinet our tv sits on? (super cute I'm sure.) Their little timers would click on and I would be so happy looking at them while watching all the grim crime laced tv I love. And how perfect, they'd turn themselves off just as I was ready for bed. It would be lovely. Except OF COURSE there were no trees in Northern California.

Which leads me to the next chapter of this story, obsessively looking for something Frankie wanted for her birthday. I was on the Target website searching for the tinsel lighted unicorn and saw that in the Christmas offerings there were TINY GREEN OR WHITE TREES. So off to Target I went. Lets be clear, I did check the website and it said the blessed words "IN STOCK AT YOUR STORE" but like many an PamKitty dream, they were not. #sadpam But would I pay $15 a tree for small ornament sized trees that previously I would not pay under $10????? Sob, I was conflicted.

In true holiday story style, one day I went to Target, innocently looking (probably in an obsessive way) for holiday Pyrex for Frankie, and there, sitting in their glory, the tiny trees.

Best of all they were on sale for $7.50 which was less than the original Walmart trees and it was like a Christmas Miracle, Lifetime movie style.

I bought myself 2 trees and a tree for my mother-in-law Doris and I lived happily ever after. (don't ask about the Pyrex.)

The End

BUT WAIT! THIS STORY IS NOT OVER!

P. S. I was walking though the Christmas department at Walmart right before Thanksgiving and what did I see??? LITTLE CHRISTMAS TREES!!! Having no control I bought 2 more.