The 12th day of Christmas & a Chinese curse

Those of you who think the winter holiday is a distant memory should know that today is, in fact, the Twelfth Day of Christmas.  I always wonder at people who complain about the commercialism of the holiday, but stop the season with the day gifts are given.  Whatever, this is not the first, last or even close to either time that people will just plain puzzle me.

& I have no business starting the new year pontificating on why other people drop the ball; starting just before Thanksgiving my world has been slipping, sliding fast.  The good news is there is fodder for many upcoming posts originating (or culminating) in these last few weeks.  The bad news is a lot happened in the last few weeks.  Bad news for me, anyhow, while I live in interesting times.

But I am trying to think about right now & what comes next.  My parents are very likely undecorating tomorrow.  They usually leave the tree etc. up through today:  Little Christmas.  Last year, I had lunch with M*******, which was accidental....  We planned to have lunch, I had just lost track of how full-circle it was to spend Women's Christmas with a woman who works in a woman's shelter.  This year I have just finished a project that I would like to deliver & today seems like the right day. 

The larger of the two is the string quilt pattern I often make.  It's quick, it's bright & it's not so fancy that someone won't use it.  There are some quilts or hand knits or whatever that are future heirlooms; mine are more for every day. 

The other, smaller quilt is more or less (more really) the Once Upon A Time quilt from The Modern Quilt Workshop.  Sidebar:  When I was in the business of selling quilt books, I used to tell people there were less than 1/2 dozen quilt books a person really needed to own.  This is one of them.  I also told people that some of the fabric was evil.  You would have to ask M****** & A***** why they did not fire me.  As for the pattern, yes, I have altered it some, added a border of international children (a gift from A**** with her October 2010 swap blocks, left over from a UNICEF fund raiser, I think), etc.  It is still the same pattern really.  & it is for these story quilts, which I make almost compulsively, that I collect all those novelty scraps, participate in I-SPY swaps, etc.

As you may have guessed from the kid-i-ness of these quilts, M******* has been working on a project of her own. 

& that's it, the first post of 2011.