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This week was a busy and unusual one. It forced us to make it a slow and relaxing week, but a lot of things happened in the same time.

My kid borrowed my desk this week. So nothing crafty to show now  but the constructing aids I made. Only 3 shown here, but I made a lot.

It is not a great photo as it was taken late in the evening after all the boxes were ready and filled with the bricks.

I am a Bulgarian, living in Bulgaria. It seems to be an exotic country for most of my virtual guests here. Something totally unknown, distant and maybe interesting to most of you. So I think I have to explain something about Bulgaria.

It is the white country on the old map shown here /the only map showing almost all of Europe that I found - it is really old and the colour coding is quite out-dated, but you can see the location/.

It is in Europe, on the Balkan peninsula /South East Europe/, west to the Black sea. It is a small country with great history and beautiful landscape situated on the crossroads of various routes, cultures and interests. This proved to be a great chance and more than great trouble.

We have 4 seasons, great mountains /and vegetables and fruits/. Lots of resorts /too many in the last few years/, amazing history and cultural and folklore treasures, and a post socialist transition economy, suffering a substantial brain drain /plus negative population surplus for a long period right after the democracy introduction /1989//…. Bulgaria is a European union country, but not a euro zone one yet.

We use Cyrillic alphabet, which is similar to the Russian /that you can see on some Japanese fabrics/ but has less letters. The Russians added some new letters after adopting the Cyrillic alphabet. Read the rest of this entry »

I was planning not to enter new swaps until the end of the year with all the holiday work to do.
But I realized I will have to finish the 2 swaps I am in, in a a few weeks, so I could think of something new.
So I entered two new swaps. And one of them is absolutely new, it all starts now - started tonight actually with partners announcement.

The other has no sewing involved so its almost instant gratification swap. I will start working on all the swaps tomorrow to make a very busy week more interesting.

Wish you a nice and productive pre-holiday week!

This is truly my idea of holidays and gifts. It is what made me stop using my diploma and start full time crafting experience instead. I am so happy I can make gifts and craft, sew, quilt, plan gifts and gift lists… and pack, give and make people happy on a regular basis.

If you are like me, you will be happy to see that Sew, Mama, Sew! has started a 2nd Handmade Holidays campaign this year. Click on the “Handmade Holidays” banner at  the right column of my blog, to be part of the holiday fun!

I made some progress knitting my hat during the weekend. Half of it is ready now. But it will not be like this for long. I will have to start it over this weekend as it turned wider than expected.
I have some new fabrics here, in addition to these great fabrics and extras I received in the Fat Quarter Swap.

It is a dark evening photo, but it shows the hat before the remake.

There is less than two months left until Christmas. Great time and holiday season! Lots of holiday preparation to do…

I have not started the actual work yet. And will do so today. So it is appropriate time to share my way of handling big holiday issues.

I love presents and preparing them. But choosing and buying or preparing can be hard, so I start early. I keep a list of all the nice people I am going to prepare a gift for. All birthdays, special occasions and all the Christmas gifts recipients go into a long list as early as possible. Then I try to choose the gift in the same manner - as early as possible. That is the key! Although as you can see, sometimes it means November start for Christmas gifts…

But I have almost half of the work already done now. Here is how this happens. Read the rest of this entry »

I am making some progress. I can not believe it, but it happens. I spend approximately an hour or two a week quilting it - tiny, tiny steps progress. That is why I can hardly believe I am making any progress at all - I hardly quilt it.

The machine applique acts as quilt-as-you-go here and since I finished applique, approximately two years ago, this little quilt was stored. I decided to try hand quilting this summer and quilted the blue curves. I changed my needle somewhen in the middle and it turned out the first one was absolutely wrong choice. The new one allowed much more stitches per inch. This makes the whole quilting very “unique” as the stitches density is quite variable and getting higher. I even tried variegated thread, which also adds “uniqueness”. Well, I like it and this is all that matters now. Hopefully it will be ready for Christmas.