St. Valentine day is in four weeks. A good time to get started about its preparation. In Bulgaria it is a double holiday - the adopted western St. Valentines day - celebrating love - and the local folklore day of wine and wine pruning. St. Valentine's day is on another day in the Orthodox calendar used by most of the Christians in Bulgaria. So I started these hearts as my first creation for the holiday of all the people in love. Or people who like good wine. They will become small useful thing. I do not love the idea of making something cute for the cuteness itself. It is very important to find a good reason to use it and not just put it somewhere to collect unneeded piles of dust...

The first week of the year is almost all gone. I was sewing, quilting. embroidering and knitting this week. A very promising new year beginning, I think. Blogging got a little bit neglected due to camera exhaustion and will be back here as frequently as usually next week. In the meantime - by the end of the day- I will put the final stitches on 3 projects started this week. Other 4 got finished during the week. Oh, and the big Valentine sewing and crafting starts tomorrow! Wishing you a lovely new week!

We celebrated Christmas and look forward to get all the errands in time for New Years Eve. Hope you had a lovely enlighten and warm Christmas and wish you a Happy and prosperous New 2011! I can now show you my Christmas patchwork potholders with their little embroideries /quilted actually/ and my second pair of socks /coming soon with the third one/. The sock were ready in time, the size was OK but I mostly happy with the timing. Have just finished a new quilt too - washing it now. Looking forward to the new year and new week and the beginning of a new project. Sewing and hand quilting today felt great!

I realize now, I've written no post in English since Dec 7th! Writing independent posts in both languages - Bulgarian an English seems to have a minor hiden disadvantage in busy periods... So here is what is new here: We had snow! It was a beautiful snowy afternoon last Thursday. It all got white and wintery in half an hour! And I was driving at this time... I am sewing a bit and knitting a lot! Longing for a good pair of "my" sock for quite a long, I finally did finished my first pair! Number two is in progress now. Hopefully all done tomorrow. Christmas lists are almost done - still need wine and cookies, but ready with gifts! Just need to pack and buy some spices and wine... I have a little special something - mini patchwork quilt to play with on Christmas /here it is -  with some rambling in Bulgarian about it, blog post in English will be here for Christmas/ and... it is said we expect a warm Christmas this year. Which will definitely not keep me from baking! LOL Did I shout loud enough how happy I am with these socks? Well, despite the size error... LOL

Here is the original second batch for 2010 - semi-Christmas, semi-neon. Love the traditional-contemporary mix in them - linen and neons. Batch number one is all gone, so here is the second one. It also comes in appliqued, embroidered, drawn form. However I think this no accents version is my absolute fave so far. Nothing to remove, nothing in excess - so really close to perfection. The appliqued, etc. versions have no decent pictures yet. Coming soon here... Having promised to write about process - this is a fave process too - they look almost the same way inside out... Yay!