Day 18

As I predicted, today's offering

was two pretty blue colours of DMC and some Aida cloth which can be used for the Cozy Snowman Ornament from yesterday's package.

If I were to stitch this project, I'd probably use linen or an evenweave of some type. 

Yesterday I went into The Big City to meet Scooter for a visit and an early supper. We just ate at the food court at Union Station; nothing fancy. He's in the process of moving back to his mom's and will be completely out of his apartment at the end of the month. He has plans to go to Portugal for a couple of month in February so I look forward to following him on his travels.

My 5 year-old laptop has been acting up; not connecting properly to the Wi-Fi network. I thought I'd take it in to get checked out then figured for what it would cost me to get it fixed, and considering its age, I might as well just buy a new laptop. I found a deal at an electronics big box store but the only place the desired model was in stock was way across town. I beetled over there last night and got the last one. Remembering the hassle of transferring programs, etc. from one to another laptop, I signed up for the transfer service, too. The plan was to take the laptop in within 30 days for the transfer.

Once home, I unpacked the new laptop and fired it up. Except for a few things, it's very similar to my old one. AND since most of my stuff was stored in cyber space, the transfer went surprisingly easily. I've had to adapt to a new browser as I can't seem to find the old one and my preferred photo editing program, Picasa, no longer exists for download. I have to adapt to some other photo editing procedure. Not too difficult, just a bit of a learning curve. 

The night before, in anticipation of the old laptop completely crashing, I transferred all the Pictures and Documents to an external hard drive. So i'm pretty much up and running with the new one. I'll return to the big box store and get a refund for the transfer service I don't need.

Today I didn't have to get up for anything so slept in a bit. After breakfast I set to the task of fully finishing a Christmas ornament I finished stitching and embellishing months ago. For such a small thing, it usually takes me at least two hours to complete all the steps:

• cutting the cardboard for mounting
• finding and cutting the batting
• cutting the ornament into a circle with 3/4" border
• selecting the fabric for the back of the ornament
• spraying adhesive on the cardboard so the batting won't slip
• stitch running stitches around the stitching  
• centering the stitching and batting on the cardboard
• pulling the running stitches yo-yo style to mount everything on the mounting cardboard
• repeating this for the fabric for the back of the ornament
• locate the glue and glue the back and front together, securing with Wonder Clips
• making the cording
• attaching the cording with glue in the channel around the edge, leaving a loop at the top for hanging.
• sewing the top and bottom of the cording into place.
• creating and attaching the bow
• attaching the date charm to the back
• unravelling the bottom threads and pressing out the twist.

Again, nothing is difficult, just a lot of fiddly steps. And yes, I attached HotFix 'jewels' for the bling factor instead of beads.

It's my version of last year's Christmas Wreath Ornament from Mary Corbet. It's a free pattern and I stitched two of them using Sticky Fabri-Solvy on which I'd printed the design rather than trying to trace the design onto the fabric with a light box. I made the second design a little bigger by changing the settings on my printer. It's all stitched but won't get FFOd this year. 

Tonight is our guild's Christmas get together and ornament exchange, hence my need to FFO this ornament. I just need to wrap it.

Now that I have FFOd another project, I am free to start stitching a new one. I have a couple of others I've been working on so I'll reserve a new one for during or after the holidays.