Getting Things Done!

No pictures with this post, I'm afraid.  It's been pretty dark and dreary the last two days and I can't seem to find decent light for anything that we've been doing.  But I'm glad to say that things are happening around here again!  Even with Bug and I both being sick!

The sashiko-ish towel set is coming along quite nicely.  I've only got the one completely stitched up, but there are two more ready to go, and the embroidery on the fourth (and last) towel is almost done.  Depending on how the afternoon goes, I might actually get it finished today.

I still haven't gotten to sit down at the sewing machine long enough to finish Boo's project, which is a little frustrating.  It will - quite literally - take me about two minutes to finish.  But Bug has been all over the sewing machine and isn't so big on letting ME sewing anything right now.

And that's a nifty segue into announcing that Bug is now, officially, sewing.  He INSISTED that he be allowed to use the sewing machine a few days ago.  He picked out a fabric remnant, crawled up into my chair when I moved to the ironing board, popped the fabric under the needle and announced that he was making a purse.  He would not be deterred, so I showed him how to drop the presser foot and turn the knob on the side of the machine to move the needle.  That proved to be a bit of a trick, so we ended up putting the foot pedal on the table and he controlled it by pressing it with his hands.  (I DID tell him that he had to keep his fingers away from the needle while it was moving and he was supervised the whole time.  There's no need to call CPS or anything over this.)  He discovered the backstitch all by himself, though declared that it was "scary", and that put an end to the machine sewing for the day.

The following day, while I was working on the towels, he asked if he could sew with a needle.  I'd bought him one of those big plastic early-sewer kits, but he wasn't interested in it.  He loves the big plastic needle, but doesn't seem to think that it's really sewing.  So, even though it really kind of freaked me out, I loaded up the biggest embroidery needle I could find for him and poked lots of holes in my own fingers while I tried to sew and watch him at the same time.  He did a GREAT job.

I've managed to get quite a lot of swap stuffed prepped the last few days, too.  I'd fallen behind on embroidering my name on the LITJ blocks so I was behind in mailing those.  But I have some ready to go out today.  I've also prepped and packaged my fabric for the Sew, Mama, Sew fat quarter swap.  I'm not posting pictures of those yet though,  Don't want to ruin the surprise for my swap partners. :)

I've also been working on my projects for the potholder swap (the flickr group is really inspiring!) and the Quilt Block Swap.  No peeking on those yet, either. ;)

Pictures soon. Sooon.  Also, it looks like I'll have an exciting annoucement to make before too long.  Still working out the details though, so I'll leave it at that for now.