Sunday Sundry 1-8-12

You know, sometimes I get to thinking about a Sunday Sundry post and I'm at a loss for words.  So this evening, I'm going to focus on some randomness in photo form from the past few weeks.  Some are things I haven't mentioned but have meant to.  Others are just of a moment I thought to take a picture.  Maybe the light was right, maybe it was wrong, but something made me pick up my camera and shoot.

There was Pyrex under the Christmas tree, from hubby!

Apropos of nothing, we watched Crazy Stupid Love last weekend, and, whoa, does Ryan Gosling have some crazy, stupid abs, or what?  Very funny movie, though. Steve Carell and Emma Stone really cracked me up.

This past week, I put away the Christmas decorations, except for a couple little things that will stay up a while longer.

(Sometimes the crop feature in Picasa makes a really cool auto-selection.  How does it know?)

I was delighted to receive a beautiful holiday wall hanging for Christmas from my buddy Michelle at The Gypsy Quilter!

She did such pretty quilting on it, right down to the holly leaves and berries border.  I love looking at it and marveling how she saw to quilt it.  The curved lines really work well with the angular nature of the blocks.

I am working on finishing up the the scrappy string ring (dresden plate) from Friday, making the sample block into a wall hanging.  I did straight line quilting, mostly, but FMQ'd a spiral in the center circle—a very wonky spiral.  I'm debating whether to unpick it and try again, or just leave it as is (leaning toward the latter).  In a year, when I look back on it, perhaps I will feel like I have made some good progress in my FMQ skills.

Speaking of which, the first quilting exercise for the Free-Motion Quilt Challenge is up at SoCalGal.  Time to make some sandwiches (quilt sandwiches, of course) and get to practicing.  Work on that wonky wobble.

Tonight's dinner prep work.  In real life, the shadow was not so obvious.

Raw materials, awaiting inspiration.  Another lovely Christmas gift from a friend, including the pin:

The sky was pretty at sunset the other day.  My hand, not so steady.

View from my back window. 
I moved the camera, but I kind of like the effect.

Try, try again.

Those are a few sights from here at Chez P.  I'll leave you with a sound heard in my sewing room today.  I sometimes get tired of my usual music rotation, so today I closed my eyes and ran my hand along a row of older CDs, telling myself that no matter what it was that I picked, I would play it.  It happened to be Sting, circa 1999.  Not bad, considering it could just as easily have been Backstreet Boys.  When it came to this song, I remembered why I'd bought it; I like Sting's funky side!