Things that make me happy

I thought I'd start the year on a positive note and list things that make me happy, e.g. on Facebook or here. One thing I have come to love are gnomes (also called nisse/tomte/gonks/wichtel), and I've got a small family of them (Blogger refused to upload the photo - grrr!). Still, here's one I made earlier - now gifted to a friend. They take about 2 hours to make and are fun. The trickiest part was finding beards and noses. I finally found the beard fur on ebay, in the fishing materials section of all things! Apparently, faux fur is used to make lures. You live and learn...
January is often a month to see friends, and as I can't go to see them at the moment (due to my recent hernia ops), they have to come to me. And so they did. Tracee came for lunch and brought me these spectacular dahlias, I just itched to photograph them! The colours were so beautiful.
Another group of friends came for lunch yesterday, bringing quiche, salad, and a wonderful lemon tart. Great to catch up again; we're old friends from my days working at the airport. 

I love colouring in, and have quite a few colouring books. I saw this one the other day, with Venetian masks, and thought they would be lovely to work with, and possibly even give me some inspiration to start (and per chance even finish!) my Venetian Mask quilt, which has been years in the planning stage. The design is simple, in black, red, and white, and most of the masks are drawn, to be turned into applique. It's just a matter of starting. But right now, I'm enjoying my Kim McLean quilt, and have just started Block 10. Only 14 blocks and the border to go. It'll be ginormous!