Here is the Jacob block from the Days of Advent Sampler. I'm still not sure of the pink tones I want to use and am waiting for an order from Hand Dyed Fibers for sample tags in the three color groups I'm considering. I simply love working on this piece -- the colors are so vibrant! I can't wait to get those pinks so I can see how they will look. This block completes the first row of five.

Next I worked on Dragon Skies. I didn't make much progress with her. Friday I was exhausted and went to bed early and then I decided to only work on her for three days since I wanted to try out the experimental scroll rods I got for Peace. People at the Lowe's probably thought I was nuts -- I went in there with a q-snap clamp, a scroll frame side bar, and a piece of fabric! A q-snap clamp fits perfectly on a 1" dowel so for $10 I got myself some 48" scroll bars. The experiment is only a partial success, though. The 1" dowel is too big for the indents in the side bar, which made it difficult to turn and one of the dowels has a splintery groove in it from the friction. The yard of fabric fits on it quite nicely, but it's not really tight. I haven't tried stitching on it yet, so we'll see if the tension is good enough. Anyway, here's a picture.

Another thing I did this weekend was rearrange my living room -- all for my floss. I think I've tried just about every floss storage system known to man and I think I've finally discovered the holy grail: Annie's Thread Keepers. They are so awesome! The one draw back was how to store the slides -- hanging file boxes are simply not deep enough and you either have to cut your thread short or allow it to tangle in the bottom. I wracked my brain and wracked my brain and then it hit me -- I could remove the bottom of the top drawer of one of my file cabinets, use a metal plate or something to join the two drawers together and wah-la one nice deep drawer. Then I took a look at my file cabinet and decided my floss deserved a nice, new home rather than my ratty old cabinet. I found one I really liked -- but it was quite large. So I decided to experiment with my existing file cabinet (which is actually smaller, but still quite large) and discovered that there was simply no way it was going to work without looking incredibly stupid. So I decided to see if there was any other way to arrange the furniture. All my friends had told me to try this arrangement but I just didn't think my gigantic chaise would fit, but it does and I like it sooooo much better. It still looks kind of funny, but not nearly as funny as it did before. And there will be plenty of room for the new file cabinet (experimental file cabinet is still in place for now). I just need to get used to having my stand on my left rather than my right. But so far, so good!