Christmas catch-up post

I originally had this on my Twister Tool note to self post, but I wanted to pull it out separately.

Other things I've done over the past few weeks:

Made masks for the library commission group as a thank you from the staff association:

Gillian made kombucha (with my prodding):

I made a bunch of pop-up cards with Gillian's help, although I still need to send out three of them:

Took some photos of some neat frost-rimmed leaves out in front of my library when I was putting out signs one morning for our curbside services:

Thankfully there were no customers in the parking lot yet because I spent a few minutes staring a leaves and taking photos, and it probably looked really bizarre. (These were on the sidewalk in front of the building, so it wasn't like I was standing in the parking lot, although that *is* something I do as I'm inspecting the building, etc.)

Some paper village mantel decorations, using my Silhouette Cameo I got as a present from Greg a few years ago:

And here's the design wall in progress:

While we didn't get good photos of the conjunction of Saturn and Jupiter the other night, I did use Gillian's old telescope to take a photo of the moon with my phone's camera:

And to continue the randomness, I got a new set of nail dip powders and organized my existing stash, including updating my swatches (only five are new):

And then of course I had to try one of the new ones, so this is "Double Gleam" with "Snow Elves" as the gradient glitter:

Then, because I sometimes do things that make me question my own sanity, I decided that for this year's branch (work location) and neighbor gifts, bean soup mix would be perfect. We went to WinCo and got a ridiculous amount of beans and onion soup mix from the bulk area, and I went totally overboard.  The first photo is the beans we had leftover from making 37 packets, and the bottom photo is the little packets I made of onion soup mix with minced onions added in, which we'll use instead of the two-packs from Lipton, etc. that are twice the price of doing it myself:

And yesterday (Christmas Eve) Gillian decided to pull out a puzzle. We were able to finish it (500 pieces, not 1,000) this morning. Here's a photo of Ryan putting in the last piece, and Gillian cheering him on:

In other Christmas news, Ryan got a new set of keycaps (among other things) and promptly replaced the old ones:

Gillian got a pottery wheel, and both she and Greg took it for a spin, although we've misplaced the box of tools that came with it (Amazon to the rescue), and we still need to get an electrician out to add a 220 outlet in the garage for the kiln.

It'll take some practice, of course, but Gillian has had a great time with it so far. She will be in the "shitty pottery" stage for a while but I have no doubt she'll be throwing beautifully things pretty quickly! She and Greg really enjoy the technical sides of these arts, and I'm eager to see what she comes up with. 

Whew! That's enough of an update for now. I'm going to try to keep up with the blog more frequently (I know, I've said that before) because while Ravelry is great for spinning, knitting, etc., I'm getting back into quilting and I need a space to record that kind of thing.