Hi everyone! I hope you’ve all had a fantastic weekend! Northern Virginia has had a perfectly autumnal weekend with gusty winds and low humidity; I live for fall and winter!

I’m really into rocks right now. I love the permanence of stone as well as the opportunity to do something uniquely personal. I did this one for a friend Elena’s birthday. I thought it was funny that it’s literally a “milestone.” I can’t help myself!

Here is some video of another rock engraving for a friend who is on a path to finding her bearings as an empty nester.

We made this birthday card out of 1/4” plywood that I painted first, then engraved, then filled with Pro-Tec. It came out pretty well; we’ve never achieved perfection with this method but we will keep trying!

And of course I have some sewing going on; a Christmas wall hanging in the making. Those of you who follow us already have a sense of how vastly different Cameron and I are relative to skill sets. It makes for a lot of comedy on a regular basis. One of my favorite things about being married to Cameron is how much we laugh. You can extrapolate this video in lots of directions and have a pretty accurate sense of what it’s like in our house.

If you don’t sew or quilt this will bore you, but anyone who has ever cut out a quilt will appreciate this. I often wonder how many people who stumble across this blog have an interest in the textile cutting. I’m sensitive to the fact that it’s not as enthralling to most people as it is to me!

And while it is still very much in the making stage, here is a photo of how I used what we cut. It measures 30” wide and 15” tall and will be a wall hanging. I used red and gold glitter threads for the lettering and a gold metallic thread for the white quilted background. People ask me how much time things take to make. So far I have 9 hours in. Depending on what I decide to do from here my guess is that I’ll either pull in at 11 or 13 hours. I’ve got something I’m mulling. We’ll see.

We still have a few more things up our sleeves; I’ll share when I can. As always, thanks for reading and for your interest in our adventure. – Dana