Using Beautiful Focus Prints, and a Covid Update

Remember back in the old days before covid when you could have company?  And occasionally someone would have "one too many" and need a nap?  These are perfect.  Pick a great print and add some borders.     

These quilts make a nice throw for the couch.

They would also make a nice quick gift.

If you can't get in to your longarm quilter in time you can easily do straight line stitching on these with your domestic sewing machine.

I've finished up my 2020 customer quilts and am taking a couple weeks off.  Yesterday the fur-baby got a bath, so she's nice and clean for Christmas.  And I started the Christmas baking.  I also have a couple little things I want to sew for small gifts.  I'll take care of those projects in between listening for the dinging of the oven timer.

I DID have some big excitement, which let me tell you - has been pretty scarce these last many many many months.  I have a friend who is distantly acquainted with a painter I have loved for a long time.  She discovered this painter had donated a piece of art to a fundraising silent auction.  Super!!  I checked out the bids - there were a couple on there already, so I threw my hat in the ring too.  Well, of course I got bidded up.  So I stealthily waited until the last 30 seconds and placed one more bid and yee-hah!  Success!  Sorry for all the exclamation marks, but I was VERY EXCITED!

Here she is, Catching Fish by Sandee Ewasiuk.  

COVID-19 UPDATE

Worldwide:  76,912,000.  Wow.  Almost 77 million cases, 1.7 million deaths, 700,000 daily new cases.  

USA: 17.8 million cases, 317,700 deaths, 189,000 new yesterday.  

Canada:  511,000 cases, 14,200 deaths, 6,000 new yesterday.

Ontario:  155,900 cases, 4,150 deaths, 2,300 new yesterday.

Hamilton:  4,885 cases, 136 deaths, 98 new yesterday.

• The U.K. has locked down the south of England due to a variant of the virus, which apparently spreads much faster.  I thought it was spreading plenty fast as it was, but I guess I was wrong.  Several countries, including Canada, have stopped incoming flights from there until something (?) happens with this issue.
• Hamilton, which is the city next door to my small town, is in lockdown effective today.  Numbers have been escalating and the hospitals are on alert to cancel surgeries, along with whatever other measures they take when they're worried about incoming patients and lack of patient beds and staffing levels.
• The whole province of Ontario will be going into lockdown, apparently, effective December 24th.  The official announcement will be made later today, so at the moment I don't know if the timing is 24th morning, or 24th midnight.  
• Vaccinations have started in much of the world but it's going to take a long time for that to get us out of the mess we're in.  I understand that politicians want to save the economy by keeping everything open, but money doesn't help you when you're dead.