star anise and flying geese

Normally I would say origami is not my thing. My spatial reasoning skills are just...meh. The day before yesterday, when I attempted to make this Carambola flower, I repeatedly said in a less than pleasant tone of voice, "Origami is NOT. MY. THING!"

But then today when I decided to give it a go again, and to be super uptight about every little crease and corner, I found that while it's still not necessarily my thing, I can muscle through it to get something I really like.

I think what I like about this model is that it looks like star anise. I love star anise. I'd buy a million packets of it from the store if you could be guaranteed a lot of whole ones. I always see the packet with one whole one and then a bunch of busted ones.

Anyway, I'm thinking a wreath interspersed with the tiny pinecones I collected in California this summer. Eh?

I also got started sewing my x & + blocks together. And I gave up after one row. One thing I've learned about quilting (or anything) is that if you're not feeling into it, you'd better just stop before you destroy your work or kill someone. As much as I'm feeling the deadline approaching, I know when I'm beat. So I decided to make a doll quilt for my niece as part of her Christmas present this year.

Fun! I've always wanted to do a traditional flying geese (as opposed to these flying geese I did awhile back), and this was great way to get rid of some purple scraps. My niece is totally obsessed with purple (remember that purple stormtrooper I told you about? Yeah.) so I figured it'd be hard to go wrong here.

Now all I have to do is bind it. Oh, and make the bed to go with it. In the meantime, I should probably contemplate putting up some outside decorations. For some reason I'm just not feeling the outside stuff this year--probably because it's December and it's 80 stinkin' degrees outside. Yuck.