Weekend Wind-Up (photo-heavy)

Three day weekends are awesome.
Especially when your birthday falls on one...even better when your husband manages to throw you a surprise party. Which is exactly what happened on Saturday, when I thought we were just going over to a friend's house for dinner. Instead, the house was decked out in Hello Kitty birthday decorations (yeah, the Exchange is kind of limited on party supplies, and this is Japan, after all!)
Here are two of the sweetest things from the party:

There are two mini-bouquets in there, from a co-worker's two adorable daughters. I love flowers, and these are now brightening the LDK.


The other great thing about three-day weekends is the amount of work you can get done! I don't mean catching up on paperwork at the office (although I did get called in for an hour to fix a problem), I am of course referring to all things craft.

I managed to crochet another panel for Tim's Babette blanket:

And here is the entire project thus far:

I got started on the sweater I'm making for Tim:

Another thing I made was a mug rug.

Ok, I feel the need to explain something here. I'm not really a "mug rug" type of person. I am a coaster person. I have several gorgeous sets of coasters that I am quite fond of using. Not a single one of them is made from fabric. I prefer stone or wood.
However, I like to practice free motion quilting, and I like to play around with different ways to cuts fabric to little bits and sew them back together. Hence this little guy.

He did, in fact, provide a place for my coffee mug this morning:
But I'm pretty sure he's going to go in the stack of mug rugs that are, in fact, a chronicle of how my skills improve with practice.
(This one is much, much better than the first oversized coaster I made.)


Finally, there is the super-awesome finished object that I am oh-so-happy to announce completed.
My nephew Link's quilt:

Now I've completed both quilts (there was also Liz's quilt that I completed a couple weeks ago), I can throw them in the washer, then dryer, then box them up & ship 'em across the sea.

And then, I can start planning exactly what I'm going to do with this newly-arrived fabric.
Yes, that's Kate Spain's Good Fortune line. I am totally in love with it.