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I was invited by Bernie from Needle & Foot to join in her Holiday Tales & Traditions Blog Hop. Be sure you visit the other participating bloggers listed below to read about their holidays.

Hanukkah, the Festival of Lights, is a minor Jewish holiday. The traditional story is that in response to the suppression of their religion, Jews rose up and rebelled, eventually taking back control of their land and re-sanctifying the Temple in Jerusalem. The legend is that when the Temple was re-sanctified, there was only enough oil to burn for one day, but the oil miraculously lasted eight days, just long enough to resupply the Temple. This "miracle of the oil" brings us to our traditions of lighting candles for eight nights and eating fried foods.

My favorite part of the holiday is the lighting of the hanukkiah (often mistakenly called a menorah). This is done nightly for 8 nights. As a family, we light the candles while singing the Hanukkah blessings. These two photos are from the 6th night, yesterday evening. The kids are each holding a shamash (a helper candle), used to light the candles in the hanukkiah. The first photo above was taken at a community celebration years ago, a lovely event where we typically come together for lighting the candles and celebrating at our synagogue.

One of the by-products of being at home 24/7 for 9 months is that my husband has started to cook more often, developing a wider repertoire of skills in the kitchen. Saturday evening he made latkes from scratch for the first time. They were delicious and perfect! (I like mine with sour cream and applesauce.)

Thanks for visiting. Happy Holidays! I wish you a safe and happy season.

 

Hop over to read about the holiday memories from these other quilt bloggers:

Sew Preeti Quilts

Quilting Jetgirl

Confessions of a Fabric Addict

Academic Quilter

From My Carolina Home

MMM! Quilts

Pieceful Thoughts

Devoted Quilter

The Colorful Fabriholic

Me & My Quilts

Kathleen McMusing

Sarah Goer Quilts

Needle and Foot 

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I use the descriptor "planned improv" loosely. Sometimes the improv comes in the piecing. Sometimes it comes in the design work before piecing starts. In this case, the improv had to do with having no idea where I was going when I started piecing scraps together. And the plan was that HSTs would be involved, and I was working with a limited amount of scraps (at the beginning) with a limited color palette (that I'd curated for the bag of scraps).

This quilt has been a long time coming. The scraps that were the start of it predate February 2016 when I took Jeni Baker's Creative HST workshop at QuiltCon in Pasadena. (We won't discuss how these are scraps from another project that is not yet finished.) This three-hour evening class was a chance to play. I finished my first four blocks for this quilt that night and eventually went on to create 140 more!

As with many of my quilt projects, I worked on this one intermittently over the years. It had no deadline or destination. The quilt top was finally finished at a quilt retreat in September 2018. I mailed it away to be quilted (by Jess Zeigler) in December 2019. No rush on this one. ;-)

I finished the quilt with a faced binding in order to submit to it PIQF in October for their Online Quilt Festival.

It's 59" x 59". I plan to hang it in my entryway.

 

Unrelatedly, check out the new short film, Canvas, on Netflix.

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Today marks nine months that I've been home. There is so much that I miss. But I am thankful to live with family that I enjoy and we have certainly found some new ways to entertain ourselves. I haven't gotten to paint as much as I'd like, but I did get into watercolor during this time.

I started in May with Let's Make Art's watercolor kits. Sarah's tutorials on YouTube are great. I generally watch once through so I know what's coming and then watch and paint along, pausing as needed or stepping away if I have to let a layer dry.

My biggest struggle is finding uninterrupted time to paint. Watercolor is a little unforgiving to interruptions because things dry when you don't want them too. Even without interruptions that's a bit of a trick.

This little beetle is a mashup of my drawing from Art Starts with a Line (affiliate link) and some watercolor.

Starting this week, I'll be working through the book 15 Minute Watercolor Masterpieces (affiliate link) by Anna Koliadych. I've joined a group with Lori from One-Per-Week. It's basically a pacing group to stay motivated and share our work as we work through the same book at the same time. She has a private Facebook group for the community. If you're interested, you can connect with Lori to join the group here. There's no fee beyond the cost of the book and supplies. I don't have the book in my hand yet, but the first assignments are landscapes.

And last night I received A Field Guide to Color: A Watercolor Workbook (affiliate link) by Lisa Solomon. So lots of painting options in my future! (Don't worry, I won't stop quilting.)

Thanks for visiting.