It didn't feel like Christmas this year for some reason, and now I can't quite believe that we've nearly finished with 2010.  The year is galloping to a close, and I feel totally left behind.  I'm not ready to start writing 2011 as the date.

We did have a lovely get together with Mereth's boys and their partners, plus Curtis the WonderDog and new baby Logan. 

It was great to see them all again, and Logan was welcomed with delight.  He hardly had a chance to sleep in his bed, there was always someone waiting for a turn to hold him.  He was placid and good-natured and utterly adorable. 

Dolly and Curtis got on like a house on fire, but Curtis just couldn't work out what Pippi was.  She was too small, and too quick, and she kept chewing on him with needle-sharp puppy teeth. He was reduced to begging his mum to protect him.

We went to Adelaide on Boxing day for a quick visit; this photo is of the salt lakes at Lake View.  They were a vivid fuchsia pink, completely unreal.  We took lots of photos, but the colour doesn't come out true to life.  It's particularly pink this year, it looks like it's been Photoshopped.

I thought that it would have been a terrible Christmas break if there was no sewing accomplished, so I sewed a few more of the Road to Oklahoma blocks, but my heart isn't really in it.  Then I decided I was thoroughly sick of my overflowing drawers of strips.   I usually do Bonnie's mystery quilts, and that helps clean out the strip drawers, but I didn't have time for that this year. 

The first drawer I tackled was the 1.5" one.  I had no idea what I wanted to do with them, so I just started sewing them into pairs, which I've done two or three times before.

The sewing time lets me decide what I'll do next.  Last time I did this I made hundreds of four-patches and it took ages before they were all used up.  This time I wasn't particularly keen on the four-patch idea, and I'd been thinking how much I like the way Bonnie makes new fabric by string piecing all the little bits together.  So as well as sewing pairs of light and dark strips, I also sewed similar coloured strips together so I could cut a larger square out of them.

The light/dark pairs will form a sashing around the strip pieced squares, the small bits will make the four-patches and hopefully every last little scrap will find a place in this design.

What amazes me is that if I've regularly cleared out this size of strip drawer; why then are there such old and unlovely bits still there??  Where are they coming from?  Will I never be rid of them?

Once all these bits are used up I'll make crumb blocks as the large square, and just keep going until I've used up all the stray bits cluttering my workroom.  And I'm going to get rid of anything that makes me think twice about including it. If I don't love it, it's going to be thrown out or given away.  I'm going to start 2011 with the scraps thinned out and the drawers a lot emptier.