Handmade Parade: Part 2

To continue with the handmade show-and-tell, here's what my sewing machine and I got up to last month.

I made a fleece frog for Maisie, to join her fish and her star. As much as I enjoy clearing out clutter, I'm reaping the benefits of amassing a stockpile of sewing supplies. I'm still getting mileage out of a bag of fleece scraps I got for free and have carted around for 10 years, as well as a pile of stuffing that's no longer inside the long-gone dog toys from whence it came. They now live on in this leggy fellow.

By the way, riding on Maisie's back is not the frog's usual mode of transport. More often, she is flinging him through the air by one limb or trotting him up and down the stairs in her mouth. They're pals.

Nick enjoys a good frog-flinging session, too. But he also has some more refined habits, including a taste for dinner-time conversation with substance. We sometimes start a meal by asking each other, "What are you grateful for today?" It's a nice lens for looking back on a day's events, and sets a tone of gratitude in our lives that I appreciate. So, to spark further interesting discussions (and get myself off the hook for thinking of topics on the spot), I made him a conversation-starter jar for Christmas.

I typed up a pile of questions that range from childhood recollections to travel tales to future hopes and dreams. I sewed a little roll with pockets to hold a pen and blank slips for jotting down new topics as we think of them. The jar (which I made in a pottery class back in Reston) has taken up residence in the dining room and gets invited to the table regularly.

Sometimes I find it difficult to move from a day of work to tasks around the house and making dinner to, at the draw of a slip, deep and thoughtful conversation. But truly it's been a good way to add meaning to our mealtime chats. Something I'm grateful for today: That Nick prefers this kind of interaction to, say, yelling at a football game on television while we eat. (Our tv-free lifestyle is another big check mark on our compatibility chart.)

The mealtime theme carries over, I suppose, to the next project. The holiday marathon extends all the way until the 6th of January at our house, so I made a pair of cheerful picnic placemats to give to Nick as a birthday present.

I've seen all sorts of variations on this theme, so I just made this one up as I went. A pocket for silverware, a piece of elastic to hold the napkin, and ties to roll the whole package up.

Now they're all ready to be tossed in our picnic basket and hauled off to some beautiful place. Perhaps we'll put them to use on our half-birthday in July. Or better yet, we should probably plan a snow picnic in the near future!

Nick's name lends itself so well to wordplay that I couldn't resist including a menu with the placemats. Can you think of anything else this picnic should feature?