Four days remaining for January goals

It is really hard to get a great picture of the night sky.  The colours are brilliant pink and fuschia and it looks glorious.  Plus, so nice for the evening to stay light, longer and must be the same for here and back home?

I have been stitching away on too many projects at once.  I have a routine of filling between 8 and 10 bobbins at once and when they are empty, I stop and give my machine some TLC, fill bobbins, change needle and clean out the lint.  I love my Janome 6600 - a true workhorse but the the lint always amazes me.

I huge thank you to my friend Marge... she told me about these tiny sticks with a bit of cotton on the end that are perfect for digging out lint.  She learned about them from another guild member, Debbie and they are available from Harbor Freight.
One thing I did do is throw away my old bottle of oil.  I compared the colour of the oil to the new bottle and it was definitely yellow which means it has deteriorated.

As for finishes... or completed blocks, I am plugging away - but I do have my flannel squares put together and the top is ready to take home in March and get it layered, quilted and bound. It is a a very old ufo of a package of flannel squares with more added from my stash.

I have finished making 'happy blocks' which have 6.5" centers and I have a large variety.  I ended up  making over 70 of them.  And am now sorting them into those suitable for preemie quilts and those that would work for Quilts of Valour.

And I have made enough of the Perkimon Valley quilt blocks for the fire victims in California to be able to mail 30 which is enough for a decent size quilt and have enough left over to take home and work on adding more for a Quilt of Valour.  This is a great use of scraps.

And I have a Craftsy kit that was on sale that I bought to go with the surrounded 16 patches that I started a few weeks earlier.  This kit uses a jelly roll and I added in a few more fabrics but this seems to be fairly juvenile oriented prints and the blocks I made earlier are much darker and more adult oriented. 

There are a few more 9 patches from 10" squares being stitched and am hoping to work diligently for the next few days to be able to show a more finished stage of all these projects by the end of the month.  Oops... that is only 5 days away. 

Off to put the pedal to metal... or to the floor!  Too many ideas, not nearly enough time!