Back Tack recap

Lots of photos in this one. I wanted to post the goodies that came out of back tack 4, which I thoroughly enjoyed. It was my third back tack and I always enjoy myself and have met nice people along the way. I only have this one photo above of what I sent my partner- the rest of it went into the box without a photo. She has this fantastic kitchen so I thought this set would go well. The towels were purchased plain and I added the fabric and the mitt is from a Denyse Shmidt book that I love. My partner, by the way, was Julie from Denmark. You should go check out her blog as she is a fantastic writer and has lovely photos to boot. Look what she made me...

This gorgeous tea cozy. It was funny because we both ended up sending kitchen items and tea. I love this cozy- the colors are so great and the butterfly in the corner is my favorite. The tea she sent was from Norway and it is amazing! I love really nice fragrant tea.

She also sent those darling coasters in the top right, a little book and the french press cozy at the bottom. I need to get a french press to fill it but my hubby will be thrilled with one so there you go. She is living in Denmark and sent this darling Danish Christmas candle. Funny thing was that the day I got the package I was out shopping and some woman asked the store clerk if they had these candles. They didn't of course.

And these little beauties... I love jewelry and the green beads are such a great color.

So there you go! Back tack is always a good time.

Meanwhile, my plan was to make christmas gifts this year and I enjoyed making the towel and oven mitt set so much that my mom got one too. I found some great insulated batting made just for oven mitts so they should do a good job of blocking the heat. I love that umbrella fabric- a friend brought it from Hong Kong for me and this was a good way to use just a little bit of it. Love those colors.

Meanwhile, no sewing today. We continue to battle the flooding furnace pit. Argh! We finally called someone to come by on saturday night. All day I had been telling my husband that we needed to just build a little dam to divert the water coming into the crawl space into the sump pump and he did not agree and all day he kept telling me that we just need to block off the drain spout on the gutter so that water can't get down it and I kept disagreeing with him. So the guy comes out to help us and tells us that the drain spout is broken somewhere under the surface and what we need to do is build a little dam to divert the water into the sump pump and then go block off that drain spout so water can't get in. We just looked at each other and laughed. Together we are useless! It cost us $114 to have him tell us that but at least then we had a plan. Poor 6'4" hubby had to be in the crawl space for several hours to build the dam. Watching him crawl out of the tiny hole in the wall is like watching clowns all pour out of that tiny car. So both things were done yesterday and then heavy rains came... we have water in the furnace pit but only about half an inch so I consider it successful. Let's hope we have more fun next weekend!