Dullsville

There's not much happening around here right now. I haven't posted in so long simply because there is nothing blog-worthy occuring. I'm just hanging out healing, for the most part. And things are getting better on that front, but still nothing exciting to blog about!

I did manage to get out to lunch and then to the meeting with my quilt guild. That was so nice. I had to be careful to order something that didn't need to be cut up! I'm pretty helpless with a knife still, and I really didn't want to have to ask someone to cut up my meal for me!

We had a one-day pottery sale at a local church's holiday boutique on the 7th, which went well. Our friend K came to help DH. I just hung around and talked to customers. It poured rain that day, but the boutique had an excellent turn-out, which was great.

I had a birthday last Wednesday, and it was pretty low-key this year, which was just fine with me! My new age ends with a 9, and the thought of entering another decade next year is kind of daunting. I told DS that now we're both middle-aged (just different ends of that spectrum), and I don't think he found it as amusing as I did! *grin* DS's birthday is the day before mine, and DD's birthday is the day after mine. I missed celebrating with her this year, but we'll do that when we visit her next.

Last Saturday we went to the Seattle Aquarium with DS and the DGDs to celebrate our birthdays. That was fun. The girls seemed to have a lot of fun, and we all really enjoyed seeing all the fish, and otters, and so on.

I'm progressing on the healing. The doctor is happy with my progress and has sent me to physical therapy, starting this past Monday. And I drove my car for the first time since my accident! My left arm doesn't help too much, so parking was a little challenging. The hardest parts are getting the seat belt on, the door closed, and then getting out of the car. But I did it, so that makes both me and DH happy. Before you know it, I'll be going grocery shopping all by myself. That will be a happy, happy day for my poor DH!

Here's a sneak peek of the selvage project I've started. It's not going anywhere soon though. . . I learned that there's more precision sewing involved than I can handle at the moment. So, it's on the shelf waiting for me to heal some more. Right now it's difficult to get my left arm up to the level of my sewing machine, but it is getting easier. Just not good enough for precision sewing yet.

Because the selvage project wasn't working for me, I thought and thought about what I could do. I finally went through some of my many boxes of projects already in-progress to see if I could find anything I could do. I knew I had to have something!

Well, I found a quilt kit all ready to put together! I forgot I had this. I had put this kit together to take to a quilt retreat with me last year. The 4-patches are already made, and the alternate blocks, borders and even binding are already cut and ready to go. Sweet!

But I kept looking. . . .


Then I found these. These are packets of 4 inch squares from Mr. B's Preview Pack Club (from Benartex) from a few? - God only knows how many - years ago. These are from before charm squares! (By the way, they're making them 5" now) So, I'm planning on making 9-patches with them to make into a Disappearing 9-Patch quilt. I've already made one 9-patch. I discovered that these are really cut at 4 1/4 inches squares, except for a few that aren't quite that big. So, this may be challenging.

I did some math and determined that I don't have enough squares to be quite big enough, so I tried cutting some scraps to go with the squares. It went pretty well! My arm is getting stronger, and my cutting table is a good height for my arm. I didn't do a lot at one time (I learned the hard way that I need to pace myself right now), but it seems like it's going to work alright.

Happiness!! I'm so happy that I have some things that I can work on, and that will work with my "broken wing". And the cats were very happy to have me back in the quilt studio. As a matter of fact, Shade is still in there sleeping!