Slow in quilting

It seems with my hands, stitching is something that will take forever and I am making slow or rather no progress.  So in the mean while I kept myself busy by adopting another dog.  This time it was an old Border collie whose humans simply gave him up because they got a new dog, how convenient.  So he had three teeth extracted to cure his terribly bad breath and a tumour removed from his back and apart from following me every step of the way, he is doing very well.

Then future son-in-law turned 30 and we had a surprise party for him and I am really getting too old to keep secrets.  For some ridiculous reason (o wait he updated his new gift with our internet) he spent most of the day by us and I didn’t know what to talk about to him.  No conversation about food, drinks, entertainment or clothing as it may turn into the events of the evening.  It was good when it was done!

Clue 5

At this stage I would still not regard my hands as 100% up to hand sewing but I hate sitting around while the quilting world runs away from me.  So seeing that this was not a huge finish I decided to take it slow but at least get up to date with the next clue to my Hillbilly Space Journey mystery.

These are my Shooting Stars and although this fabric is not ideal for fussy cutting, I do like the movement the coloured dots add to it.  Looks like shooting stars to me.

Rosette 2, only beginning

With my hands still not willing to work, I put all my Freezer paper hexagons needed for this rosette up against the design wall and I’ve realised, if Rosette 1 didn’t drive me nuts, this one might.

 If you turn one hexagon the wrong way around or have one single fabric in the wrong place, you will have a totally different pattern and even end up with yet another star as in Rosette 6 and I am not even sure that I like the star in Rosette 6.

And as if I wasn’t depressed enough by now (check, first glass of wine going down well already!) I took out some fabric to see how and where this could go.  After staring and starting and staring at these, I decided to go for the second glass of wine.  At least I can pour and drink wine rather successfully.

Why is it that when you find that perfect picture on fabric you'd like to use for your centre piece there would only be 3 on a 3 yard piece of fabric and then not near the sides, top or bottom but right in the centre???  Looking at the photo above, none of these fabrics even seem to go together.  Sigh.

Aches and pains

In my previous post I complained about my hands and fingers in need of a break from hand stitching but by then I think it must have been even worse than I initially thought.  On Thursday it felt as if my hands were about to cramp at any given moment, so instead of quilting we went out with friend Karin and her hubby to watch a local rugby game.

By Friday it seemed as if the aches turned into an inflammation and flared up into my arms, shoulders and back.  So I cooked instead of quilt and tried out a creamy lambs’ liver recipe shared by a co-worker.

Wort of all is that I got my next clue to the HillbillySpace Journey mystery and excited or not, couldn’t do a thing about it.

Decided not to try and be too brave and took anti-inflammatory tablets Friday evening and Saturday morning and used an infra-red massager on myself.

Not to go totally insane from quilt withdrawal I traced the rest of the 52 blocks (32 in total) from Katja Majek's Quilt with me project onto freezer paper, ready for fabric auditioning.

Block 17 completed

With DH away on business for one evening I had the run of the house with no cooking whatsoever.  Always an amazing feeling and it is not as if I totally hate cooking but a change in routine is always welcome.

I finished Brenda, block 17 and still trying to give my hand and fingers a break I decided not to do more actual sewing but instead traced a couple of future blocks onto freezer paper and to cut my batting for these.

Went out to dinner with the kids and grandchild the evening and looking at the little one I often wish I had her ongoing energy.