Yesterday I had an scheduled appointment with my cardiologist (Dr. Lily Barouch of Johns Hopkins Cardiology). I quite like her - she is a very good doctor. Not just because she knows her 'stuff' about hearts and physical things but because she involves herself in the whole patient.
The last time I saw her was just as I was closing my store, so she was interested in how 'retirement' was going, how my life situation has changed. We talked a bit about my displacement behaviour (that's how I see much of what I am doing right now - avoidance of what I _should_ be doing which is cleaning and decorating my house)...and she had some really excellent ideas about how I might tackle the problem in ways that would work for me. :) Very inspiring.
In addition, she decided to send me for a routine echocardiogram since it has been four years since I had one. She also changed the dosage on one of my blood pressure meds since it doesn't appear to be working very well. (sigh)
Lately I am much more concerned with my arthritis issues than my (in my mind) non-existent heart problems. I am having quite a bit of trouble with my neck and 'pinched' nerves - I have an almost constant low-level head ache and my arms/hands are going numb from time to time, depending on how I sit. :P Gotta ask my GP about that next time I see him. As I said, it's allatime somethin'. :P
The weather had been gray and gloomy again today - and wet. We've had cold rain, sometimes freezing, most of the day. It is supposed to transition to snow sometime in the middle of the night with a possible accumulation of 8" or so. March already!!
The positive side of the weather is that I did not have to go out today and was very happy about it. :) I spent my day sewing, eating, petting my cats, and sewing some more. With some tv watching in between. At the top of this post you can see the two Victoria's Star blocks I made for Cat in the Scrappy Bee with BMQG. She asked for green and white blocks so I chose a variety of greens. Mostly yellow greens 'cause those are my favorites. :)
The pattern was done with foundations and the outside grain lines actually are pretty much straight. I decided to starch the blocks anyway, after I removed the papers, because that should keep them stable and non-stretchy. Hope Cat doesn't mind. :)
The rest of the day I worked on making a border for my Faithful Circle round robin piece. The project came to me with four blocks set on point and arranged into a runner length. My assignment was to make a 5" border using triangles and more than three fabrics. I don't have a space large enough to photo the whole thing (and was _not_ going to try to take some one else's top outdoors to take pictures in this weather:) ... so here is the left and right half:
It took me a chunk of yesterday and a couple of hours today to make and attach the borders. I am so naive sometimes. I measured and measured and calculated carefully ... and even so, when I got to the sewing on part, my border didn't fit correctly. One short end of this piece is longer than the other so the border fitted fine at one end and was too short by 3/4" at the other end. Major sigh! I decided to just make it wider by adding another piece of the theme fabric (that sunflower batik):
You can see where I split the big central triangle above. Same with the long borders ... my calculations failed somewhere and the triangle units I made came out slightly wrong sized so that I had a smaller one at each end on opposite corners:
See the small purple triangle at the lower right above? There is a similarly small yellow triangle at the opposite end corner. Sigh.
I spent a lot of time and money, actually, making this border and so I decided, after some thought, to leave it as it is. I like the way the five colors I chose worked - I think the colors look good with the body of the piece (and I chose them from the theme sunflower batik so they match well). I think the triangles generally perk up the runner and give it some 'oomph'. So I hope the owner won't be too unhappy with my unbalanced solution to the border. Sigh. I just failed to take into account how many variations come up with so many people working on a single project. At least it is flat and smooth (despite my photos of it draped over my sofa:).
I also went back to gathering fabrics for the Income Inequality project - I got the block background fabric from Thomas K. I also got the papers for my rosette #3 for the Millifiore, which is what I want to work on tomorrow. Skip will probably be home all day as he just saw that Goddard has declared a code red (center is closed due to weather) already due to the predicted snow accumulation.
:) Linda
Comments