Updates From the Homestead...

 Quote for the Day:

Thought I'd update you all on a couple things going on around here...

First off, construction was started on our garage and workshop on the new property this week.  They were only able to work on them for 2 days this week because of rain, but things are moving right along, anyway.

Garage, street-view:

Garage, inside, looking from right front corner to left side:

Yes, this thing is HUGE for a garage...24' deep by 32' long!  :)  

The beginings of Andy's workshop located behind the garage:

The workshop is slightly smaller at only 20' deep by 32' long.  Still, though, plenty of room for storage of Andy's "stuff".  


Several months ago, a new client found me through the local quilt store and asked me to repair the bindings on 3 vintage quilts she had that had been passed down through her family.  I posted about the first one here.   I finally got around to completing the second one this past week.

This is that horrible red fabric that I posted about that just kept bleeding, no matter how many times I washed it.  The last time I rinsed it in vinegar, but it was still bleeding.  At that point I just gave up and went ahead and applied it to the quilt.  I have warned the customer that it bleeds and recommended that if she washes the quilt that she should use several color catchers to keep the red from bleeding onto the white.   

She has one more quilt that she wants me to repair the binding on, and when she picks up this quilt, she'll drop off that one for me to work on.  

And, last but not least, here is the latest update on the Blue Ridge Beauty quilt that is currently in my quilt frame...

This is the center block, meaning...I'M HALFWAY DONE!  woohooo!

You can see that now my lines of stitching are going in the opposite direction...following the layout of the quilt.



Uh-oh!!  Points that don't quite match???  Say it ain't so, Loretta!!  

Yep.  Just keepin' it real...

Loretta

A Horrible, Awful, No-Good Day...

Those of you who are my regular blog readers know that I have back pain issues, ie, advanced arthritis in all three levels, cervical, thoracic, and lumbar, and herniated discs in multiple levels in the neck and lumbar areas causing spinal stenosis.  I have been suffering with this for the last 3 years and things have deteriorated over those 3 years.  

I had an appointment with a neurosurgeon last month, but he says I'm not yet to the point for surgical intervention, and even when I am, he is more concerned about the cervical/neck issues more so than the lower back.  Since being put a medicine for nerve pain, the neck and arm pain has been relieved.  However, the lower back pain is what bothers me from day to day and what concerns me most and limits my activity the most.

Starting in March of 2012, I started getting lumbar epidural injections for the pain and they really helped.  They basically gave me my "life" back.  I was able to clean house, garden, and walk long distances again.  The injections were lasting about 4 months and then it would be time to get another one.

That is...until this past April when I got an injection that only lasted 1 week.  :(  At that point, I was sent for updated MRI's and then sent to the neurosurgeon, which I already mentioned.  

Today I was scheduled for another lumbar injection.  In preparation for the injections, I have to go off of all anti-inflammatory drugs for the 5 days before the injection.  The anti-inflammatory drugs help decrease my pain by about 60-75%, I would say, so going off of them brings on about 4 days of pure HELLISH PAIN.  Basically, for the last 2 days before the injection, I drug myself with every narcotic I have in the house, trying desperately to relieve enough pain to even be able to walk around the house and get a decent night's sleep.  

I go through this hell because I know that within minutes of getting that epidural injection, I will be essentially pain-free.  

That is the plan, anyway, and has worked in the past.

Until today.

The doctor tried to get the needle into 3 different levels of my lumbar spine to deliver the epidural medicine.  He was not able to get into ANY of them due to bony prominences (bone spurs), and overly-toughened ligaments due to the degenerative processes going on in my spine.  

What should have been a 15 minute procedure, turned into a 1.5 hour procedure...all to no avail.  That was 3 injections of local to numb the skin...OUCH!!!...and 1.5 hours of me laying on my front trying to lay as still as possible...no moving at all.  

First off, people with back pain DON'T lay on their stomachs because it causes too much back pain, and secondly, people with back pain are in constant motion because staying in one place for more than a couple minutes causes pain.  I tell people that I am the "queen of movement"...always changing positions, trying to relieve pain from the previous position and trying to find a new, comfortable one.

To then find that all of this was in vain was truly more than I could handle.  I left the procedure room in tears and didn't stop crying till I was home and finally just fell asleep from sheer exhaustion.

The doctor seems to think that there are other alternative treatments that we can try, but I was too upset and he was too behind on his other patients to really discuss them today.  I have a follow-up with him on Monday to go into these in more depth.  

I'm not particularly hopeful because over the last 3 years we have tried a variety of medications and treatments, but the injections were really the thing that gave me back any semblance of "normalcy" to my life.

Needless to say, I am quite upset and worried about how all of this is going to affect my life, work, activities of daily living, etc.  I am WAY too young to feel this old or be dealing with these kinds of life changes.

If you've made it all the way through this post, then thanks for letting me vent...

Loretta

More Baby Gifts Finished...

Quote for the Day:

"A Hundred years from now, it will not matter what my bank account was, the sort of house I lived in, or the kind of car I drove but the world may be different because I was important in the life of a child." 

~Forest Witcraft, Excerpt from an essay originally published

 in the October 1950 issue of Scouting magazine

I have a friend that is going to become a first-time grandmother in September, so I made a receiving blanket and 3 of my flannel burp cloths for the new baby.  I did the edge crocheting on the blanket as my "take along project" for the recent car trip to Georgia.  I have to say, time goes by much faster when I have a project to work on.  (It also makes the trip more pleasant for Andy because I'm not paying attention to the road and his driving!!!  LOL)

I think they are holding a baby shower for the young mom next weekend, so I dropped it off to my friend's house today.

I was a little apprehensive about giving a homemade gift to someone that I don't know very well (my friend has 2 daughters, but I've never met this one that is pregnant), but I've been assured by my friend that Tabitha does like homemade gifts.   (Some people don't, ya' know.)

To make these receiving blankets, I take 2 squares of PRE-WASHED flannel, about 40" X 40".  Placing them WRONG SIDES TOGETHER, I serge around the outside.  Then I take crochet cotton and a small crochet hook and crochet an edging directly to the blanket over the serged edge.

I would say that from the cutting of the fabric to the finishing of the crocheting, it takes about 12-15 hours/blanket, but only because the crochet thread is so small and somewhat difficult to work with, ie, keeps slipping out of the crochet hook.

The burp clothes are made with 2 pieces of flannel serged the same way...WRONG SIDES together.  I don't crochet an edging on them...only on the blankets.  I can't see spending all that time crocheting a pretty edging on something that is made specifically to be spit up on!  LOL  I have, however, been known to use my embroidery machine to embroider on the burp cloths such things as "Spit Happens"!  :)

Loretta

Some Organizing and a Quilt Update...

Quote for the Day:

"It's a sure sign of summer if the chair gets up when you do."

~Walter Winchell

We got back home on Sunday from our visit to our son and daughter-in-law's house in Georgia.  I brought back with me one doozy of a cold.  I've been really sick with this cold...and hoping that my left eardrum doesn't burst from the pressure because my hearing still hasn't returned in my right ear, yet.   :(

I also brought back with me several baskets that I found when we were out "thrifting" while there.  I like to use baskets for organizing, and my stash of square and rectangular baskets was nil.   I've gone to only buying baskets that have straight sides and are, preferably, square or rectangular because they are the best at utilizing space without wasting any.  I will occasionally buy oblong baskets as long as they have straight sides, and only buy round baskets if I have a specific use for that particular round one or if it is really small round basket...the kind that are good for corralling things on a desk or table.  So, whenever we are out "thrifting", I look for baskets that are good for organizing...and are CHEAP!  BTW...any basket with straight sides will do.  If it is an ugly color, I just spray paint it white.  If it has a stationary handle, I often remove it by cutting it off level with the basket part.  This is easily done with a hacksaw, or, if really thin, a pair of scissors will suffice.

Since I've been sick and haven't been feeling up to doing much, I decided yesterday that I'd tackle a small organizing/decluttering project in the downstairs bathroom that's been needing done for a LONG time.  

The bathroom downstairs is really small...well...actually BOTH bathrooms in this house are really small...but I digress.  Because the bathrooms are small, we only have pedestal sinks and there is no storage cabinet underneath them.  Instead, I have this bookshelf that we found in the garage when we moved here 15 years ago.  It was from someplace industrial because it was painted a machine-gray and had safety-related stickers on it.  LOL  I removed the stickers and painted it white.  Usually it has a pair of battenburg lace curtains covering the front held on by a tension rod, but I removed them while I cleaned this cabinet.  They need washing before being put back up, so they still aren't up.

Anyway...back to the ugliness of the contents of this cabinet.  Those orange and red bins are really flimsy and the sides kept coming un-snapped, so they had to GO!  

I went through everything being stored and threw away all the old hair products, etc., that weren't being used.  I grabbed some of the baskets I had found and went to work.   I refolded the towels in thirds so they would stack neater.  I would still like to find an appropriate basket to hold those bottles on the bottom shelf, but for now, they will be fine.

I had planned on cropping out the stuff on top of the cabinet so I didn't straighten it up, but I decided to keep it in the picture and just "keep it real", as they say.

Now...on to the quilting update.  

After not doing any quilting for 2 weeks while we were away, I've been "itchin' to be stitchin' ".  I've been working on the Blue Ridge Beauty since we've been back and yesterday I gave the rollers another crank and found THIS...

Those arrows at the top of the frame are pointing to the CENTER BLOCK of the quilt!  That means I'm very close to being 1/2 done with this quilt!!!  I find that diagonal lines go fairly quickly, so that's why I'm moving right along on this quilt.  The diagonal lines on the other end of the frame that you can't see from here go the opposite direction so they meet with a "V" down the middle of the quilt.  

Loretta

Baby Pictures...

Quote for the Day:

“A father is someone who carries pictures in his wallet where his money used to be”

~author unknown

All of these pictures were taken by my daughter, Erin, except for the last one where she is kissing on Alex.  I'll warn you right now that this blog post is picture-heavy.  :)  But I'm a new Grandma, so we do things like that!  :)

Loretta

Vacation Update...

Quote for the Day:

"Deep summer is when laziness finds respectability."

~ Sam Keen

We are busy vacationing!  It's a tough job, but someone's gotta do it!  :)

We've been enjoying visiting with our kids and grandkids...

 What says "childhood" better than sliding down a slide...

...or twisting up a swing as tight as it will go...

...to feel the wind in your face when it twirls you around!!!

Of course, there has to be summer watermelon...

That's right...yellow watermelon!  We'd never had it before, but this is a very agricultural area and they grow it here and sell it out of the back of trucks on the main street of the small downtown!  :) 
   

Yellow watermelon has the consistency of red watermelon, but a much milder, though very sweet taste.  I'm not entirely sold on it because of the milder flavor.  I think I prefer red, seedless watermelon over this, but it's still good and will get eaten!  :)

And, last, but not least...let's not forget the other ubiquitous summer thing...BUG BITES!!!

This is a fire ant bite that I got 3 days ago, on Saturday, while out helping Andy, Erin, and Paul do lawn work. 

I've never had a fire ant bite before, so I'm not sure how long the blister will last or how I'm supposed to treat it.  It hurt when I was first bit, but it doesn't hurt now.

For the rest of the trip, I'm going to try NOT to have anymore illnesses or injuries!  :(

Loretta

Baby Alex is HOME!!!

Quote for the Day:

"A baby is God's opinion that the world should go on." 

~Carl Sandburg

At the ripe old age of 10 days, Alex FINALLY got to come home to the family that loves him!

 

Needless to say, a lot of time has been spent cuddling and loving on this little guy!  After all, we have 10 days of not being able to hold him or even be in the same room with him, so we've got some time to make up!  :)

When he first came home he was still being fed breast milk through a bottle, but after a couple feedings of that, Trinity has taken to nursing him and supplementing him as needed!  There are little "extras" that need to be done to take care of an underweight baby, but we are all just taking it in stride and pitching in.  


I'd like to thank each and every one of you for your prayers and expressions of caring!  I have read each and every comment, and often cried when I was reading them.  They have meant so much to me during this time!   I truly have the BEST readers out there!  Thank you!

And now...if you'll excuse me...I have a grandbaby that needs some of Grandma's love!  :) 

Loretta