A New Craft Interest

I recently saw a book on Crewel Embroidery online so I ordered it. This turned out to be a great book with beautiful, modern Crewel designs. I did what I usually do when I get interested in something. I bought more books. Luckily and by chance, Rochester, New York has a fantastic store just for embroidery. They had everything I think anyone could want. The owner was quite knowledgable and when I showed her the book she was interested in why I got interested in this kind of embroidery as opposed to the more traditional embroidery. I told her that it generally went along with my style and I thought it would be a great addition to some quilting projects so she started me off with a hoop and thread. Usually I begin to get too anxious to start something at this point, afraid I won't be able to do it but we were going on vacation and it seemed the perfect time and size to try something new and so I did. As you can see (pictures to follow) I'm just at the beginning, but it's pretty easy and the shapes are fun and there are hundred, if not thousands of colors and types of yarn. Now I'm anxious to add a little embroidery to a quilt I started. I'll try it out soon. If you're interested in it, try it. It's really pretty easy. The book I bought first is entitled, "the new crewel by Katherine Shaughnessy. Have fun if you try it!

Where are the pictures?

I haven't gotten around to getting my camera and taking pictures of what quilts I'm working on and what I plan to work on. I think I'm going to change the name of my blog and the banner picture to more accurately suit what the blog represents or what I want it to represent so keep your eyes on it, the photos are coming. I think maybe a new camera that can get closer would be more helpful too. We'll see....

This Time for Real

To those of you who dont know (and that can't be anyone who reads my blog, which aren't many people), I've been in two car accidents where I was rear ended in 2007 and 2009. I won't go into all the gorey details but at age 58 I've ended up with a significant back injury which I only recently was told may not get any better than it is. I'm not the type to give up so I got a new physical therapist and contacted my old, wonderful Yoga teacher and my forever, terrific chiropractor and we're all going to work on building up my muscles which have forgotten how to work and stop the muscles which are working and causing me pain to stop working and give up their job to the muscles who are supposed to be working. My core muscles (meaning, now my very flabby stomach) don't even know they're supposed to be doing anything so they're in for a big surprise because it's their turn now! I feel after three years all of "my team" is on the same page and doing the same things to turn this body into the best body it's ever been. The injury will clearly never go away but it's the muscles that are the culprits now and with a lot of work (on my part) things can really turn around. It may take a while but I'm optimistic. I'm going to be one of those 95 year olds you read about doing all these miraculous athletic feats.

Onto quilting. I have taken three months off of work (since mid-May) since my back was getting worse and my doctor and I decided that my life, as it was, needed to be re-evaluated, which you can see that it was. I also rested and hoped to spend a lot of time quilting, which unforunately I didn't, not sure why, but c'est la vie. I now have several quilts started or fabrics and patterns picked out and I feel like I'm on my way. It's hard to stay focused since I'll never be someone who can make a quilt in a week (how I wish I could do that) and the most amazing quilts in the world at that and because new fabric keeps coming out all the time it's hard not to keep buying and buying and not doing anything but I've vowed to cut down my buying at least and start working on what I've got or I'll be one of those people on the hoarding show only I'll be buried in fabric.

I also promise to stop writing so much since no one likes to read all this stuff and start taking a LOT more pictures so today because it's a gorgeous sunny day me and my camera will show you what I've been up to.

I'm also going to change the format of my blog. This one just doesn't seem to work for me so next time you might not recognize me as the same blog but I'll just be an improved blog with a lot less words and a lot more pictures! For those few people who have read or read my blog, "thanks" and that's my other mission, to let people know I'm here so I can get to know more quilters. Since I had to quit the bees I was in I feel very isolated but not yet ready to rejoin the bee world, too much pressure since I wasn't doing any of my own quilting but I'll be back there next year, but will start with one bee, not three and see how that goes before I join any others.

For those people who have corresponded with me your emails mean more than you can know and if you've forgotten I'm here, I am and your emails are still the support that keeps me going.
Thanks to all those wonderful quilters out there who contacted someone they didn't know to let me know they were there for me.