Some Sewing

It was a pretty quiet New Year’s Eve celebration at the Three Cats Ranch. We did what we do even when neither of us has a broken arm...went to bed early and slept through any fireworks. Speaking of going to bed, I slept in the bed for the second time since this all happened. Oh yes, and let’s mark this dubious distinction of the 4-week anniversary of my accident. I’m doing better than I thought I would be at this point...less pain, sleeping in a bed (twice!), and back to sewing with a few limitations. The New Year could have gotten off to a worse start, for sure.

After the sewing I did a few days ago, I realized I needed to limit my time somehow. My arm was pretty sore after about two hours. Even with a new blade in my cutter, it’s taxing to do a lot of cutting. Even more, it’s taxing to use the iron. I figured out I could just tip the iron up and down without actually lifting it, but I found the muscle in my forearm (below the elbow) surprisingly sore from that. Okay, so lesson learned. I did more sewing yesterday, but paid attention when I noticed increasing pain, and stopped.

On Wednesday, I finished sewing the borders around all the embroidered blocks. There are 12 altogether.

I like how the border looks with the gold metallic floss.

Doing all of those really had my arm sore by the time I stopped, and so Sadie was there yesterday to remind me to take it easy. 

It’s impurrtant that you save your strength fur opening cat food cans and dispensing treats.

I’ll just sit right here and monitor your purrogress.

Think of me as your purrsonal assistant.

Okay, so I’d already started this cutting the day before, but I finished cutting the remaining pieces for the 8-pointed stars (pieced snowflakes).

And then I sewed the half square triangles to their designated locations.

And before I could go any farther with this, I’d need to trim the flying geese and the half square trianges.

But Sadie thought I’d had enough by then, and so she cut my sewing time off at this point. Since cutting is particularly taxing, I’ll probably just trim enough to make one star at a time. I need five, and so I expect it will take me a couple of days to do all of them.

Edited to say this was my goal for December's OMG Challenge...and then I broke my arm, which threw all my December plans out the window. So, I'm starting January with the same goal from December. There's only about half a month to finish, but I think I can, I think I can, I think I can. So my goal for January's

is to try again to sew the embroidered snowflakes into a finished quilt top.

In the meantime, I’m getting plenty of slow stitching finished, and I should have my current project finished today or tomorrow. I’ve pulled out a couple more small motifs to trace, and so I’m giving myself plenty to do within my limitations. It’s nice to be doing something other than watching bad daytime television.

So, I hope your New Year’s celebration was safe and quiet. Whenever I start something new, including a new year, I’m reminded of the sound I heard when entering the Peter Pan ride at Disneyland. Just as our little sailing boats took off into the main part of the ride, and the doors swung open, Peter Pan could be heard to say, “Come on, Everybody! Here we goooooooooooooooooooooooo!”