Good Medicine

Good morning, my friends. Well, I'd say it's a near miracle...or a "nearicle," if you will. My elbow feels 100% this morning. When I wrote yesterday, I'd only just taken some naproxen, hoping it would ease the pain and stiffness. I could barely lift my coffee cup, and you know...life is barely worth living if there's no coffee. 

After finishing my post here, I took a short nap, and then did my slow stitching. I gave myself a day off from most everything. By afternoon, my elbow was feeling pretty good. By evening, there was no pain or stiffness at all. For good measure, I took some more naproxen at bedtime last night, and it feels fine this morning. It's very nice to have relief from the discomfort. 

The day wasn't wasted. It seemed like a good time to trace the next block for the Girls' Getaway quilt. This is the "Bicycles and Lace" block, and it extends nearly the full width of the quilt. Just FYI, here's the picture from the pattern cover:

I'll be doing the section right in the middle of the quilt. When I had it traced and colored, it looked like this:

It took most of the morning to trace and color it. Now it's ready to go for when I finish my current piece. I expect to finish my current piece no later than tomorrow morning. 

My day was moving slowly. I did no housework, nor any quilting, figuring I'd give my elbow a good break for the day. Later in the afternoon, I decided to make a block for the "Seasons" quilt. When I went into the sewing room, I found Smitty waiting patiently for my arrival. He was ready to sew even if I wasn't.

When all was said and done, I had a Maple Leaf block. This block pattern was another I found on Quilters Cache. It's a pretty easy one.

So, I need just one more pieced block before I can start sewing the Seasons quilt top together. I selected some fabrics before I turned off the lights for the day.

I'll be making the snowflake block below from a free pattern I found online. 

You might remember it from when I made the Snowflakes quilt.

After walking away yesterday, I started thinking I might want to choose something to replace the lighter of the two fabrics above. I'm afraid there won't be enough contrast with the background. Probably, I still have some of the lighter blue snowflake fabric from the Snowflake quilt. If so, I'll use that instead. In any case, I'll look for something else. That powder blue fairy frost is too light for what I'm doing.

So I'm still giving my elbow a rest. I'll avoid the Bowflex for a few days more. It occurred to me this morning that I'd also done some vacuuming the same day I did a Bowflex workout. That probably didn't do my elbow any good either. Obviously, I need to stop doing housework. Certainly, the vacuum has to go. But with those restrictions, I can probably get back to my quilting today. 

Also, I'd like to finish the last pieced block for the "Seasons" quilt. My work on Seasons has mainly been to give myself something to do when my hour-long limit of quilting is reached. Now that it's getting closer to being a finished quilt top, I'm feeling more motivated to work on it. I love that about quilting. It urges me onward so I can see how it will look with each little bit of progress.

Tomorrow morning I have an appointment for a haircut, and then Thursday I'm getting a pedicure. I really hate going out at this time of year, but you know...I want to look good for Santa Baby. There's an earworm for you. You're welcome.