A little progress, a little sad news

F10 is now underway, and it is still somewhat slow going.

[snorting at "somewhat"]

The finger is still tender, but healing.  Amazingly better than it has been, and for that I am grateful to the medical peeps at the Wayne State University Physician Group in Rochester, MI.  Handwork is infinitely frustrating due to the nature and location of the injury and the s-l-o-w healing process, but I am overjoyed to be able to hold and manipulate a needle and Perle cotton again - albeit clumsily.  In time I will be back 100%, but until then, I am happy to at least be slowly working at my loves.  For now, my crazy quilting is on the back burner.

Nothing much to say or show on the PSQ front, but I can admit to trying my best at identifying and cutting bits and pieces for F10 and F11.3.  I tell you, you have no idea how much [we] take for granted the simple tasks of holding our quilting tools is.  Gripping the rotary cutter is a real chore, as is pinning.

With a gimpy digit, it's even taking a lot longer to machine piece the blocks together.  The normal 2.5 hours for one hundred 1" pieces is up to well over three hours!  Allowances have to made for how I hold and push the glass heads into the seams for meticulous matching of every joint.

So when I tell you how happy I am for each completed block in RowF, I am not blowing it out of proportion.  Also, this row represents a huge familial loss for us.

The second of my beloved quilt testers and sewing buddies has passed. On the 19th of September, we had to help Flop move on to a better place.  This wound will take longer to heal than my finger, and the pain of it will linger far longer.

Rest in peace, Flop.  I miss you and Cleo more than words can say.

Just a quickie

Took some doing, but I found the missing F7.

[sigh]
Yes, I managed to misplace (OK . . . 'lose') one-hundred little joined pieces.  Never fear, after a certain amount of searching it's back in the line-up!  Phwew.  There's a load off.



Now, the longer version:
Thing is, I had really planned to pick out several seams in order to replace one of the objectionable bits and swap it with a better fitting color piece.  But, then I became distracted by the whole tidying up thing, and trying to locate more bits for the growing F8.

Then, suddenly I was on to F9, and I realized I didn't see F7 anywhere.
How did I misplace a whole piece of my postage stamp puzzle?
WHERE did I lay it? [smacking forehead]
When did I do it?
If I could answer even one of these questions I would be on the road to locating 100 inches of specific color, I thought.

Well, Q&A did not work.  It took Brian's help (and about 1.25 hours) sorting through three rather large piles of material to get to the bottom of my issue.  Yup, the missing F7 was at the bottom of a bunch of material I had planned to harvest for F9, F10, and F11.3.

Sheesh.

Thank you, Bud.  Now, I need to resort all of that material again.  Whatchya doin' for the next two hours or so?

F9, 10, and 11.3 to go

However, now it's time for bed.

There is a mountain of fabric to sort and cut, so tomorrow's daylight is spoken for.

Not much

Not much to report.  Certainly not much crowing to do.

Still working with a 'gimpy' finger, and so cutting pieces is a slow-going pain in the thimble.

Happily, I am powering through (to the best of my ability) the piecing of F8, and have approximately one third of the pieces to locate.  That's a lot better than having only ten pieces in place.  So, I am content enough.

What are you working on?

A little teaser

This is an image of a-l-m-o-s-t
half of what is complete on the
current postage stamp project.

Happy?

You're welcome.

Fini!

OK, finished with F7...not the entire quilt.

That's alright, though, because that means I am now on to F8.  Four-and-one-third blocks to go, then - bazinga!  RowG!  ;v)  And yes, you perceptively brilliant readers, that was a nod to the Big Bang Theory.

So much excitement, can you feel it?  Can you?  Oh, c'mon...you know you can feel it.

Tell me, what's your little bit of excitement?

Ten whole inches

Just ten inches lay between me and assembling F7.

Pity of it is that there is more of the same for F8, and while I have put some of it aside (as I've found it), there is still an awful lot of cutting to do.  Yuck.  And it's difficult without the use of an index finger.

By the time I am an old women, I will have very little I take for granted anymore.

UPDATED -

Managed to cut the gap down to five before shutting off the lights for the night.  Poor lighting - no matter how good it is - leads to a lot of swapping pieces later.  Just do it right the first time.

What have you been working on?

Patience is a virtue

Working without the use of your index finger is akin to having no thumbs.  It's darn near impossible to manipulate and coerce fabric to do the things you want on the bed of your sewing machine when it's humid, but add the inconvenience of not being able to use your index finger to guide and pull and prod - and pin - and you have a whole other realm of frustration.

Sewing together F6 has taken a great deal of patience, and two days.  Two!  The process of joining 100 pieces into a block is generally takes less than three hours, so you can imagine my frustration.

Couple that with the inability to properly hold/use a rotary cutter, and there you have complete quilter's annihilation.  I even managed to lose control of the thing once.  It tumbled out of my hand, across the table and to the floor, where it fell on my foot creating a three-quarter-inch gash.

Voila!

F7 is currently two-thirds of the way laid out.
Funny, though.  I don't feel any more virtuous.

Good news, though

When I can get back to it, I will be able to assemble F6 right away.  I have a mere four pieces to find and place, so I have that to keep me buoyed while I wait for my finger to 'normal-up'.

What are you working on?  No. Really...tell me, I'd like to know.

Putting the breaks on

Yesterday was not a great day, in the grand scheme of things.  Took the lovely, reclusive Flop to the vet - her eating has been almost non-existent of late.  Turns out, she has lost 20% of her weight since early July.  She is a small Maine Coon, but still, a stocky, box-y girl, and we could see (and feel) the difference.  But it was her running away from the food dish that had me worried.

On a good day, m-a-y-be she would eat a handful of meager bites, but then would run from the plate as if she had seen a ghost.  And that seemed to have begun overnight in late June/early July.  She has been reticent to approach the canned food at all - even though you could see she wanted to eat.

Well, long story short (mostly because my finger is throbbing), the vet asked me to assist by moving Flop's tongue out of the way...with my finger...while she held Flop's scruff and chin - her mouthful of teeth wide open.  Against my better judgement, I did it.  The next few seconds were swift and shocking.

Her jaws came together and my index finger was impaled on one tooth.  When the vet finally opened Flop's mouth for me to attempt to retrieve my finger, I only partially managed to turn it off of the tooth enough so that the second bite resulted in another - even more brutal - bite, and this time it included a couple more teeth...several more holes - including cracking my nail bed.

It's excruciating, that's all I can say.

I will have to put any handwork - and cutting pieces for VG - on the backburner for a short while.  So please, forgive my absence for the next several days.  I'll keep you posted.

Just about one dozen to go

Twelve short inches separate me from completing F6.

That's all.  Just twelve.