Quilt Update, Other Stuff

My quilt is proceeding well.  I’m now quilting the water in semi-circles below the land, and when that’s done I’ll do a bit of sky – haven’t decided how exactly that’s going to look yet.  You can see a bit of the water in the picture below, and you can see the leaf stitch work I’ve been doing over the past few weeks.  Remember back whenever, when I said that the stitching I was planning would take just a week? I am completely full of nonsense about that.  Totally. I get maybe 2 hours a night at most to work on this, so getting things done fast is really unlikely.  I never estimate time correctly!

Stitching and a bit of cooking have been my salvation lately. This quilt is a sea of calm, a reminder of a place I once was that was beautiful and soothing, which I’ve needed.  So this “thing” – I’m normally pretty stoic and uncommunicative about things like “this,” but it’s not a state secret, and it’s affected my life quite a bit, like blogging less, and making my dream of backpacking pretty hard, and using so much sick time I can hardly take a vacation, that sort of thing. For the last several months I’ve been dealing with a medical issue that I flippantly refer to as “irritating” but when I’m feeling less flippant I refer to it as painful, scary, and gets in the way of life a whole heck of a lot. For months, since last summer, I was getting only small pieces of what was going on, and the problem continued while I saw doctors, and had uncomfortable and anxiety-provoking tests for things like seizure and stroke and blood pressure.

So I worry, but what can I do?  Well, I have finally gotten a clue – narrowed down the doctors to a headache neurologist, who  thinks basilar migraine is the culprit, a less common type with a peculiar, worrisome aura, one that that results from problems with reduced blood flow to the brain stem. It’s not fun. It lasts too long a lot of the time, and it has scared me half to death sometimes. I get dizzy and faint, my eyesight goes funny, I can’t speak well and get confused, and I get clumsy. And indeed, if untreated or treated wrong, those stroke-like symptoms can become stroke. Plus, it can’t use many of the typical treatments. And so there I was today, listening to this, and then getting an injection in my head, and I’m thinking, what in the world is going on with me?

This is treatable, it is. It’s not quick, but it’s possible. I’m feeling scared right now, as I start treatment that’s more specifically directed toward this, and I’m tired because naturally there will be more tests involving needles and claustrophobia.  Ironically, this is when I need my sewing needle and crochet hook and my cooking spoons more than usual, at least these are things I can create and have some control over, soothing things I can do when I need to think, or when I just want to watch TV and zone out, or just something else to concentrate on when my head doesn’t feel like it’s on straight.  Everyone has their own things that they do; this is mine. This is what I do when it feels bad, or I just need to unwind.

Thanks for bearing with me. It’s not my usual thing to share, but if I can’t talk about it here, where can I talk about it? I hope in the next few months I can find some peace from getting 2 or 3 or 4 headaches a week, some more permanent resolution, some sort of break from feeling like this, and get back to feeling more like typical energetic and overly creative self. It’s taken a fair piece of that away since last July.

I hope all of you in blog land have places to share what you’re going through. I’ve found a good bit of comfort in reading others’ struggles – not that they’re struggling, I wish they weren’t, but that I’m not the only one who goes through things that disrupt their life like this even though they have to keep getting up and doing what they do every day. I feel weird, having problems that don’t go away; most days it’s fine, but some days like today, it’s just a little harder to wrap myself around.

Ta for now, M

Re-organizing (again) with cork

I have a problem with organization. It’s not that I’m against it, I do too much of it. A while back I moved my desk-sewing-craft-office-space around a couple of times, leading to much disarray and confusion. I’ve been slowly clearing back the weeds and did this in the process:

These are a pair of framed corkboards meant for organizing the fabric scraps, sketches and other ideas for the projects I’m currently working on. It’s a pretty simple concept.  I took two cheap 8×10 frames and added a double-layer of sheet cork and voila! Mini project inspiration boards.

The key to making one that works is finding a frame that’s deep enough for a double layer of cork, and one with a back that doesn’t come off easily when you poke pins in. Most frames will work (except the very cheapest of frames, they usually don’t have room enough for padding).

I also try to find one also that has plastic in the frame instead of glass so I don’t have a random piece of glass lying around.  Some people would know what to do with a piece of glass, but I’m afraid I don’t.

I have started these two and plan to do a couple more (because I always have more than two projects). I pinned up threads, fabric swatches, sketches, a couple clippings from magazines that gave me ideas, a photo, and a pattern.  It’s nice to see them on the wall like that, all findable and stuff, instead of scattered about my desk in an impossible-to-decipher mess.

Speaking of which, I took a picture of Jeff’s and my desks. They face each other, but are totally different. His is clear, just wires and electronic equipment on the left, and mine’s the other one, totally cluttered with piles of stuff, pens, papers, envelopes, the odd sewing machine foot, and there’s my computer sitting on top of my cutting board.  Some people complain about the men in their lives making the house cluttered and never picking up after themselves. As you can see, our house has the other problem, namely, ME.  There is a wealth of organization under that clutter, though.  I swear.

Cooking with Canning

I mentioned in my last post that I’d finished up using almost everything I canned last summer (just in time for this summer). I used my few cans of tomatoes, my salsa, my peaches very sparingly since I had so few.  It was a lot of work just to make a shelf’s worth of canned goods, so the fruits (haha!) of my labor were parceled out to worthy projects:  a warm pot of chili just as winter started, a small and rich batch of tomato sauce a couple of weeks ago, a peach crumble, some peach ice cream.

When I cook something I canned, I use all my special ingredients – usually things I get specially from other places, like my Dad’s basil and oregano.  I use rosemary and bay leaves from my mother-in-law. These things teach me about the importance of ingredients, when you see it grow or put the work in to preserve the food. I learned long ago, from I don’t know who, to not waste food. I scrape bowls when I cook. I keep my leftovers. I learned to use up my food in the order in which it goes bad.  I’ve never been wealthy, so I guess I learned a lot from watching my pennies at the grocery also.

Farmer’s markets are great, and I will always go to them, but really, it is my dearest wish to have garden. With lots of sun. And lots of stuff I eat. My backyard has now decided to add 2 kinds of purple flowers and some weird bush to its usual crop of rocks and trees, but it leaves much to be desired. And it’s not my house, so I just can’t bring myself to fix it up really nice when I know it’s a temporary arrangement.

Jeff’s mom has mentioned her garden will be growing asparagus, tomatoes, carrots, green beans, radishes, black beans, okra, thyme, dill, basil, thornless blackberries, elephant garlic, eggplant, onion and garlic chives, bunching onions, 1015 onions, butternut squash, acorn squash, bell pepper and cayenne pepper.  I copied that from her email to me.  I hope she knows I’m raiding her garden. I think she planted some of it because she knows I like it.

Apart from cooking and clearing my stores, I got a bug to make jewelry the other day. It was an exhausting day of work, and I was frustrated, and I am not a calm and patient sort of a person. I get anxious and tend to, um, get overexcited about things. I am somewhat … opinionated, I guess you could say. And when I get particularly overwrought, I end up at the craft store, whatever’s closest. Last week I ended up at Hobby Lobby looking at findings and fabric stiffener.  This being a brand new craft, I’ve been teaching myself about what happens when copious amounts of felt glue are applied to fabric and beads. This could get messy.

Hope you’ve all had a fun week. I’m going to do a fair imitation of posting twice this week. Watch out!