Cathy's Block is now a box!

I finished this block and mounted it quite a while ago but then it sat on my table with nothing to do 

but look pretty fabulous for a long time 

until I got my excrement together to finish what I intended to do with it

Even the inside of the box was ready

I just hadn't yet decided on the fabric for the outside of the box

So needing to get SOMETHING done

I finally shifted myself and went through my fabric stash


And there you go

Easy peasy

Bob's your uncle 

I finally did it

The culprit

 Don't get all excited, it's nothing good,

 although it had a good outcome.

So at 55 I have finally sewed myself to my work with the machine

Ungh

I have always been cautious about this eventuality as most of the women in my family sew in some capacity and they all have "War" stories about putting the needle through a finger.

And I distinctly remember having to help my Mother, pull the needle out of her thumb with a pair of pliers, when she did hers

So I knew this was a possibility

It is quite a shock when it happens you though

At first I couldn't understand, why had the machine stopped?

What could it have possibly hit?

There was no pin to hit there

Pro-tip: don't try to yank your hand away, it's attached.

As I realized what had happened, at first I was astonished, It hadn't yet begun to hurt.

Then worried about the piece I was sewing, no blood YAY!, Yet.

Unscrew the needle from the machine, look to see the damage, 

Wow! good machine it went clear through the finger, thread and all!

poke it, ow, OK don't poke it

Grab a pair of pliers on the way to the bathroom, find the bandaids and the gauze, 

now where did I put the damned things?

Try to pull it out myself........................Herngh!.........................nope it's stuck

*Sigh*

Go look up the nearest urgent care facility

call doctors office and see what they can do, go tell DDH

who react's like It's baby time, It's just a needle honey, Icandrivemyselfdon'tbesilly. 

Needless to say I did not drive myself

By the time we got the "so sorry we're booked you need to go to the urgent care facility"

20 minutes had come and gone, we were already on our way down the hill, and the finger started to hurt

I'm adding the gory details for those who are interested but if you are at all squeamish, don't look.

you have been warned

Yep that's the tread I was using

OOOwuie!

The two dots down by the knuckle are from the lidocaine shot, much better.

Good thing I'd taken off my Wedding ring the day before to clean it and hadn't gotten around to putting it back on yet! Otherwise it too would be stuck and I was informed they might have had to cut it off!

The nice doctor and nurses fussed over me for about an hour and a half giving me a lidocaine shot.

AAHHHHH! Much better! 

It ended up taking two of them to pull the needle out, with hemostats (Not the tool for the job)         turns out my pliers would have been better! Then got my hand x-rayed 4 different ways to make sure It wasn't through the bone, it wasn't.

Bones are surprisingly sturdy things, I love my skeleton!

Anyway, back home again, with a bottle of hydrocodone which now that the initial trauma and swelling are gone I don't really need. 

This morning you can barely see where it happened and it doesn't hurt unless you poke it hard,             so don't do that!

Just a little bruised, poor thing

It's that dot on the 4th finger

Happy Eoster

 The sun is shinning and the bunnies are bouncing, the earth is awakening to the spring, blessed be! 

RSC Pink

Geese don't migrate in April, do they?

All I know is I'm going to have a ton of them by the time this year is over

I all sorts of glorious colors! Woo-hoo!

and enough birds to make 2 quilts, 

maybe more.

One never knows

I have no real plan other than I like the pattern

And there you have The impetus behind most of my projects

I want to! Says the inner brat-child, and so it is done.

Then there are the end pieces that are to small to do much with 

so I sew them together those upper left blocks are now 2" square and big enough to actually do something with

I make them from the smaller part of all the HST I get off the birds,

since they are made from 2" squares by sewing down the middle of a color and a background it's much "easier" to sew the smaller HST before you cut off the end. other wise your WASTING FABRIC

OMG!

Can't have that now can we?

And since the ends are only a bout an inch or so they aren't useful for anything else all by themselves

Am I being silly? Quite probably

They are for me in that grey area of, to small to use and too big to throw away

So I appease my inner OCD "waste-not" hoarding freak, by doing this.

Don't judge! It's not nice to make fun of the mentally challenged!

And last but not least the spools

For a wonder I actually have a plan for these

It involves some applique and fiddling though.

I'm still thinking on it



 

Why am I so exhausted?

 I was thinking about this all last night. I am Fatigued.

 Not in a First world sort of "Oh me oh my" sort of way, but in more of a trying to sort it all out, sort of way.   I realize, I am a white woman of privilege and I am not obligated to fix any of what is broken, but I can't help but feel I should at least know what the hell is going on.

There is so much going on in the world and trying to keep track of it or even keep it in some sort of order is crazy making. I want to be informed but the more I try the more knackered I get. Then I don't pay attention and I feel horribly uninformed. Trying to keep a balance between my peace of mind and staying abreast of what is going on is getting harder and harder. 

It was bad enough before Putin invaded Ukraine and started killing everyone. The news is heartbreaking and there is so much suffering we can't do anything about, it puts more pressure on the pile of things, I can't do anything about. "Just throw money at it" seems inadequate but what else to do?

 I can't just disengage myself, turn off the news, be less informed and still look myself in the mirror and like what I see.  Am I doing this to myself?  Yes, probably. It doesn't help that the news is a fire-hose of badness. So how to overcome the feeling of helplessness? The feeling that I don't do enough but what can I do?  If I ever find out I'll let you all know. For now it's time to play in the dirt. Dirt don't care, neither do worms.

I can take my frustrations out on the weeds, so there is that.