It's been awhile since I last posted. I have kept busy with things at home and sewing. I guess the biggest thing is I've started the preparation for testing of the thyroid cancer. There are four days left of the two weeks of no thyroid medication and the no salt/iodine diet.
I've found more food to eat this time so I'm not as hungry but they are bland. I guess the most liked for dinner is sliced vegetables (carrots, celery, tomatoes, onions) sauteed with cut up chicken slices. That fills me up. But breakfast is a hard one - no dairy products. I've eaten alot of fruit and found some dried fruit with no salt. Thursday I have blood drawn and if the Thyroidglobin test is 50, I'm ready for a thyroid scan to see about the cancer. If the blood count is not up to 50, then another week of the above. I already have the side affects of no thyroid - tired, puffiness setting in, husky voice, dry skin, short of breath and overall not up to par. Hope it all works out well. I'm optimistic.
I want to show two blocks I've finished of the Jenny Haskins quilt. They are very pretty.
This block is lace and took more than one spool of thread. This is going to be an expensive quilt.
This is the base block for blocks 1, 4, 13, and 16. I have to get some satin and tulle before I can embroider the flowers on these blocks.
Just finished was a table runner. I took the class at Mulqueens in Mesa. I didn't want to make a large quilt so opt out for a wall hanging but where in the world would I hang that in my house so I chose to make it table runner size.
I have enough left over to make another table runner so will probably do that and give it away. It is made with Early American fabrics in a fan shape. It needs quilting now so will probably do feathers down the center. The fans are edged with prairie points. It looks pretty cool.
I enticed some fellow quilters from Sallys and Mulqueen to take a class at the Bernina Connection in Phoenix on McTavishing. McTavishing is a name given by the now famous quilter, Karen McTavish. Her method of free motion quilting is mainly for background quilting and filling it spaces. The first picture is Cylone Mctavishing.
The second picture is her method. She backtracks a lot and sometimes that is hard to do. I'm not fond of going over previous stitches. She uses a fine thread like Bottom Line so the stitches don't show as much.
Here is my method. This is only a small portion and I need to practice more if nothing but drawing on paper. It sort of looks like her method. I didn't do any backtracking. We had a fun time together at this class. They are nice ladies. We went to eat afterward but can you believe I couldn't eat anything but a lettuce and tomato salad. What a bummer for going to a Mexican restaurant.
Also, I found time to make a bed skirt. 
Too much stuff under the bed could be seen and needed to be covered. I got the fabric at Home Fabrics at Mesa Dr. and Baseline. They were having an inventory reduction so I got the Home Decor fabric for $3.00 a yard. What a deal.
In embroidery club, we made these picnic placemats. 
They have ants on them eating a hamburger, drinking lemonade and watermelon. I thought they were cute so made up 4 of them.
I'm still working on some pillowcases that have hemstitching on them and some scarves. Plus I have Red Delicious blocks to do before the 15th. Hope I feel up to it.
Plus, I'm working on my family history. I almost have the life story of my Dad on my genealogy web site. I only need to add a few more pictures but that means going through the family albums again. So if your interested you can look at the site. My dad wrote his story and I just added the pictures.
Thats all for now.
I am still recovering from the side effects of no medication for so long. It seems that it takes the nurses forever to order tests and get back the results so instead of 2 weeks for the diet and off meds, it turned out to be 4 weeks. I am still weak, tired and my poor hooded eyes are even more hooded and hanging on my eyelashes. I learned about the hooded eyes when Mary Hartmann and I attended a Mary Kay glamour workshop. We both have hooded eyes. Up close you can see the puffiness of my eyes and my cheeks and hands are puffy. My eyes are now dripping and running. I guess the swelling is beginning to go down although my eyes still feel heavy. I had horrible cramping in my feet and legs and went to bed with a heating pad every night to relax them. I found some dried apricots with no salt that are good for potassium so that helped. I ate so healthly but now I can eat anything. I'm still going to eat some surgary things but try to stay away from delibertly eating chocolate, candy, pies, cakes and cookies and hope that will help with IBS I have. I am on the mend but still have a few weeks before I'm really up to par. If it took me 4 weeks to get in the position I'm it, it will probably take that long to really feeling good and up to par. But the good news out weighs the bad. The picture of me was taken at the Mary Kay Glamour Workshop. Actually the picture was before we did any glamour. I really think I looked better before the glamour than after so I'm not showing the after picture. So much - for glamour. Mary looked great afterward!
