Month: December 2010

The next delicious thing

Posted by Caitlin Jane – 29/12/2010

When I am done-completely done including binding-both of my parent’s quilts, I’m going to move on and start one for Shannon and I. It hadn’t really occurred to me to make one for us until he said something a couple weeks ago. So the fabric collecting started, but I didn’t really know where I was going with it (colour wise) until I went to The Workroom and saw the dark brown Castle Peeps. I love it. There are greens and golds and purples, so I went largely with green.

It’s going to be green with smatterings of brown and purple. Here is what I have to work with, so far:

I can’t name everything, but other than Castle Peeps I got It’s a Hoot by Moda, Parisville by Tula Pink (if you quilt, get this, it’s gorgeous and the spotty colourway I got is already sold out-RUN), Far Far Away 2 by Heather Ross, a huge stack of Libs’ destash, and lots of other loveliness abounding. When I get to Target in the spring (and to Joanne’s Fabrics) hopefully the top will be finished and I’ll figure out the back/binding.

And no, I have no idea what pattern I’m doing. I like pinwheels and I love a good, old fashioned log cabin, but I’m thinking about doing a sampler type quilt with a bunch of different blocks all tied together. We’ll see!

Bords

Posted by Caitlin Jane – 26/12/2010

My mother has a couple Irish fellows staying with her (well, they’re off to Havana tomorrow for a week) who are SO NICE and we just love them to death. Anyway, my mom has a couple bird feeders on her back deck that were just flooded with wildlife. Tons of goldfinches, house finches, morning doves, sparrows, juncos, chickadees, squirrels, blue jays and cardinals. Sitting and watching them battle at the feeders was so awesome, better than so called ‘festive’ tv programming.

The Irishmen found the cardinals to be so exotic.

I do too. Lovely.

Seasonal secrets revealed

Posted by Caitlin Jane – 26/12/2010

I started working on these quilts in the summer but couldn’t post anything about them until now. I know my dad doesn’t read my blog (he’s only really recently aware of computers at all) but my mom does (hi mumma!) so I had to keep it all on the dl. Until now.

The first one is for my dad, it’s a design by Boo Davis. Her work is amazing, buy her book now. NOW. Can you tell it’s a tree? Once this one is finished (I had a minor setback, ahem) I will have a hard time handing it over. It’s going to have a navy back and straight quilting.

The second on is for my mom and is my own design. It looks a lot more complicated than it actually is. Well. It took a lot of work, to be fair, but I simplified my life by buying solid colour jelly rolls, sewing strips of colour to strips of white, and on and on until I got this. The back of it will be red and I’m planning on doing a diagonal quilting pattern. Libs says it’s hard but we’ll see!

These pictures suck, sorry. I’ll take better ones when they’re finished.

Here’s an idea of what the beginning of my mom’s looked like:

Trying to stay upbeat

Posted by Caitlin Jane – 20/12/2010

This morning was hard, saying goodbye to Shannon. It’s very quiet here without him or Ari crashing around, but it means I can do some serious cleaning and listen to the radio as loud as I want to.

I won’t make this any longer than necessary: there’s no cream here for coffee and I have to remedy that before a migraine sets in.

Anyway, on the hand front. My hand is healed. Seriously. I went to see the plastic surgeon on Friday who said it looked fine to him and to exercise it to make sure the scar tissue stretches out properly. He said I could leave without bandages but that made me too nervous, I was going onto TTC and the movie theatre, and didn’t want to risk the cooties. Not to mention it still looks pretty awful and it’s easier when it’s bandaged to avoid horrified glances.

So all it took was a  week. I find it amazing, honestly. The skin is tender still, I don’t like fabric rubbing on it-or hot water, but over all, not a problem at all and I haven’t even had one pain killer since Friday morning. Funny how those first few very dark days…I really wondered if my hand was screwed forever.

Friday:

Today:

It doesn’t even look that red irl.

Today, flexed:

You can see where it’s tight.

That’s it! Hopefully no more hand blogging from now on.

Hand Update

Posted by Caitlin Jane – 12/12/2010

I returned to the Emergency room for a look-see and fresh bandages. I’d been dreading it, knowing how a big gooey wound can crust up. The doctor that removed it was good-firm but fair. He soaked it in sterile water to loosen things up and told me it was ok to swear if necessary.  It was, a little.  He thought it looked good, no infection, not too swollen.  Then he had an RN bandage me up and that was when the shit hit the fan, that guy was rough and caused me more pain than the burn had caused ’til then.  He kept pressing really hard, even when I asked him not to and eventually I screamed at him and burst into tears. Jackass. I hope the nice nurses are back Tuesday for visit #3.

Pictures, but after a break. Not that they’re NSFW, but they’re really horrific. At least to me.

More→

Burnt Out

Posted by Caitlin Jane – 11/12/2010

Yesterday morning I spilled my freshly made coffee on my hand. I use a filter thing that sits on top of my mug and I’d just filled it with boiling water from the kettle when it tipped over, landing on my left hand. Luckily I was standing right beside the kitchen sink and our water does get nice and cold so I immediately doused it, letting the water run for a while. Shannon came to see what was wrong-I’d screamed and was sobbing-and told me it looked “really bad”. That was when I looked too.

It looked worse than really bad to me: It looked terrifyingly awful. All the top layer of skin from my wrist above my thumb diagonally across to my pinky finger was peeled away, bright pink underneath. The shredded flaps of burnt skin looked brown and disgusting. Even between my fingers and down to the second joint are cooked.

After minimal debate, it was decided that a visit to the nearest Emergency Room was necessary. At that point I’d been running icy water over it for about half an hour and the pain was tolerable-I’d also taken 2 Advil before we went out. The nurses were so great, they let me sit in the eyewash station right beside a sink so that whenever it started to heat up I could cool it off. It was a good spot too, I wasn’t sitting with truly sick, infectious people and I got to listen in on very interesting conversations between doctors, nurses and patients.

Anyway, eventually a very nice doctor did see me and wrote a prescription for percs then a nurse bandaged me up and sent me home. Both were amazed by my pain tolerance, but I swear that all the icy water made an enormous difference.

All together I spent less than 3 hours in the ER.

The good news is that I can’t do dishes for a while. The bad news is that I can’t knit or sew and that means no xmas gifts will be done on time. The other news is that percosets make me crazy dizzy and put me into a shitty twilight state, not asleep but not awake. Me and my low tolerance!

No pictures yet, sorry. I didn’t really have my wits about me to do that pre-bandaging yesterday. When I go back to the hospital tomorrow for a look-see and fresh bandages, I’ll do it but be prepared for extreme ugliness.

If anyone is near me and wants to help with some sewing I’d be forever grateful and in your debt, please let me know.

TL;DR I have second degree burns on 2/3 on the back of my hand.

Hilarious.

Posted by Caitlin Jane – 04/12/2010

This is mostly for Ashley who thought snakeskin leggings would be hilarious. She’s absolutely correct, of course, they really are quite amusing. They’re also very comfy, walking in them is indescribably awesome. It was funny, I tweeted about them the other day and almost immediately got an @ message from the manufacturer telling me that there was free shipping (!!!) on them if I ordered more online.

Twitter. I do like it very much.

Also in the picture, my new boots.  I don’t own one single pair of high heeled platform shoes, but if I did, I’d wear them with these leggings. Being almost 5’10″, I’ve always been somewhat scared of high heels-not just of walking in them, which I can’t do even at all, but also of towering over people in a comical way. I do always try them on at Winner’s and that’s how I scratch that itch.

Not in the picture, a denim skirt and variety of clothes above my waist.

I’m making taco lasagne for dinner tonight.