While I was Away

It has been a long two months. On November 5 I had shoulder surgery to repair my rotator cuff on my left shoulder. I thought I was going to be in the sling for three weeks but things were worse than I thought so I ended up wearing the sling for 6 weeks. I started physical therapy the first week of December. It was horrible when the therapist moved my shoulder to start the therapy. It was so painful. I didn't cry at therapy but I sure did when I started my therapy at home. I am progressing well. I can now lift my arm to the second shelf in my kitchen cabinets. Being able to type with both hands is really great too.

The weekend before Christmas Mr. P. and I both got the flu so there was no celebrating at our house. We were by ourselves and feeling pretty pitiful. To top it all off our live Christmas tree was infested with some kind of bug that decided to hatch and start crawling around the floor. At least they were slow moving so we were able to kill them and take the tree back outside. We thought freezing weather would kill them but it didn't. We had planned to bring the tree back inside when we did have our family get together but it was still infested.

Last week my son and his wife from DC came home. My other son and his wife, my grandson, and my daughter all got together last weekend to celebrate Christmas together. We had a great time. It was all over way to soon.

So the house is back in order and I am getting back to a more regular routine. So I thought I would share a little bit of what I did do while recuperating from surgery. First, I had to show you some of my fall veggies. These were picked before surgery. I have a bed of carrots still out in the garden. There are two beds covered with plastic to protect some of the cool weather veggies. (broccoli, kohlrabi,cauliflower, and onions)

In my previous post I revealed a table runner that I had made while testing some paper piecing/applique patterns for Missie of Traditional Primitives. The pattern is now available if you are interested. Isn't it wonderful? You can get it here. I am excited to do those applique blocks in the border.

So what is a girl to do when she can't do much but sit around? I did read some blogs and followed some blog hops. I also did a little shopping on the internet. I also watched way to much Netflix on my TV.

 I won this package of batiks during the Canadian blog hop.

When I finally could get out and drive I bought this gorgeous yarn to make this cowl.

And I visited a new quilt shop to me and bought these fabrics.

 I was finally able to get in my sewing room in time to make this BOM before the meeting this week at the quilt shop.

 Oh, and remember I mentioned I was making a rag quilt for my daughter-in-law. Here is it all finished. She loved it. If you go back to this post you can see that I used a rotary cutter that cuts like pinking shears, sort of. Well after I washed the quilt I didn't like the look so I clipped all the edges and washed the quilt again. Much better!

This little guy is now 9 months old. I started watching him again this week. I will only be watching him 3 days instead of 5. He will be going back to the girl who was watching him while I recuperated from surgery. She has a little boy so Damien will be playing with his little 2 year old friend on Thursday and Friday. I will miss him but it will also give me time to sew and do other things while he is at his friend's house.

Thanks so much to those of you who sent emails to see how I was doing. You all are so sweet.

Happy New Year to you all.

With Passion,

Carrie P.