This is All I Can Do

Sooo, last weekend I had a wonderful time with my daughter, Ellen, at the Madison Quilt Expo. Her first time at a quilt show was last year for part of a day and I had to tear her away from each and every booth. She bought fabric last year for her first quilt, got it pieced together, and now is at the quilting stage. So, we took two machine quilting classes together. One was with Nina McVeigh, a Bernina educator. I took the same class last year, but wanted to take it this year with Ellen. Glad I did - mostly the same information, but I learned a few more tips that made it very worthwhile. The second class was a free motion quilting class with Frieda Anderson, award winning quilt artist. Another fabulous class full of tips and techniques. By the end of both classes our brains were exploding with good ideas! The booths were also filling us with good ideas...I especially loved the fabric booth of Marcia Derse. Her fabric is commercially printed yardage of her original hand dyed creations. Gorgeous. Had to get some of that, for sure! At the Fun Quilts booth, I met Weeks Ringle, half of the husband/wife team behind the fabulous modern quilts they are famous for. She was selling quilt kits, and one of them really caught my eye...it was her modern fresh design done in Marcia Derse's fabrics. Yep. Had to buy that, too. Perfect colors for the cabin. Speaking of the cabin, I told Marcia how I loved her studio that just appeared in the latest issue of Studio Magazine, and that we had just finished building one of our own. She told me to send her photos and she would forward them to the magazine...how fun! I was looking forward to coming back home and getting some sewing done. But....I think I picked up a cold bug at the quilt show along with all the inspiration. By Monday night I was feeling a bit under the weather. Tuesday morning I had scheduled a PDT (Photodynamic Therapy) treatment for the AK (pre-cancerous spots) on my face. Since I had a squamous cell cancer removed this summer, the small spots needed to be taken care of. This procedure involved a medicine applied to my face, a two hour "soak in" wait, and a 17 minute bake under a blue light. By Tuesday night, my face was on fire, swollen, and my cold was in full force. Fast forward to Thursday night, I am still coughing, and look like I am ready to trick and treat - no mask needed. Miserable is an understatement. All I can do is sit in my red chair, watch HGTV, drink water, and knit. Just garter stitch...no energy to do anything too fussy. The above shot is what I have made since Tuesday. The two bigger cloths are hand towels. Not sure if this is a great idea, but I will find out. More knots, of course. I think my big mistake was telling my daughter that "I don't get many colds anymore. I think older people are more immune." Well, I guess the cold-giving gremlins heard me and decided to give me a doozy. Hopefully the face will decide to get a bit less scary looking and I can maybe sleep through the night without coughing. Jerilynn