Housebound

I'm finally starting to feel better. I've been sick with a cold and sore throat for the past nine days. Sniffly, sore throat, runny nose, achy, coughing, generally feeling very yucky. It really hit me hard, and I've been pretty much glued to the sofa for the past week.

It has not been much fun, but I won't complain about it, as I know everyone has gone through this. The worst part is that I missed my guild's annual quilt retreat. That is three days when we go out of town, stay in a motel there, and sew to our heart's content in a conference room which we turn into a sewing "factory." No cooking, no housework, no making beds. It's always so much fun, and a time to get a lot of sewing done. One of my favorite parts is seeing everyone else's projects. So that was a big bummer, to miss that.

The good news is that I survived (!) and MisterStitches took good care of me. KittyStitches actually had the nerve to enjoy my being sick, as I generally had a lap for her.

I was able to do some things, though. I read a lot, and I did a lot of hand sewing. I recently showed you the hexagon Grandmother's Flower Garden designs I'm working on here. When I started these, I was brand new to it, and wasn't sure I wanted to sign up for a whole quilt. But I needed some kind of a project.

So I joined two flowers together with a ring around them, then added another ring all the way around that. I filled in the corners a little bit until it was about the size of a placemat. My plan is to quilt this, then trim it up and bind it into a placemat.

Here you can see three of the placemat shapes I've done. In the photo just above I've removed papers from some of the green hexagons, but not all of them. That's why it looks like there are two different colors of green. I've actually completed four placemat tops, and am close to done with number five. I love sewing these little hexagons together!

Now I'll tell you what I've been reading.

First of all, I finished reading Vanity Fair, which had taken me a very long time to read, since it's such a big book. Really. Big. Book. 1800's England, society, family life, society, hierarchies, society.

Then I picked up Sarah's Key, which I had bought a few weeks ago. I was so glad to have finished Vanity Fair so I could get on to reading another book! Sarah's Key is a great book, very moving. It went back and forth between present-day New York/Paris and Paris under Nazi occupation. I highly recommend it.

And just today I picked up this little book and read it through. Heaven is for Real is the true story of a 4-year-old boy who almost died with a burst appendix. After his recovery, he starts talking about seeing God and visiting heaven, with amazing detail for a child that young. It's very interesting, too.