retiredteacher09

Iceblossom: I hope you feel better soon.

joe’smom: It sounds like a good idea to try both.

Carol in WI

Iceblossom, I also pray that you recover quickly and have more energy. I am impressed with all your accomplishments even while feeling poorly.

Joe's mom...I'm anxious to see how your black works too. That is the exciting part of following along - to see all the creative variations. The friend that I'm making this MQ for will shop for her own fabric, so most will not come from my stash and will not be scrappy.

SusieQOH

I agree - it's so much fun to see what everyone does. My problem is I always like what I see better than mine LOL

origamigoldfish

I bought the kit from quilted twins, a big part of doing the mystery quilts for me is limiting my design choices so I can focus on technique. This time of year is extremely busy for me at work, and I just don't have time or the motivation to agonize over dozens of tiny design decisions about color and fabric pattern with each step. The kit came in half-yard cuts, so not as scrappy as the kit I worked from last year. Too gloomy to get a photo today, but I have a nice range of patterns across the colors. I need to press everything and get it ready.

I am spending today burying thread tails on the throw I made from all the extra pieces we cut out for last year's frolic. Hoping to get it bound tomorrow and finished before I start on grassy creek!

Iceblossom

Nice to see you here again Origami, I loved your border last time.

Thank you all for the well wishes, long form is I have a lot of issues, one of the newer ones is I have a knee that needs an operation. Short form is I think this is just the reasonable response to my chronic insomnia. I see a sleep specialist, I don't have sleep apnea. "Sleep hygiene" works well for some people but not so much for people like me. One of the big rules is that bed is only for sleeping, if you aren't sleeping you need to get out of bed.

Unfortunately for me I think the rule needs to be "be as comfortable as you can be for a 6-8 hour period so that your body can rest even if you are not asleep" and that is the path I've been trying to take for the last year or two. But the conditioning is still strong that if I'm awake I should get up and stagger through my day. I take gabapentin to improve the quality of what sleep I get, I'm taking other supplements prescribed by my specialist (l-theanine and magnesium). These spells are just my bodies way of telling me it really needs a break, whatever my will or mind may think... My mind/depression issues are just fine right now which is a big help. I'm pretty happy considering my physical limitations right now.

Most of us know what short term lack of sleep does to us. Makes us grumpy/emotional among other things. I've gotten 4 hours per 24 or so for decades (the rules for torture say less than 4 hours uninterrupted sleep time is considered cruel and inhumane). It's just not good for any of us to have me shaky and wobbling and distracted out of the road, but I can get a lot done in short increments staying at home -- lockdown really isn't much different than my "normal" pre-covid life...

Talked a little in this thread about how I try to plan things in small chunks, 15 minutes is my usual start goal. Up to 2 hours and even if I'm having fun and doing well I need to change what I'm doing.
First thread. Fibromyalgia, hands

joe'smom

Iceblossom, I end up with about 4-5 hours sleep per night, too, but it is self-inflicted due to bad habits. I want to improve my sleep habits (at least, I tell myself I do), but thus far I haven't succeeded in getting myself to bed earlier consistently so as to break out of the current pattern. On the occasional night I do better, I just lie awake until my normal time of falling asleep.

I had decided that my grays would represent gray skies, which was a more appealing idea to me than asphalt. The black neutrals could represent a blacktop country road (which I guess is quite similar to asphalt, but it sounds more picturesque, LOL).

sewingpup

i am another one with poor sleep habits....I have fibromyalgia and a variety of age related aches and pains....I bought an electric recliner when I had my rotator cuff surgery and it is pretty comfortable. I just woke up at 5 and I was in my recliner after falling asleep after the news last night...ummm....I do try to make it to bed sometimes...I usually sleep i a couple of hours then will lay awake for an hour or two and then fall asleep for a few more hours....at least now that I am retired, I don't worry about the lack of sleep as much and I have been known to nod off during the day too....walking helps but now that we just got another 6 inches of snow and I live on a narrow street without sidewalks and folks go well over the 30 mph they are supposed to go...I will not be walking much. I am still on the fence about doing the mystery...my dog is sick and I am supposed to give him 11 pills per day...it was rough the first day...then I got him to take them the next three days and yesterday....I could not get him to take any of them....I tried liver sausage, cheese, pill pockets, cream cheese, and hot dogs, mixing the nummy covered pills in a little dog food, feeding them to him like treats....he would take whatever they were wrapped in, then with surgical precision, extract the pill, spit it out and eat the rest. I tried opening his mouth and putting them in as far as they would go....that did not work either It is serious and he is supposed to take these pills for 14 days....I will call the vet tomorrow for any suggestions.

toverly

Has anyone else pulled so many colorways from their stash that now they have no idea what they will do? As I have gone thru my stash it started with fall color, morphed into brights, then pastels. But I would really like beach colors. Of course that requires more fabric. Maybe that's why I want to do it.

Iceblossom

I hope you figure out the pill situation with your pup. One of my last dogs, Sandy, just was so suspicious about everything, we could not get her to take pills at all. Even pills designed to be flavored for dogs.

Buddy, my itchy dog, he's a chow hound and eats everything, but he takes Apoquel daily and used to have other meds as well. We are able to use little bits of American cheese for him wrapped around the pill, actually all three dogs get cheese every day after breakfast.

When we got Sandy, she was 3 years old and not house broken... Buddy is house broken but would be naughty and get into trash and stuff if left alone, so we got a kennel for them. For potty training, you put them in the kennel for half an hour after eating then let them out and encourage them for "potty on demand". Whenever they go into the kennel, like if we leave the house, they get a few cat treats (those Pounce things). Silly dogs, they look to see if we put our shoes on and they run into the kennel for treat time now!

One of our current dogs is a bit suspicious about treats, he's not the just gulp down anything kind of dogs... but we think we can hide stuff in the daily cheese treat if we have to. Sandy never did. Unfortunately, she passed about this time last year. Was just talking to the hubby that this has been such a long year and the two "new" dogs seem like they have been here forever, but it was just January before Covid hit that we got them.

vadalia

Not sure I'll be joining in, as "busy" quilts with lots of tiny pieces usually aren't my thing, but I will take any excuse to play with fabric choices and color design. I'm fine with most of her color choices except 1) I hate orange, and 2) like a lot of people, I don't have that much grey fabric. However, she did say we could take inspiration from our own homes so I think I'll do that. I live in one of the Great Lake states so lots of blue would be a fitting swap out for all that grey. And I could see possibly substituting grey back in for that loathed orange.