This week has not been a very productive week, and not all of them can be. We all live life, and life gets in the way. This week the hives have showed up. Amazingly they were not bad. And I am so thankful they seem to be gone. I am not gonna lie, the last time I had the hives I was bedridden with them and vowed to go to the doctor right away when they present themselves. This time I had very little itching, and the histamine reaction was low for swelling.
But, being on 24 hour allergy medicine knocks me out. And the doc said to take two 24 hour in one day. I might as well have taken bendryl because that knocks me out but for a shorter amount of time. Through my hiving, I continued to work, only missing an hour and a half for the doc appointment. As successful as this flair was, the doctor told me the stuff I had this time can affect my organs and to make sure I do not have any throat swelling shut!!! He said I really needed to figure out what caused them.
Since I am a creature of habit, the process of elimination was very easy this time. I believe it was something I ate. Last Saturday I made brownies. After mentioning this in my discord server, the ladies ooooed and ahhhhed over my picture. I made a brownie post on my other blog, the cook book project. If you are interested in that recipe, make sure to click the link and make some for yourself.
I have made brownies from scratch around 4 times. This involves a higher than normal amount of cocoa powder than cake which I also make from scratch. The whole pan of brownies was gone by Tuesday morning. Since I don’t make these often, I induldged. I do believe I am allergic to the cocoa powder. I have no other symptoms yet. After looking at the cocoa powder, it had expired 3 years ago. After looking into “does cocoa powder go bad” the answer I got was no. But I think it does. You cannot believe everything on the internet. And because this is a nut or bean that is processed to death, I believe I had a reaction to the high alkali content. I was telling mom when I cooked them on the stovetop, the alkali stained my stainless steel. Turned the pan blue. My mom used to work in a bakery and I was telling her it blued my pan, and she said the cocoa powder was probably good stuff!
Brownies was the only different food I had eaten all week. All of my creams, cosmetics, soaps, detergents, and “beauty” regiment had not changed. Although there was some new gold bond cream that I had been trying out, but had used that for over a week before the hives showed up. I suppose the brownies could have raised my alkalinity enough to react with the lotion???? As the week got farther from my last brownie, the hives disappeared.
So, as life came back to normal, the sewing commenced!
I dug around in my projects determined to get going on this.
And I almost forgot why this became a UFO, I could have sworn it was for lack of fabric in the triangle settings since this was on point. But low and behold as a dug through the bin, I had plenty of fabric. But that fabric just did not speak to me. I have decided to take a scan of these blocks on a copy machine and upload it to spoonflower to fill in the setting triangles. Because I am on a no buy fabric diet, this went back into its bin until next year.
In digging around in the bin, I found the backing for this, as well as several large pieces of white fabrics. Even a lovely gradient I had purchased thinking that would be what those triangles needed. I also found some vintage feedsack fabric in the bin. These bloomers I made eons ago and wore them out. And then they quit fitting. My grandmother was still alive when I raided her small fabric stash. There was half a yard of each print. Not enough to make shorts of one color. So I made each side a different color and contrasted the gathered fabric too. These are so soft, and because the fabric was from my grandmother, I cannot get rid of them. Eventually these shorts will end up in a quilt!
As disappointed as I was to put this away, I got out yet another project bin. Spinning 9 patch it is!
And when I got this out, I realized I used up all of my green bar fabric for other quilts and have very little left. This quilt needs the blocks homogenized so the spin shows up. So I grouped them by color which seemed to do the trick. I will eventually sew some greens to go around the perimeter of this. I think this will work.
When the design wall is full and you need a photo op, who says sewcialites2 cannot photo bomb the spinning 9 patch? hehe
That was last weeks block. And here is this weeks block…
The above block was designed by Doug Leko and I just LOVE IT! This looks complicated, but it is just some folded corners over some rectangles and some flying geese, with a pinwheel HST. I can just imagine a whole quilt made with this pattern. Perhaps this will make my new bucket list page on my pinterest board. Yes, when I have started to get inspired by all the quilty pretty things out there, I made a bucket list for quilting. No, I cannot share it, because I have made that board private.
Additionally, this week I was gifted two major patterns, the Dear Jane book, and the Tula Butterfly pattern. There is currently a sew along going on with the Tula Butterfly. As much as I want to dive into that, I am holding off.
I look forward to making both of these and maybe as a reward for getting some UFOs done I will dive into these makes. The Tula pattern since I Have no Tula fabric, I will have to plan big for the fabrics I have. I am thinking of a theme with the monarch butterfly. So blacks, yellows, oranges and whites….there is a coloring page for this pattern so I will probably play with that quite a bit and may totally reassign colors within the blocks. Believe it or not, this pattern is not hard at all if you just take it one block at a time.
Not feeling good today, feels like I have the flu. Others in the house are sick too. Hopefully I will get some sewing done. Thanks for stopping by and reading my blog!
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