MUCH better

I’ve clawed my way out of the pit of self-pity today, and I’ve been sitting up much of the day! I finished the basic hand-sewing on a project that had baffled me in the hospital — a patchwork puzzle ball — and I’m SO glad to have figured it out.

I’m making little handmade decorative balls to put in a bowl by our front door so that the girls will be allowed to play with the decorating. Currently what’s in that bowl just isn’t friendly to a home with small children. So I found this book:

and the templates to go with it and I’ve made three so far. I hope to have about 7 or so in the bowl, and then I can change them out seasonally if I wanna. But they’re SO easy and fun to make… I took supplies and pre-cut fabrics to make two of them in the hospital, including the one on the cover of the book. It’s one of the smallest balls in the book — about 2-1/2″ in diameter — but the instructions weren’t really complete, I found. I tried several times while on morphine to figure it out, but kept getting something that would have been shaped like a fish when I turned it right-side out, so I gave up and packed it away until I was off the drugs. Figured it out today, and started stuffing it! Yay!

The other one, a design with hexagons and squares, proved to be much simpler — I got it put together during two episodes of Trading Spaces or While You Were Out or something similar while I was in morphine lockup. The nurses were funny — I did a lot of (very slow) knitting, and when I was working on the puzzle balls they’d come in and say, “What are you making NOW?!” I already had the rep of being Crafty, since my nurse the first full day discovered that I was a scrapbooker. So when I just kept pulling out more activities I guess it amused them.

Anyway. Glad to be feeling better, and I KNOW my family is glad. I feel like I’ve been living under a cloud of unhappiness for the last few weeks, and I’m sorry for that.

I’m baaaaaaaaack! And I’m NOT ON DRUGS ANYMORE!!!! WOOWOOOOOOOOO!!!!!!