kayray.org

I just finished Chloe’s Herringbone quilt and I’m so proud of it. She chose the fabric when she was up here visiting a month or two ago — a lovely set of flannel prints from the Missouri Star Quilt Company. I chose a nice creamy herringbone flannel for the background fabric, and an extra-thick cotton batting so it would be heavy and comforting. The borders and binding are some black kona cotton I had hanging around and the backing is 90″ premium muslin as usual. I quilted big free oak leaves all over it, which was both fun and challenging! I’m still not sure how I managed to maneuver that enormous heavy thing through my tiny Featherweight 221. :) The quilting took several days because a) it was so tiring that I could only work for an hour or two at a time and b) I’ve had a mild migraine for 11 days which gets a bit worse in the early afternoon.

Finished quilt is 70″ x 82″

Photos!

Recipe time! I make tabbouleh/tabouli a lot in summer. I don’t care for parsley so I make mine with spinach. Also I never have mint. Who has mint? So no mint in mine. This recipe makes a nice big container.

Kara’s Tabbouleh

2 c bulgur wheat (check the rice or international section of your store)
2 c water
4 handfuls baby spinach
2-3 tomatoes
2-3 scallions or 1/4 onion
1/2 c lemon juice (maybe 2 lemons worth)
1/4 c olive oil
salt

Microwave the wheat and water together for 5 minutes, stir, and let it cool.

Chop the tomatoes, spinach, and onion. Stir into the cooled wheat, then mix in the olive oil, lemon juice, and salt to taste. Fridge it for a while to let the flavours blend, then eat eat eat. You can, of course, adjust the quantities of everything as you like. Yummmmmmmmm.

I finished Em’s quilt!

She chose this pack of 10″ flannel squares from my stash (“Lil’ Sprouts” from http://missouriquiltco.com), and she decided she wanted big plain squares with a scalloped border. We laid out all the squares on the floor and she arranged them to her taste. She also sewed some of the seams! (Em will be 6 in June). I quilted a big flower in each square and rainbow shapes around the edge. The border is flannel from JoAnn’s. Cotton batting.

Remodulin update: one minor migraine last weekend, several episodes of Hot Face (so uncomfortable, feels like my face will burst into flames), painful knees, nausea, extra fatigue, weird temperature issues — I feel way too hot or way too cold almost all the time. Quite tolerable!

I had an appointment with my pulmonologist up at UCSF on Monday, and he convinced me to try increasing my dose of Remodulin one more time and to have another right heart cath done — they’ll put a catheter in my heart and look around and measure the pressures in there. (I’ve had this done many times and it sounds worse than it is.) He thinks there’s a tiny TINY chance that, with a little more Remodulin in my system, they *might* be able to fix the hole in my heart, which *might* lessen my symptoms somewhat and give me a little more time. Don’t get all excited, it’s a very very very slim chance.

So I cranked my pump up one notch yesterday (to 0.04 mL/hour, which equates to 32 ng/kg/min at my weight) and now I’m waiting for the hideous side effects to set in… I will probably have several weeks of near-constant migraines, full body pain, and intense nausea. If I can’t handle it, I’ll need to drop back to my regular dose. We’ll see. I couldn’t handle it last time we tried this. Anyway if you don’t hear from me here for a while it means I’m lying in a dark room trying not to puke.

In other news, I finished my beautiful Voysey print “Modern T” quilt! and it’s the most beautiful thing I’ve ever seen and it is mine, mine, mine. I drew leaves and vines all over the backing and quilted from the back, which was really fun! I used a different kind of wool batting (Quilters Dream) and I think it is MUCH better than the stuff I got from JoAnn’s. Barely any fibers on the surface of the quilt after washing. I wish I’d used this better batting for Henry’s quilt, but oh well, live and learn. I also finished Suzanne’s little green lap quilt and she loves it :) :) :)

Next up: quilts for Emma Rose, Chloe, Kathy, and Lulu. I think I have enough fabric for all of them, except for the backings. I’m waiting for muslins to go on sale at JoAnn’s…

On Friday I had another bout of SVT (supra ventricular tachycardia) which was horrible horrible horrible. I was lying in my bed, reading at 5:30pm when all of a sudden my heart rate jumped to 160bpm and my o2 dropped to 84% — and I was using my supplemental oxygen at 5lpm at the time! It was awful. I waited 20 minutes to see if it would clear up (as instructed last time) but it didn’t so Marcos drove me to the ER.

They fiddled around for a while but when they decided it really was SVT they gave me the magical drug adenosine, which flatlines you for a moment so your heart can reboot. Wild, huh? I felt instantly fine again, just tired. They would ordinarily send a patient home at that point but because of all my other underlying stuff they kept me overnight for observation. I demanded that they remove both IVs and all the electrodes (because of the adhesive allergy) and they complied! I also informed them that I had brought all my own medication and that I would be dosing myself — and they complied without even much of a fuss! So that eliminated both of the major Hospital Headaches.

(The usual medication routine in a hospital is they take away all my meds and then give them back to me on THEIR schedule, which is different than MY schedule. Also my meds are so complicated that I always catch them making a mistake, and it’s stressful needing to monitor them.)

So then I was back home again by Saturday night, after waiting four hours between when the cardiologist said I could go home and when my discharge papers finally arrived. *eyeroll*

I’ve also had a little cold, so I didn’t get any sewing done for the last couple of days. But I think today I might have enough energy to sew a little bit! I’m working on two quilts at the moment: a green and white throw for my therapist and a beautiful quilt for ME which is made out of the most beautiful fabric! I will write about all that another time, but here’s a couple photos to whet your appetite: