Time to get back to the blog

It's been a long time!  I have been stitching but life got in the way, not in a good way, but things are looking up.  First the fun stuff:

I needed some new placemats, so I put together some odds and ends left over from other projects and made these:

These are 12" X 18" so plenty big enough to hold a plate, glass and utensils with lots of room left over.    Other placemats were just too small but these are great!

Next, the Gnomes BOM.  I am keeping up to date with these cute guys.  Here are the last three:

These are the April, May and June blocks, July was released today, so another one to play with.  I really enjoy working on these.  Only four more to go in the series.

And the Buttermilk Basin BOM.  I have kept up with these, too and am waiting for the next one to be released in a couple weeks.  

I love the prim look and these have been fun, too.  I love quilts with houses.  It is fun to pick through all my little scraps to see what I can put together to make the blocks.

My Grandmother's Spools quilt is coming along.  Here are close ups of the quilting in the blocks.

I have two rows left to quilt before starting on the borders.  I like how this one is looking.  

Our Blue Knights motorcycle club conference was a big hit.  That was about three weeks ago.  People from California, Arizona, Colorado, Texas, Oklahoma, Arkansas, New Jersey and a few other state attended along with a few people from Canada.  The weather was HOT but everyone enjoyed themselves.  The quilt I made for the raffle was a huge hit.  Lots of chances went into the bucket for it and it was won by Blue Knights from Taos, NM so it stayed in the state.  

I enjoyed making this one, it was perfect for our theme for the conference.  Scenic Route 66 with motorcycles on the back.  I had fun fussy cutting the centers for the diamonds in the borders.   It is the kind of fabric I see and wonder what it could be used for, this was a perfect pattern to show off the scenic fabric.

That is about all the quilty stuff for a while.  We remodeled our master bathroom, that took a while with some scheduling conflicts for us and the workers but it is done.  I looked for photos of it, but couldn't find them.  It looks a lot like the other bathroom except, we ripped out the tub and put in a large walk-in shower.  So nice!

Now, for the life stuff.  At the end of April I went in for my routine annual mammogram.  This one did not come back normal.  After three mammograms, an ultra sound and a biopsy I was told I had breast cancer.  No symptoms, just happened to catch it really early with the mammogram.  After lots of doctor visits and an MRI, I had surgery on Tuesday to remove the tiny lump and three lymph glands.  That was an experience I hope never to repeat!  I am feeling much better now, it is amazing what a difference five days post surgery can make.  I was really lucky, it is the most common type of breast cancer there is, it appears to be totally encapsulated and hopefully when the pathology report comes back it will not show up in the lymph glands.  We are very hopeful that they got it all.  After I have about a month to heal from surgery, I will see the medical oncologist to discuss chemo options, then later in the fall I will see the radiation oncologist to discuss radiation treatment.  The surgery removes the cancer, the chemo treats the entire body for any cells that may have escaped the site and radiation treats the breast area so hopefully it never comes back there.  It has been a scarey few months but hope the worst is over.  

So, the take away is don't skip those annual mammograms, they can be beneficial in revealing a problem and getting it taken care of early before it gets to be a much worse problem.

That catches things up and I hope to keep more up to date again with blogging.  I was reading what everyone has been doing, just couldn't get myself to comment much.  I will try to do better!

Keep working on those wonderful projects, I really enjoy seeing what you are all making!