Dear Jane Retreat

I've been away most of last week to the Dear Jane Quilt Retreat in Shipshewana, Indiana. It is always a fun time to see old friends and to make new ones. On the way to the retreat, I stopped at a quilt exhibit by 3 friends at Goshen College in Goshen, IN.

The exhibit was a nice mixture of old quilts:

And new quilts:

There was definitely a lot of talent displayed in that room.

As you can see, it says we were at a conference. It sort of makes it sound like we were actually doing something constructive, doesn't it?

We shopped at Yoders.
We shopped at Lollys. Downstairs there was more fabric and fishing for fat quarters in the boat.


After all of the shopping, eating, and sewing we packed up and headed for home making plans to do it all over again next time. I'll upload more photos on my webshots page soon.

My Best Friend is Sick

This is my best friend, Mr. Kitty. He has been sneezing and generally not feeling well, so I took him to the vet last Wednesday. He was dehydrated and had a 104.5 fever which is pretty high for a cat. He has also lost a little over 4 pounds since last year's visit. So my options were to take him home with oral antibiotics or to leave him there at the animal hospital until they could hydrate him intravenously and give him iv antibiotics. I decided it would be best to leave him there. The vet ran blood tests and found that he has an overactive thyroid. He was there for 2 days, and he came home on Friday morning. He seems to be doing a lot better, but it has been a trick to get him to eat. His nose is still pretty stuffed up, and the food has to be really stinky for him to show interest in it.

These are blankets I've made to donate to Project Linus. I say that I made these blankets, but they are fleece that I've bought, and used my trusty new rotary cutter tool to perforate the edges of the fleece, and then I crochet a border around the edges. I've found some really cute kid prints, and the crocheting around the edge is great TV work. I love knitting, but I've crocheted for about 40 years, and I can do that a lot faster.

These are preemie hats that I make and donate to Newborns in Need. There are about 200 preemies born in this county every month. I have a tiny circular needle that I knit these hats on, and I usually carry it in my purse with some yarn.

Time for Mr. Kitty's medicine. More tomorrow.