Does anybody want to see my X-rays?

A bit of an update. 

First how about an X-ray of my new ankle joint. Pretty cool hey?   

It is called a Hintegra. My sister Sharon has named it Mankle - and my quilt peeps call it my Frankenfoot. 

I am getting better - slowly. I am still in my boot!  But the pain is much better this past week or so.  I have been experiencing a bit of pain - not as much as the last surgery,  but most of the pain - of course - occurs at 2 AM!  

But I am seeing a light at the end of this tunnel - unfortunately when sleep doesn't come at night the days are not that productive. But fortunately there is the OLYMPICS!!!  

CBC has a wonderful iPad app that make it possible to watch all kinds of Olympic events - Live - when I am awake at 2 AM.  The Women's curling team is amazing!  All the Canadian athletes are doing a wonderful job to represent!  

The CBC app for the iPad has so many streaming videos and with the 12 hour time difference there is lot to watch in the wee hours of the morning! 

So that is mostly what I have been up to for the past few weeks. Trying to heal my new Mankle and watching the Olympics. I have one book of short stories I am reading - slowly - I find my concentration is not great right now. But I'm starting to " Look on the bright side of Life". 

Loon Lake

                     

 Loon Lake 2013.   The credit for this photo goes to Dianne - it is from Instagram

In November I was able to go to my annual quilting retreat at Loon Lake.  This is one of my favourite quilting get aways!  Although I have another little get away with my quilting peeps in the early spring where a very small group of us go to Mayne Island - MIR. But that is another post.

The Loon Lake retreat is run and organized by Krista - of Poppyprints fame. She has been organizing this retreat as well as the day long QBTB retreats for a number of years. And I have been lucky enough to have been going to her retreats almost as long as she has been doing them - but not quite!   Krista's retreat organizing skills are amazing! 

Interestingly enough I was first introduced to Krista's retreats by my husband!  Of course!   Jim was driving back from the village store one Saturday afternoon and he saw a sign at the village hall that said Quilting Retreat.  He - of course - parked the car - walked into the hall and said "My wife is a quilter". Haha. So the ladies at the retreat said - tell her to come up and say hello!  So Jim rushed home and told me I had to go up to the hall and see the quilters!  So off I went and I discovered there were a number of women from my quilt guild there as well as many people I had seen at the local quilt shop.  I chatted a bit and then went home. And then, a few months later Krista had an empty spot that she needed to fill and she thought of me - I was thrilled and I've met the most wonderful group of women over the past 7-8 years. Krista will have a QBTB once every other month or so and I have attended almost all QBTB since that first invite.   Even in a cast and a wheelchair last January I popped up for a visit.

One of my first photos of QBTB - June 2006

Bowen Island Retreat - 2007  

Bowen Island Retreat - 2009 - Show and Tell - Krista and Dianne

Then Krista decide to try her hand at expanding to a weekend retreat. The first few years  the November long weekend retreats were held on Bowen Island at the CNIB Lodge there. It was a nice spot. The little village area around Snug Cove was easy walking distance and had lots of little shops for a Saturday afternoon wander.  There was a hot tub - and deer wandering the grounds around the hall. We went to Bowen Island for three years and then CNIB was making changes and a new venue needed to be found. And since then we have been going to Loon Lake.

Loon Lake - 2010

Loon Lake retreat - Sharon is the only one sewing - Marsha heading out for a walk

I have been very fortunate that life events such as broken ankles  and surgeries and grandbabies being born have all managed to present themselves in such a way that I have never had to miss a year of retreat!  Although there has been things that have tried to get in the way. Jim and I celebrated our 15th wedding anniversary at a little restaurant on Bowen Island as I was at Retreat and he felt we should do something!  Fortunately it was easy for him to walk on the ferry to Bowen Island and we had a lovely meal and I just took a few hours off from my retreating!  That was 5 years ago. This November we will be married for 20 years!

Loon lake is a really beautiful venue. Although there aren't any little shops within walking distance there are many things about Loon Lake that make it a special quilting retreat. The lodge is tucked away at the very end of a long road up into a B.C. forest - sitting right on the lake. There is a hiking trail around the lake - I hear it's a great hike but I've been dealing with some kind of ankle issue almost since we started going there. The lodge is bright and clean and kind of "wilderness lodge" like with a second floor with a big stone fireplace. The rooms are big and comfortable - all bedding and towels are provided. The staff are wonderful - the food is some of the best I've had at any retreat. The kitchen staff go out of their way to work around the many diets that are out there today - - not for me - I'll eat anything!  Especially if someone else is cooking it. 

 The second floor fireplace and sitting area

Loon Lake 2011 - lots of sewing going on!

It seems that each year a new quilter or two will come to the retreat. There are a few "regulars" that attend all the time and then for various reasons some quilters are not able to attend so new quilters come in their place It's always great to meet new quilters. The past couple of years there have been a few quilters that have come hundreds and hundreds of miles - quilters that Krista has met through her blog and Instagram.  I am fairly shy and I don't follow many of the new blogs. If you have Instagram and search #loonlakequilters you will find a bunch of photos from the last retreat.  They are a good look into what can happen at Loon Lake. 

But I enjoy the diversity of the women in the group and the amazing creativity of the new quilters - well all the quilters - that come to the retreat. The past two years there has been a quilter who is a machine quilter extrodanaire and I have been - wandering over and asking for advice - begging for help - coveting her amazing quilting. Her name is Janet and she has a blog called "What Comes Next". This year we talked about my desire for a quilting table. And I got some great ideas. That will be another post. 

I look back at all the years I have been quilting as a hobby and the quilt guild I belong to and the retreats and classes and workshops I have attended - I have met many wonderful women - and men. But I think that the women that I have formed the closest friendships with -  all of those women, I met through Krista's retreats. Maybe it was because we had those moments where we were all together in one big room - still in pyjamas in the middle of the day - sharing life events with each other - laughing and helping with band aids when a rotary cutter got to close! Or a pair of snips got accidentally impaled in an upper thigh! I'm not really a mushy person and sometimes I think I get overwhelmed a bit with it all and forget to say Thank you - but I don't know if Thank you if even enough at times. The friendships that I formed with my quilting friends goes way beyond quilting and way beyond anything. All they have done for me in the past three years. It's really been amazing!   It's really meant a lot to me. More than I could ever express.

My quilting peeps - The Friday Stitch group

Here we are at APNQ - me in a Wheel Chair with Dianne as my designated pusher!

A new Year - a new cast.

My daughter tells me that the Universe says 2014 is going to be a good year!  And that is the line I'm sticking with this year. 

It's hard to come back to this blog after being away for such a long time and so much has happened since my last post. 

I guess a brief little catch up from where I left off last January.

I came out of my cast and into a boot in last February.   I had as good of a recovery as I could from the triple arthrodesis surgery because the doctor informed us that I would need the ankle joint replaced as soon as I was ready for another surgery. 

In February I was lucky to have a wonderful visit from a blogging friend that I have been emailing and chatting with for the last five years or so.  Kim ( Stillmeadow quilting ) and her husband Tom.  It was so nice they drove all the way up from California on their way back to Minnesota.   Vancouver is not really "on the way". I was just getting out of my boot and getting mobile again so I wasn't such great company.  But Jim and I both enjoyed our first visit and hope there will be more in the future. 

Thankfully by March I was mobile enough that I was able to go to our annual Mayne Island Quilting retreat.  One of my favourite yearly get aways!  With some of my favourite bunch of quilting peeps. 

In April Jim and I put an offer on a boat. A 42ft Kadey Krogen. We had and accepted offer - had the boat hauled out and surveyed. There were some issues found on the survey and we tried to renegotiated the price. The sellers did not want to renegotiate so the offer was withdrawn and we were very disappointed. 

I was doing a bit of quilting here and there. In May I sent two Flags to Boston for  "To Boston with Love" which was started by a quilter I know here in Vancouver - Berene Campbell. She is from the QBTB retreat group of quilting peeps. It was an honor to see my flag hanging up in the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston with the hundreds and hundreds of other flags. 

At the end of May I turned 55. Still not back to work with my slowly deteriorating ankle joint.  Also the last day of May was a big day - Jim retired!  Something he had been working towards and planning for 33 years!  

In June we bought a boat!  It was the boat that we had put an offer on in April. The sellers came back about 4 weeks after the deal fell though and we renegotiated a new deal and took possession of the boat on June 1st.  That was a great retirement gift for Jim!!  

Jim and I went to Alberta in June and spent some time with the two cutest grand kids in the world!  

After returning from Alberta - Jim spent the rest the month of June doing some work and repairs on the boat. Fairly minor items but they were identified on the survey as items that needed addressing. 

Finally in July and August - right through until late October actually - we were able to go out on a few trips on our boat. She is a beautiful boat - Kadey Krogen 42 - walk around.  We named her "Phoenix Hunter". We were out for total of 6 weeks on a number of different trips. The Gulf Islands - Victoria B.C. Desolation Sound, The Discovery Islands - north of Quadra Island - Roche Harbour - for a Krog-In. It was a wonderful adventure. Not to many mishaps for novices such as us.  I enjoyed the boat because I could "do it". Very little walking required. I was I able to walk any beaches or shorelines with Jim and Jenny.  But I was still away and on the boat. 

Andrew moved home and was "sort of" living with us during the summer. We enjoyed having him and his pup - Khyber around for the short time. 

As I moved into the Fall my mobility seemed to deteriorate almost daily. I couldn't even walk to the end of our street. Going to any stores - such as Costco was impossible. By October my orthopedic surgeon put me on the wait list for the ankle replacement surgery.  So we had a very quiet Christmas. Waiting for my surgery date right after Christmas. 

January 8th I had a Total Ankle Replacement ( TAR ). So I am freshly post op and right now in the plaster cast and on crutches. The plaster cast will come off January 23 and I will go into a boot. I am allowed to weight bear but I'm not allowed to walk.  I think this recovery will be a bit easier than the last one.  When I came home from the hospital on Friday and set my self up in the bed it was like déjà vu all over again!  I sure hope this is the beginning of the end!!  

I have been do a bit of quilting. 

I made some cushions for the boat. 

So that's an update!  

Someone is sitting in my chair

I am finally starting to get past the swelling and nasty and uncomfortable nerve pain - that only took 7 weeks!

I get the purple cast removed on Thursday!! Yay. Then on to the next phase - which will probably include a new a different pain as I start putting weight on my foot. But hopefully it is a good pain -a "things are getting better pain"!

I have been up to the chair more and more. The chair is reclining but it doesn't quite work well enough to get my foot higher than my heart.

But it seems I was not out of bed early enough this morning! Somebody is sitting in MY chair! And not all that happy when I demanded she vacate!

A New Year.

Happy New Year!

I have been slowly getting better. My foot is swelling less and not turning such a deep shade of purple when it is down.

It has been a very quiet Christmas season around here - years from now when I look back on the photos I will wonder why there isn't a Christmas 2012 folder! I didn't even pull out the camera. I took a couple of pictures with my phone and that was it!

Jim has gone back to work after his Christmas break - I'm sure he is happy for the break from his Christmas break!

I have been able to be up in the chair more and more so I have been busy hand quilting the Civil War BOM quilt.

I have it in a puddle on the floor beside me and Jenny thought one day that it might be there just for her.

Merry Christmas from the West ( Wet) Coast

It has been incredibly wet and rainy here. I'm not sure if it is wetter than normal or if one wet winter blends into another wet winter.  Since I haven't left the house for three weeks I am certainly not the best judge of the weather anyway.

I am still trying to figure out the bet way to upload pictures and post to my blog from my iPad. I am still finding the most comfortable spot for me is in the bed with my foot elevated higher than my heart.  Within a few minutes of my foot being down my toes turn the same shade of purple as my cast and then the more they are down the more tingling and burning I suffer by the end of the day.

This is a picture of Jenny on a walk to Whyte lake in West Vancouver. My neighbour and walking partner took Jenny and her dog Django for a walk last week and took photos all along the way and sent me the Picasa photo album so I could enjoy the walk as they did.  That was such a wonderful thing for her to do. I go through the album often and I think every time I view it I cry.  But I know that this will end and I will be back!

A couple of pictures of Hunter and Phoenix

I am on my laptop - trying out the Picasa Blog This - which I used to use to post all the time - so I will see how it is working.  I have my laptop upstairs now and I have moved to the reclining chair in the living room - sort of -- I still get a lot of swelling in my foot and my cast is quite snug and I don't have a lot of room for swelling so my foot really needs to be elevated most of the time. 

These a couple of pictures of Hunter and Phoenix that were taken this fall at a farm close to where they live. 

Hunter is doing great.  He is so sharp - he just doesn't miss a thing!  He turned 4 years old last April.  He just had tubes put in his ears the beginning of December.  He is just a sweetie and Jessica says he is really growing up.   He wears the glasses to correct a bit of cross eye - and he used to just pull them off and throw them as far as his little arms could throw.  He has lost a pair or two.  When I was there in July we were running around a park in Jessica's neighbourhood and she said -- Where are Hunter's glasses?  I panicked and spent 20 minutes searching the ground where we were playing - and then decided to look a little higher - and there they were dangling from an inside branch on a bush - thank heavens I found them!!  But now he is keeping them on more often than not.

 

Phoenix is such a cutie - and she looks a lot like her mother!  And she is chatting up a storm!  She is a very determined little girl - much like her mother - and her brother.  She just turned 3 in November.  Her and Hunter will only be one school year apart.  I think it is so wonderful they are so close in age. 



This is a small quilt - I can't remember the exact size - 24inchs by 20 inches or so.  There was a challenge in my quilt guild - "In the Gloaming"  We were given two fat quarters of fabric - the black batik and the blue batik.  

" A Wound with a View"

 

This was a challenge for me.  I used a photo ( the photo below) that I had taken with a photo app on my phone.  The photo was taken from our deck one evening - as I had been on the deck with my broken ankle most of the summer - 2011.  Hence the name. 

I used all of the batik fabric as one piece for the to foreground and then the blue fabric plus a lighter blue fabric for the sky.  I had to make a line drawing of the photo and then enlarge it in sections and then I traced it on to fusible Steam a Seam.  I did a bit of thread painting for the moon and then used my friend Dianne's Shiva Paint sticks to blend the blue sky and add a bit of glow to the orange sunset.  I think if I did it again I would change a few things in the sky and the sunset but otherwise I was pleased with the result - and I won a ribbon for the challenge!  Yay!  

 

I am going to try to do a bit more blogging - as I don't really have much as to do! 

The Lion Finally Sleeps Tonight

So now I am testing the blogger app for my phone - which apparently doesn't work on the iPad.

Today is Jim's birthday. He is 56 today. And today is my parents 56 th wedding anniversary. Happy Anniversary mum and dad!!!
Poor Jim is stuck spending his birthday with me - in my state. I can't even go out and buy him a card. :((. He says its alright but...... Anyway there is nothing I can do about it. He has invited a friend over for a Ploughmans lunch and a pint of his home made English bitter. He has been saving a nice piece of Stilton just for today.

He has been working very hard at all the various household tasks. He took the first two weeks of my recovery off work as I was basically on bed rest. Although I found it didn't hurt as much as Holly had exclaimed! Thank goodness for that. Holly - the orthopedic surgeon's receptionist had scared the stuffing out of me. Although it did hurt a lot and now my big toe is numb and tingly.

I am going to try to post a couple of quilt photos. The quilt is "The Lion Finally Sleeps Tonight". It is a quilt I made for Eric. I upload the pictures from my phone but I can't see where they have gone. So I am not sure what will happen when I publish this post.

My Left foot is --- purple

It's been a bit of a time of it!  Well mostly I haven't posted because I have been mainly working off my iPad and most of my photos are on my computer. So that's my excuse.

I am trying out posting from blogger on the iPad. This will be a bit of a test.

After returning from our latest boating adventure I had a big surgery on my left foot.

I had  -  are you ready for it-----
1. Arthroscopy and micro fracture of the ankle joint
2. Triple arthrodesis
3.  Calcaneal osteotomy
4. Bone graft
5. Gastrocnemius slide.

I was in plaster cast for two weeks and yesterday it was removed and all the various staples and sutures were removed and I got this nice purple cast - kind of matches the colour of my purple toes. I am doing quite well - all things considered. Although it has required a fair amount of medication to maintain my wellness.

I have been quilting. And if I like the way this blog post turns out I may try posting again. I am on crutches ( again) for the next 6-8 weeks. Depends on how long it takes for these poor bones to heal.

So we will see what happens when I press publish.....

Orca's

We had another fun trip up to Desolation Sound in September. Saw a small pod of Orca's around the Copeland Islands

Prideaux Haven is now a new favorite place.

I am trying out a new blog app for my phone - so thus is a test.

Jim is not an Orca!  I can't quite figure out the photo upload in this app -- Jim and I went swimming in Prideaux Haven.

A bit of a Video–taken by a bit of an amateur !!!!

Not a great video but it shows a bit of our adventure!

Up Toba Inlet and back to Prideaux Haven

 

Toba Inlet is a very pretty little inlet just north of West Redonda Island.  We had quite the grey and overcast start to the morning but it got much brighter in the afternoon. 

 

 

Jim got to  have a little break from the steering as I took the wheel for awhile. There is a LOT of water up there and it is very – VERY deep and I was pretty sure I wouldn’t hit anything – and I was right!

We didn’t travel too far up Toba Inlet before we turned around and went back down Homfray Channel – which is on the west side of West Redonda Island.  Our plan was to just go up Toba Inlet as far as we wanted – there isn’t really anywhere to anchor at the end of the Inlet.  We were off to spend another night at Prideaux Haven – we were going to try to anchor in Melanie Cove. 

We saw some pictographs on the rock walls in Homfray Channel.

 

The sun came out and the water was flat calm in Homfray Channel.   Such a beautiful day!

 

 

Approaching Prideaux Haven – a much different day than the first day we went there in the drizzling rain and fog.

 

We did not get to go into Melanie Cove – it was full of sailboats – so we ended up in the same spot as the previous day.

Once we were set up and anchored Jim decided we needed to take the little dingy out for a spin about.

 

I didn’t take the camera with me in the dingy – not sure if it was sea-worthy – and I’m still not sure!  It required frequently bailing!! It even came with a little plastic bailing jug!  But we went around the shoreline and looked at all the oyster beds. 

 

 

Back on the boat – plotting tomorrow’s route.

And the end to another day of our adventure ---as the evening sun is casting long shadows and reflections in the water.