BOMs Away - Neptune's Gift and Sage & Sea Glass

 

Welcome to the Link-up for BOMs Away Mondays!

Where we share what we're doing on a BOM type project
so they don't stall out in UFO-land!
(Linky at the bottom)

I finished the 16 smaller flying geese arcs for my Neptune's Gift BOM:

And I got a good bit of work done for Sage & Sea Glass. This week was slotted for attention to Bag 3 of this BOM. That work is to put together 100 cream patches that have 3 greens in them on the diagonal. 

When I have a large number of repetitive patches to make, I do them in batches of 20 at a time, and add the next batch as I go to the next seam. So once I'm well into the process, I'll have 20 at seam one + 20 at seam two + 20 at seam 3, and so on. You get to start smaller than the whole job, and then after going full steam a while, you get to taper down so that when you start to weary of the entire set, your work gets shorter and shorter. It sustains me through tedious portions of patchwork.

While I was working on Bag 3, I was also doing the connecting work of Bags 1 and 2. I love the resulting patches! They're so much prettier than their parts, but they also look like Siamese kitty faces with gigantic ears.

But I only got about 2/3 through the process of this week's BOM work. Not because I wearied of it, but because Marissa and I took advantage of the beautiful weather to visit the site she and her fiancé have chosen for their wedding at the beginning of June. 

We wanted to count all the posts and columns, and get measurements of the spacing so we can plan out the swags and bows and greenery pieces she'd like to decorate with. You can't use tape, and everything has to be up, ceremony performed, and down within the 2 hour reservation they have. And the only thing you're allowed to put down on the ground or toss at the couple (because of the lake and wildlife) is real rose petals. So then we came back to the house and dug out all our stashes of silk flowers, gauzes, ribbons, baskets, votif stands/jars, etc., so she could see which things work with her color and style scheme. There's a definite advantage to being the youngest of three girls in a family that has plenty of storage space to keep decorations from former weddings and celebrations! We have gaps in the plans that will need some purchases, but not very many. Mainly just the right color of ribbons for big post bows on the gazebo and in table decorations, and a few more flowers in a particular color.

Through it all, I was gritting my teeth half the time and trying not to burst out with too many "Bloody Hell!"s - Scott laughs at me, because when I'm in a ton of pain, that's my release valve. I still maintain that since we're not British, that is not technically cursing. <snort>

I finally got my first COVID jab on Wednesday. It made me feel sedated almost immediately, and I took a 5 hour nap. Felt basically fine all Thursday and Friday, and then Saturday all the lymph nodes in that armpit and breast and neck started filling up and getting painful. From that evening, all through Sunday, I felt like a Cookie Cutter Shark was attached on my armpit/breast and would not let go, and that it was all angrily infected (describing the feeling, not the actual state). Fortunately, this morning the nodes are subsiding. Now it's only mildly irritating. I think I'll give my body one more day to concentrate on immune system work, and tomorrow I'll get back to my daily walking "therapy" plan. (Which is a very leisurely .2-mile stroll, trying to get my body capable of exercising again.)

People keep asking me about deciding to get vaccinated, so:

Yes, I had full-blown COVID back in October. I was lucky and did not have to be hospitalized, but I did have to do 4 weeks of heavy duty steroids. And yes, I have Lupus (which means my immune system is all whacked out) - and is quite likely the reason I've been dealing with Long-COVID problems ever since. I chose to do the vaccine for three reasons: 

1) Re-infections keep popping up, and cardiologists do not trust that self-immunity lasts longer than six months; 

2) COVID in the wild keeps mutating, and I don't trust that whatever immunity I may have gotten will work for the newer strains (the vaccines are designed to target the stable portion of the molecule, not the pieces that mutate); 

3) About 20-23% of studied Longhaulers report that doing the vaccination greatly improved their symptoms 1-2 weeks afterward. Only 3% reported worsening, so the remaining 74-77% saw no change. Who knows - maybe I'll win the vaccination lottery and it will lessen my long-haul issues. One can hope, anyway.  I do know I can't do full-blown COVID again.  Hence, I'm doing the vaccination.

P.S. For conspiracy minded folks: There is no way in this universe that any government is implanting tracking units into us through these vaccinations. The needle is the tiniest thing I've ever seen and you don't even feel it go in. No tracking seed could possible fit through.  ;D  I believe in using discretion about vaccinations, but this is one that you should all get unless you have medical conditions where your specialist advises you to hold off on it. Bonus: It's 100% free in the U.S. right now. (I don't know about other countries.)

~*~*~*~

But let's get back to quilting!  Did you happen to do any BOM work the past couple of weeks? 

Kate over at Katie Mae Quilts has joined me in hosting this meet-up, 

and linking up from either end puts you on the party at both sides.

You are invited to the Inlinkz link party!

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