What a difference a year makes! Posted by Virginia "Ginnie" Leiner on September 16, 2014 at 8:30pm View Blog

Dear fellow quilters, As you will recall, last year at this time I was frantically quilting the 15 Christmas quilts in my year long project and hardly had time to breathe, let alone do anything else. Well, 2014 has been radically different and as I look back on 2013, I am amazed at how different two years can be. This year I have been working on three different quilts and as the year winds down, I am wondering if I will finish any of them! It has been a year of health challenges and I am sure that is the major reason for the slow down. In mid January, I had a foot surgery to alleviate the pain from arthritis in my right foot (called a mid foot fusion) and I learned to run the sewing machine pedal with my left foot. Actually, I was quilting the 15 Christmas quilts with the left foot most of last year as the right one was hurting pretty badly. I was off my foot for 13 weeks, both in a cast (or two) and a boot and finally was walking and driving by tax day, April 15. The next excursion into Healthcare Land, or "man, it sucks to get old" is bilateral knee replacement on November 17 this year. Yep, you heard me right. I will have BOTH of my knees replaced at the same time two months from now. What fun. What a pleasure to look forward to. I will be out of work for 6 weeks. Right now I am in a physical training program to strengthen my thigh muscles so that rehab and recuperation will be easier (yeah, right.) so I have moved my bicycle up to the living room on its stationary stand, right in front of the TV. I will bicycle away everyday between now and the surgery date and do the same when I come home from rehab around Thanksgiving. As you will remember, we have a multi-level old, old house so I will have to conquer the steps early in the game. I am so up for this because I know it will be no pain (or less) by Christmas. And that will be a real blessing. In the meantime, I will keep working on my three quilts and riding my bike. My new granddaughter is due any day (one of the quilts is for her, a sunflower baby quilt with the lyrics to "you are my sunshine") so I will look forward to a speedy trip to California by the end of the month to meet her. Life is so full. Take care, my friends and we will talk again soon! Ginnie PS: this is the center of the Sunflower quilt. I found the embroidered sunflowers on a pair of pants at the local Goodwill. I wore the pants once and then cut them up for the quilt!