Dee sorry you all got sick. Hopefully you all feel better soon.

It was this past Monday night/Tuesday morning that I fell ill with a cold.  I did a home test and was covid negative.  It's the first cold I've had in years and it was yucky.   What was weird is that the symptoms came in waves ... I didn't have them all at the same time.  Runny nose, sneezing, sore throat, rumbling cough, nasal congestion, bone aches.  No appetite.  And I slept.  and slept and slept from Tuesday morning through Thursday mid-afternoon.  My eyes were so tired I wasn't even reading any books in bed ... I just slept.

But now I feel less like death warmed over and food sounds appetizing again.  Nope, I didn't do any sewing at all.

"Bone aches" sounds like a flu-type illness to this old fogey. 

A "normal cold" (or upper respiratory infection a.k.a. URI) usually does not involve body aches.  Nurses on this forum might chime in. Maybe you had a false negative on that test.

And now let's talk about watermelons. How about square watermelons?

Yep, they grow square watermelons in Japan because they are easier to store in the small refrigerators found in some of the small living quarters.

So in keeping with my Kresge Kid's Life quilt goal to make only pieced quilt blocks I present you with a seven inch square block with a watermelon theme in honor of my Grandpa Miller.

When Charley Miller (expert cabinetmaker) finally was able to build a home for himself and my grandma it was what you could call a cottage; very small and cozy but it had no front porch. So he built a frame for a swing in the back yard and hung a porch swing there; this set-up was under a maple tree that was near the sidewalk that he used to go to his garage/workshop out by the back alley.

Every summer my mom and dad and I spent two weeks in Indiana, one week visiting my mom's parents in Bluffton and one week with my other grandparents on their farm in Roanoke. The Bluffton grandpa always had watermelons waiting for me so we could sit on his porch swing in the back yard and have daily spitting contests. The idea was to swing the swing high enough that we could get the seeds to arc over the sidewalk to hit the grass on the far side.

My mom and my grandma would sit in nearby chairs and shake their heads and chastise Charley Miller for teaching me bad habits. He would grin and tell them that someone had to.

To this day, watermelon is my favorite fruit.

The Stonehenge packet of FQs has come to my rescue again!

It supplied the perfect frame for the Project Linus "thank you" gift I showed you yesterday, the counted-cross-stitch piece created for me by one of the inmates at North Central Correctional Institution in 2007.  (I suppose I could have chosen the black piece of Stonehenge but I've always favored turquoise.)  I was not encouraged to learn the names of the men so I have no idea which guy stitched this up but he certainly did an excellent job. I was told he made gifts for lots of people the prison staff and inmates wanted to honor.

Despite my best efforts I could not get rid of some of those "trails" of glue that are #### in the back. I guess I'll tell viewers that they give the fabric "character".

As for my "career" with Project Linus I started the chapter in January, 2001 and had to close it down in September, 2013.  During that time I was able to gather up and then distribute over 3,500 quilts, crocheted and knitted afghans and fleece "blankies" from the generous people in my county to comfort children in need. It was a great run while it lasted.

Huh, I cannot use the word "####" in the above message. 

E    M   B   E   D   D   E   D   

judyinohio said:

Huh, I cannot use the word "####" in the above message.  E    M   B   E   D   D   E   D   

That just drives me nuts.  Over on Facebook, one of the crafting groups I participate in is for d-i-e cutting machines.  Notice I spelled the word out?  That's because over there, if you use the word "d-i-e", that's h-a-t-e speech and you get chastised or put in FB j-a-i-l.

So, here in Delphi, we can't use the word "e-m-b-e-d-d-e-d" because it might trigger some other response??????  Geez.

Thanks for letting us know what the trigger word was.   SMH.

I was somewhat skeptical of DH's positive test, but DD had to get tested because she was exposed & her work required it.  And hers was positive as well.  And now she has cold symptoms too as does DS - so we're 100%.   I do feel bad about her lost overtime she was schedule to have today & tomorrow.  But as I told her, it's only money and not worth risking her patients by any means.  She'll have other opportunities.  Now her biggest worry is testing negative in time for her clinicals to start in a week.  But there has been a very large outbreak here and I'm sure the place she's working will be dealing with it - she won't be the only one.

Warning to one and all about the Stonehenge line's red fabric .... it's very vivid and beautiful and it "shares" its color with others. In other words, it's a bleeder. Fiddlesticks!! 

I thought Northcott had a quality product with this line and I thought wrong.

Here we go with my third block of the day.  Maybe that was my problem ... I pushed my luck!

What is this block supposed to represent?  This is a block to tell everyone about my "career" as a puzzle constructor for Dell Puzzle Publications back in the 1970s. I was a housebound mom with a three year old and a six year old in 1974 and I entertained myself with a lot of counted cross-stitch and some knitting in between the usual cooking and grocery shopping, etc. I was bored, bored, bored.

One day I worked a some Word Search puzzles in a Dell magazine and a few of them were so boring and dumb I told myself I could write better puzzles than the ones I just solved. So I took the kids to the library and found a couple of books with potential (glossaries in the back that could be useful word lists), got some graph paper and worked up a couple of puzzles. I typed them up and mailed them to the magazine and "Voila!" I eventually got a reply from an editor who bought one of the two puzzles. (They had already used the theme in the second submission and thus could not use it.)

I had a new career!  From 1974 to 1981 I sold them 376 Word Search puzzles and almost 90 other types of puzzles. Then I became busy working in DH's office and I was also dealing with my kids who were older and needed more of my time. Dell refused me a pay raise when I pointed out the price of their magazines had gone up 300% in seven years but my pay had not gone up one iota.

I lost interest in constructing puzzles although I could still do it with one eye closed and one arm behind my back.  LOL

ETA:  this puzzle diagram is pretty pathetic ... could not find a diagonal word or intersecting words. Of course, I did not bust a brain cell looking very hard, either.

judyinohio said:

I had a new career!  From 1974 to 1981 I sold them 376 Word Search puzzles and almost 90 other types of puzzles.

That is fascinating!  I never really gave a thought that *someone* needed to create the puzzles and that the someone would need to be paid for them!  Well done for creating a job doing something that you enjoyed.