Sorry about the radio silence there for a week, that costocondritis was quite the PITA (or should that be PITC?!) It meant that I didn’t do much but sit on the sofa hugging my hot water bottle and reading some of my craft book pile (which had the unfortunate side effect of making me think of loads of new projects to work on, you know, when I have a spare moment) Eventually I crawled off the couch and did some painting in miniature over a few days, and then I finally got to the dreaded task of making masks. Technically, because I have a respiratory condition, I am exempt from wearing them, and I really hate the suffocating feeling of covering my nose and mouth (I can’t even do it with a scarf in the middle of winter in serious negative temps) but I managed to find a mask option that I could live with for the short periods I will be out and in a shop/post office, because I just can’t face trying to show my Medic Alert credentials and then trying to explain why I don’t have one on to the poor people at shop doors who are no doubt being yelled at on at least an hourly basis by people who just don’t want to wear one. And then, once that was done, I started on my Tattoo Quilt Along which has a lot of cutting out of millions of bits each month.

Finishes This Week:

This is the wee trio of 4″ square canvases that I painted. The top left is based on the class I took with Jessi (@ettavee) a few weeks ago, then I tried to apply the same techniques to a couple of other flowers I thought would be nice in different colours. I like the sunflower, but I think the thistle leaves rather a lot to be desired!

And here are 6 of the masks I made (2 have already been used and are in the wash). I used the Creative Grids template and pattern, which works and fits great, except the elastic on the ears was waaaay too long. Even after I took out a couple of inches on my tester mask, it turned out that it was still too long once it was all finished, but I worked out that if I popped some more bungee elastic with a toggle through the loops, then I could tighten it behind my head, and then my ears wouldn’t hurt either. It actually works surprisingly well at holding the mask tight to my face too, so a happy accident.

In Progress This Week:

This is block 1 for the Tattoo QAL. I’ve cut about half of the pieces for the block out now, and made the palm of the hand (because I had an itch to stop cutting and sew something!)

To Be Worked On This Week:

• Finishing off my Truth
• Possibly painting a bigger sunflower
• Maybe getting started on one or two of the things I started imagining while I was reading all those craft books

Hope you all have a fabulous week!