My Only Sunshine

Corsage? Pincushion?

I've been needing a pin cushion that would be easy to keep with me as I move from the room I cut and iron in to the room I sew in.  This month is the flower pin cushion challenge (yes I know today is the last day, what timing I have huh?) so I thought I would make myself a wrist corsage.  Pretty, I think.  I made a flower shaped pin cushion, attached it to a matching wrist band, and there you have it.

It also shows another use for my hand.  It will hold my pins and I use my hands to sew.

Speaking of sewing, I made Bug a bag like Bit's.  I also put buttons on Bitty's bag.

The Art of Life

A new project for you.  I found this quote by EV Lucas earlier today and it inspired me.  I am hoping it will inspire you too.  As you can see above, I have taken a picture of my hand to show to you.  What I want anyone who wants to accept my challenge to do is show me the art of your life, your hand.  Write me a story about your hand, a poem, take a picture, sketch your hand, anything you can think of.  It can be just one hand or both, there can be other things involved.  It's up to you.  I want you to send me whatever you come up with so that I can post it in my blog and I want you to post it to your own blog.  There will be prizes at the end for whoever my daughters think did the best job and also for someone chosen at random just for playing along with me.

I will have more of my own ideas to post as they come along.

Bag for Bitty

I love happythings, don't you?  That's where I found the tutorial for this bag that I just made for Bit.  It was much fun to sew and I think it came out pretty well.  Now all it needs is a button to keep it closed.  I think I will let Bit pick it.

Oh, I can't forget to show you the big pocket inside.

The doctor's office called and told me that I have an appointment for another sonogram a week from Friday.  I think we are playing the, "how long can we make all of this last as long as possible?"

I had a feeling...

I had a feeling that I would get good news about my right breast today and I was right.  The doctor still hasn't called me but I didn't feel like I could wait any longer so I went to the medical records dept of the hospital where I had my MRI and got the results myself.   "There is no significant abnormal enhancement demonstrated within the fibroglandular tissue of the right breast."  This is indeed reason for celebration.

I'm not sure I can celebrate this report though, because while I did expect good results for my right breast, I did not expect them finding abnormalities in my previously asymptomatic left breast.  The report states,
     "In the left breast there is a ill defined area of slightly asymmetric enhancement.  On the subtraction     images, this area is prominent compared to the other areas of the left breast.  This may represent         benign normally enhancing tissue.  However, because this area is asymmetric compared to the             remainder of the fibroglandular tissue in the left breast, a short interval follow up MRI in six months     is recommended.  Alternatively, MRI guided biopsy of this area could be performed."
So now I have to wait and see if the doctor will ever call me back and then see what she has to say about these new findings.  What fun.

Guilty Knitter

I haven't been posting much about knitting lately, mostly that is because I haven't been knitting lately.  It's pitiful, but I found myself with a bad case of knitter's guilt.  I started a new project that had a time line.  It didn't take me long to realize that I didn't at all enjoy knitting on the project, but I needed to get it done anyway.  Since I didn't like knitting it, I found myself not wanting to knit on it, but because it needed to get done before anything else I felt guilty if I worked on anything else.  That made for no knitting.
With all of this waiting and wondering I have really needed some knitting to calm me down.  Yesterday when I had another day of no results (I thought it would be Friday or Monday, that is what I was told) I knew it was time to get serious about some comfort knitting.  I finished the project I was feeling guilty about, it didn't come out so well, which is why there are no pictures, and started a new one.  I'm making Bitty an upsized Katja from Knitty.  I'm enjoying the knit so far and it is relaxing me, something I sorely need.

I showed it to Bit and she said, "Are you knitting me a sweater or a brawl?"  She calls a bra a brawl.  *chuckle*

Theresa the Keyboard Biologist posted yesterday about her good news and about her happy dance to celebrate.  I am so happy to hear that her husband is healing just the way the doctors want him to.  There is nothing scarier than health issues with the people who matter most to you.  Her post made me think about what I do when I have something to celebrate because I am really hoping I will have news to celebrate soon.  My family moves around a lot and whenever we move into a new house we celebrate by going through the Wendy's drive through and taking home burgers to eat on the floor of our new home.  Ever since I was a kid I have been celebrating big school things like band concerts or ballet recitals with a trip to the ice cream shop after.  For this news I think I am going to need something different, but I don't know what.  Anyone have any ideas for me?  <!-- ckey="34548385" -->

Oh, here's a picture of the shorts set I made for Bug.

My Buster, he's the best

On Friday I had my breast MRI.  It was really quite awful.  I went into the same place that did my mammograms and ultrasound and waited in a room full of little old ladies.  It was a bit disturbing to me to realize how many of them were there for their first mammograms in life.

The ladies at the women's diagnostic center have seen me so much, and in such a short amount of time, that they recognize me when I come in.  They fill out my paperwork for me.  They tell me they are sorry to have to see me again and hope I won't have to come again soon.  All the old ladies look at me and try to figure out what is wrong.  The crazy thing is, nothing is wrong with me, at least not that we know of yet.  I'm still waiting to hear.

Once I got called back I had to change out of all of my clothes and into a huge gown.  Big is better than small though, that's for sure.  Then I went to have an IV run.  I didn't realize I would need contrast before I was taken to the IV chair.  The nurse promptly asked me if I had had all of my veins surgically removed.  I could feel her getting tense over the prospect of having to stick me.  Finally she called someone else over who also didn't want to stick me, but did.  She ran the IV in the back of my left hand and had fewer problems than she thought she would with it.

I was taken into a standard looking MRI room but with a very strange looking MRI device.  You can see the Aurora Breast Imager here.    You lay on the table face down, with your breasts hanging free beneath you, boy oh boy is that weird.  They slide you into the MRI machine feet first but you do go all the way in.  Not cool for someone who is claustrophobic like I am.  Then they start up the terrible, awful, very bad, loud noise.  That lasts 15 minutes, they inject contrast, and you get another 30 minutes in the machine.  I did not like it, not one bit.

I was told I would hear something on Friday or today, but I don't know anything at all yet.  The care my husband has been taking with me has really helped though.  Friday afternoon he came home from work with two dozen roses.  He knew when I came back from my MRI (he was watching the kids) that I wasn't having a good day.  Knowing he noticed and wanted to cheer me up went a long way to doing just that.

The girlies liked the roses so much that they asked if they could each have one for their rooms.

I found a couple of small sample bottles and cut a couple of long stems to fit.  They both love having them next to their beds.  I even have a picture of Bit's rose with her favorite out by the pond find, fishing lures.

Over the weekend we got some new furniture put together once all of our painting was done but I don't have any pics yet.  I want to get things cleaned up and put away first.  Oh, and the dog is growing like a weed!

She loves sleeping in the cat bed.  What a silly puppy.

So far behind

My brain has been full of all kinds of things lately, and it hasn't been good for blogging.  At the same time, I have been doing tons of things I knew I would want to blog about sooner or later so I have millions of pictures and things to say.

I'd like to start by thanking all the people who had warm upbeat things to say about my previous post.  It has really helped.  On the topic of breast density, I went to the breast surgeon yesterday.  I was very lucky that my husband took the entire afternoon off because I waited in the waiting room for an hour and forty minutes before finally complaining about my wait.  I was promptly taken to a room and saw an LVN immediately.  She discussed genetic testing for "Hereditary Cancer Syndromes" with me.  She said that the surgeon (who I had not yet met) was a strong proponent of genetic testing to help people at high risk for mutations of the BRCA 1 and 2 know what their risks are.  She told me that she would find out if my insurance would cover the testing (which runs $3000) and she would give me a packet of information to take home with me about the test.  I was given a DVD and packet that discuses BRCA mutations which I haven't looked at yet.

The doctor came in right after the nurse left.  She looked at my mammogram films which I had brought with me and then did a breast exam (I'm getting lots of that lately).  She then went on to say that she felt that a breast MRI was the best next step.  I should know when that will happen in the next few days.  Depending on how the MRI goes I will have an MRI driven biopsy at a later date.

On to happier subjects...  Much has been happening at my house over the last two weeks.  We had family coming to see the house for the first time so we though maybe it was time to finally get the rest of the entertainment center put together.  We also came into some money that helped us buy a new tv to go into the unit.
I'm very pleased with how it looks.  I bought baskets and a new bowl to go in the top unit and I filled the bowl with yarn.  How could that not look good?

After the inlaws visited my Mom visited and we went shopping crazy.  The girls got new clothes, toys, and Bitty got a harmonica.  You should hear her play, it's amazing.

My girlies love to see their Nana.  It was good for me to see her too after all the stress I have had to deal with lately.

I spent last week knitting very little due to the kids and the new puppy.  I have never liked getting out my knitting if I wasn't going to have at least a few minutes to spend on it.  I get lost with what I am doing if I can't get into a flow.  So instead I did some sewing.  That is easy to step away from every few minutes.  I have had a pattern for a shorts set for a long time but never gotten around to actually putting it together.  I started with fabric for Bug and will do the same outfit in a different for Bit this week (if I get my other project done).
I am not totally happy with how the set came out.  I think the top portion is shorter than I wanted but it is correct to the pattern.  I don't have any good pics of the finished outfit yet but I hope I will soon.

While we are talking about projects I should talk about my bedroom.  We have planned on doing something about the color of the bedroom since we moved in, but after the work it took to paint bug's bedroom pink we weren't really in the mood.  Over the weekend we bought new bedroom furniture and I wanted to get the room painted before we put together the new furniture.  I took pics of the babypoop yellow orange color but the pictures make it look better than it does.
We took most of the furniture out of the room and have gotten the room painted "Flower Wood" which is a rich brown.  I don't have pics of the final color yet but I do have a pic of the primer going on over the orange.

Now that the painting of the walls is done I have to paint the trim.  Wondering where the husband and I are sleeping while we don't have furniture in our bedroom?
There's our bed in the bathroom.  Crazy, I tell you.

I have so much more to say but I will save it for the next post.  Thanks for slogging through this one.