First update, and scavenger hunt stash

So as promised here's the first of a few mass updates which I'm planning to post in the next week or so to get the blog up to date again. The only thing is, I'm now so busy with more quilting, I'm going to be either blogging, or sewing non-stop for the rest of the month.

In one of my online groups, we had a scavenger hunt swap. Basically, we had a list of items and a budget (whatever that words means!) and were allocated a swap partner. Here's my box of goodies when it arrived in July:



How exciting does it all look, nestled in the blue tissue paper? (yes, I kept the paper as well, for wrapping other gifts later). In here I had lots of quilty loveliness: needle grabbers, gold fabric, a bracelet and thimble charm, notelets, plastic guides for wrapping fat quarters round, bias bars (my old set got a bit melted, so good timing!), wrist pin cushion, needlecase and needles and a miniature quilt made with tiny yo-yos. When I say tiny, they measure about 1cm across and are all hand sewn together! My swap partner has far more patience than I have, that's for sure!



I've made good use of the wrist pincushion so far and keep getting the gold fabric out to stroke! It was a really fun swap, and a nice challenge to try and keep within a relatively small budget for everything. If I was going to join in another one, I'd definitely make more use of my own stash rather than going and buying so many new things. I just need to keep an eye out on the online group for notice of the next one.

Also round about this time, I was back up and down to hospital for another battery of tests for my thyroid issues. This time it was a couple of injections, a radioactive injection followed by a whole body scan and culminated with a blood test at the end of the week. All went well until i got to hospital for the radio injection to be told the courier company had lost the isotope! A bit worrying, but eventually I was given the go-ahead to have a slightly different injection and proceed with the scan. This all came back as clear, which was great news to hear!! The blood test on the Friday came back with a slight positive reading for one of the tumour markers, so I'm repeating the injections an bloods at the end of September. If it's still raised, there's a possibility I'll have to repeat the radio-iodine and 3 day isolation, but I'm having to wait and see until then.

More quilty gossip coming up with my next update: I think I have a BOM, some baby quilts and the Plym project to cover.