Relief, again.

Mom is breathing easier; thus, so am I. She is still wheezing a little, especially just after she gets up in the morning, but is much improved.

We had the swallowing study done today. They sat her between two arms of this machine, which when turned on, showed her head and neck like an X-ray on a little screen. They then fed her various foods laced with barium, which allowed the food to show up on the screen as she swallowed. She was very cooperative, ate what they gave her without fussing, and stayed sitting in the chair. Yay Mom! It was determined that she is not having swallowing issues. Yeehah, that is exactly what we wanted to hear.

She is now officially on a mechanical soft diet, since she won't wear her dentures. It turns out, looking through the sheet of allowed foods they gave me, that this is what I've pretty much been doing anyway. I did learn to only give her small amounts on the plate at a time though, so she won't be tempted to put too much in her mouth at one time.

In other words, we are doing the peasant dance of joy here at Maplecorners. Join us!

Shadow and Light

The phlox are in full bloom. Funny thing is, I don't know where this color came from. I only planted purple phlox in this space. I brought them with me from my Mpls garden over 9 years ago.

Here I cropped and ran the Poster Edges filter. I haven't played with that for a while.

Another, cropped differently.

Shadow. Mom has been wheezing/breathing heavily, so we went to the doctor on Friday. Chest x-ray showed a little fluid in one lung, bloodwork showed a slightly elevated white cell count, and pulse ox showed her below acceptable levels. We are treating for aspiration pneumonia, just in case. She had a couple of choking/coughing incidents while eating, so will also do a swallowing study to see if that is now an issue. If it is, that would be a step into the last stage (7) of this damned disease. I can't think of that right now.

Light. The other day Mom and I were at the store, and she was pushing the cart. I was picking out a bunch of bananas, and Mom was standing right next to me. All of a sudden, I feel a pinch on my hip. I quickly turned and looked at Mom, just in time to see her hand suddenly go back on the cart and her innocently look away. About a second later, she burst out giggling. How I love that woman.

Goofing around with Fiber

Lily, this is for you.

Can you tell what it is? No? I don't blame you.

Clue.

Art of Alzheimer's

Mom drank half of her cup of chocolate milk, then made art with it.

As usual, she managed to find something that her cup would fit in perfectly. This happens to be the lid of a salsa jar.

Shrug

This one is nuno felted. 100% alpaca felted onto a semi-circle of silk crepe fabric. For a size small, this could be a shrug, if front is fastened to back under the arms, as shown above. It works as a regular shawl too, fastened in front.

In the great burdock massacre of 09, I managed to get one more pasture free of burdock, so the animals are happy. They much prefer the green grass over the hay. I much prefer that they eat the grass over delving into the winter stores of hay too!

Dovetail

I love dovetailed boxes. Something about the careful craftsmanship involved strikes a chord, I guess. Like this one.

It is lined with red velvet, and holds all of the accessories to my antique Wheeler & Wilson No. 9 sewing machine. I suspect it is original to the machine, but I could be wrong. I just think it is beautiful.

I like (maybe even prefer)the more primitive dovetailed boxes too. I have two of these. They were discovered "upstairs someplace" in the family home before I went off to college. They were covered in thick dark green paint, but I refinished them. They served as storage/nightstand in college and ever since. They currently are in the living room. I was told that my grandfather obtained them from a CCC project.

These two sit on a dresser holding hair and jewelry doodads. They originally held fish of some sort, if you can read the red writing on the one.

A stack of dovetailed boxes acts as bookshelves.

A new friend recently gave me this cheery red tea cup as a hostess gift. Much like a child at Christmas who ignores the toy and plays with the box it came in,

I'll be honest and say I am probably more enamoured of the teacup's wonderful packaging.

Raw Materials

I had what I consider a successful dye session this morning. With some blending on the drum carder, I hope to replicate rhubarb. The colorway was inspired by this photo shown in an earlier post.

I can imagine a pair of socks from this, the deep red on the feet, mixing with the green just above the ankle, and changing to all green at the ribbing on top. Or even better as mittens, so all of the color change shows. Or a scarf, red at both ends, mixing with green as you go up and completely green at the neck? Or...I'll stop there. I still have to do the blending and spinning! Unless I decide to felt with the batts instead.