Catch up with life pictures: sewing context

Recently someone told me that if I wanted to sell more books I needed a bigger social media presence. Due to life being life I thought this was sort of amazing.

For a start I am a person who sews and likes to share anything I can about sewing in a less stressful way, because that interests me and might be useful to you. A book to me is a vehicle for that.

And as far as social media goes, which I guess includes this blog,  I sometimes wonder how those who have a highly, highly active online life get the living part done.

All this is leading into a completely random collection of details about what's been going on around here.

First near the end of June my 91 year old mother fell at home and broke her leg below her hip in four places. My mom being my mom bounced back as much as you can bounce in these circumstances. She is now in a rehab hospital working on just that, which to her means being very engaged in everyone and everything and treating it like one more interesting experience. I am actually not kidding about that.

Here is my mother shortly after she was admitted, as evidence of what she is like ( she would love to know I posted this), but because she is herself all over social media, Facebook, Instagram, WhatsApp, and Pinterest as well as texting everyone all the time, she will find out about it soon.

Next last weekend my middle granddaughter Heidi, who was staying with me for the weekend, had a sudden and severe attack of appendicitis, perforated actually which is not ideal. Luckliy I had the presence of mind to get her into the ER on time. Her parents and the other two kids were about two hours away (Heidi had stayed behind because she had a birthday party to go to) but her mom was able to make it back just in time for her surgery.

Heidi has been a very sick little girl but my daughter, Katrina, is a nurse and has been rooming in with her and giving her 24/7 expert care. Here is a picture of the two of them going for a short walk around the floor:

Katrina has her own medical issues of course but has been amazing. Right now it appears Heidi is recovering ahead of schedule because her mom has been on it and might be home in a few days. In the meantime this week I have been taking care of the other two kids, cooking (my vegetable lasagna got returned - no one likes mushrooms) and taking care of the cleaning of the Airbnb the kids run.

In the middle of all of this I kept up sewing. Sewing is always my island of recovery in really busy times.

Here are some sleep sacks I made for baby Anika in California (Pattern by Peek-a-Boo), two of them pieced to use some patterned knit scraps I really liked, one in two layers of gauze for the summer:

These were a lot of fun to make these.

Finally, speaking of social media, here is a picture of my youngest son Ben, who lives in Austin Texas and works in the wind industry. Today is his birthday. He and his girlfriend are in Berkeley with his brother and his family to celebrate. Here is the picture he posted of himself in his shirt. I used the Negroni shirt pattern by Colette:

Now I don't often post a lot of personal stuff, focus more on the sewing, but this seemed to me to be the point tonight. Sewing is part of real life and gets done for the real people in it, sometimes around the living, but always as a place to catch your breath and make something.

More organized posts soon, I miss this too.