Cruising Along

Took a Hawaiian cruise... leaving from San Francisco and sailing to Hawaii, visiting 4 ports, then returning to SF via Encenada, Mexico.   15 days and nights at sea basically... 10 of the days just sailing, which I find usually restful and relaxing.... but this cruise it was brutally hard work lugging sewing machine (did I mention it was a quilting cruise?)  from our forward cabin to the aft sewing room daily, then back, then trekking back aft again for dinner, then back forward afterwards... I was a wreck most days after all that hard work, and my knees were killing me.. It was hard to sleep in such pain, but I did manage.  Got a lot of reading done and watched a lot of movies (in the room on the tv there).... saw 2 shows, stayed out of the casino (i rarely gamble), and the bingo games (my one gambling foray would be this, but I stayed strong this cruise)...

I took 2 classes on the cruise... one was called 'The Big Easy' and my quilt ended up looking like this:

Fun to make and the blocks were easier than they look.  Got to shop in Hilo at 4 quilt shops and found the border fabric on one of them...

I also took a Mystery Quilt class.  All we knew was that we needed a light, medium and dark fabric, so this was what I came up with when all was said and done:

Not really my fabric styles, but the colors are nice... I think I would have been happier with a batik, but it's a nice quilt, and I will donate it and someone will love it, I'm sure.  The process was fun at least.

I also worked on a couple of BOM blocks and got 6 made (should have been 8, but I made a couple of fatal errors on 2 of them).  I won some prizes, and did some gift exchanges, all fun stuff... made some new friends and just had an overall good time.

I will probably never do anything like that again without my husband, but I'm glad I went.  Also, if I ever do anything like that again, I will make sure my room is at the same end of the ship as a the quilting/sewing room and dining room that I'm assigned to. 

Last night of the cruise (Friday), I started coughing... On the drive home Saturday morning, I started running a fever and coughing more... by the time we got home to southern California (from San Francisco), I was seriously sick, and crawled into bed without unpacking... Sunday and Monday were a blur, mostly spent sleeping and feeling miserable when awake.  Tis is now Weds. evening and the sore throat and fever are gone, and I feel a little better.  I'm so glad this didn't happen while I was still sailing. 

Tomorrow I will start catching up on projects left languishing while I was gone... My first priority is the round robin block from my guild, which I lost 2 weeks of time on because of the cruise... After that, I have like 6 different bom projects in various stages of backlog (some only a month behind, but most of them 2-3 months in arrears. 

LOTS to do, and a 4-day retreat coming up in which to try to catch up some.  I am starting to feel the time pressure I was trying to avoid by not signing up for any saturday samplers at local shops this year... too many BOMs and too many commitments... and no way out of any of them... Aaaargh!