Quilter's back exercises...

A few little chickens, log cabin and plain, that I have made lately for gifts and fetes,





After 6 weeks of not being able to exercise, this week I am back!! I have been having more than the usual back and neck problems in the last year or two. My hands, especially, the left have been going numb of a night and getting painful and with less maleability generally
...the things I have broken would stock a house! Needless to say, stitching and keyboarding have moved to the backburner as well.

The shoulder pain is scoliosis related and has been going on since I was 13 but the rest is the last few years, I have often thought it could be the start of MS but when it got really bad recently I have seen 2 chiros, a doctor , a couple of masseurs, had x-rays and am now at the physio who is achieving great results. The x-rays were because they thought it was a pinched nerve or spinal cord, everything has come up clear so the physio is hard at work at

1. fixing the constant shoulder and neck pain.

2. fixing the numb fingers

3. stopping it all coming back

Has achieved #1, it all feels great and I am back to pilates, boxing and circuit training, but I have to do a range of specific exercises and the main two are really exercises for all quilters so I am showing you. DD is the exercise model.

This is a tennis ball in circulation stocking with knot at the bottom. This is for getting right into the shoulder blade and muscles around there. You just rub that up against the wall, working both sides.

These are stretchy physio bands. Grip these, with nice soft knees, not locked up, and pull your shoulder blades together, effectively sticking your chest out. This should be done very regularly when you have been sitting sewing. I have to do it 10 times +(x50) a day!

Nice easy ones, that may help your quilting back pain as well. yell if you have had similar trouble.

Have made a few things of late, My little niece, Daisy is two already, I had her bday last week, she scored an eyespy of all her favourite animals as her baby quilt. She is also wearing the little pik tutu I made her. i made her a couple of other little denim and applique skirts as well. She loves wrapping her babies!

She is cat mad and got a pretend cat for her bday, she wrapped and unwrapped that about 20 times!

i made her a little pram one with the scraps.

The rest of the time I have been chasing sheep and lambs...the head count for lamb pets was 9 this morning, but I conned 2 more onto a foster mother so I am back to 7! Thanks for the spider assitance, a banded orb weaver seems to be the consensus, with perhaps slightly unusual banding.

Have a great day, Tracey

Any idea on what this spider is?

Going around the sheep in the fog this morning and found this spider in a tussock, anyone know what it is...it's big...at least maybe 3 or 4 centimetres.

Sheep, sheep and more sheep!

The school market has come and gone, made $9500 this year, $1500 up on last year, which was $1500 up on the year before. Very satisfying result for the organizer...Now I don't have to think about the madness again until about next February!

The lambs basically started arriving about the day after the market. Dh puts the crop in while I handle the sheep, so here's a little explanation to where I have been of late...

A VERY rare photo of me...and holding my first 5 babies. Feeding them about 5 times a day at present...I actually did paid work teaching school today, so had to take the two youngest with.....the others could now last but 1 day olds can't! Kept them in the sports store in a plastic tub and got them out at recess and lunch to play with the kids and have a feed.....I felt like the olden days when I taught a few days while DD was a baby and I had to express to feed her at lunch! Well....okay, it wasn't quite the same!! These get formula!!

I go around the sheep on the motorbike, I have been blessed with great weather but still, with cold, frosty nights and clear days you get some orphans/neglected babies. I've been bringing lambs home for about 30 years, but I have never had a result like the one coming up...

I saw this fellow in the grass, dead supposedly. I hopped off the bike to see if he was missing a tongue...a sure sign of fox....and felt a slight sign of life. He was stiff but I jammed him down my vest and bought him home

warmed him all day in my kitchen window on a hot water bottle and under a light..

Still not a lot of movement..used a funnel to pour my home made colostrum down his throat and here he was the next night....

Out in the barn with the others, up and happy and drinking. I was a happy lamb rearer. (In the photo with me it is the one facing you second from the right.)

If I bring them home fit and well I try to foster them onto another mother, but if they are struggling that's tricky. I've fostered about 10.

I've now got you up to speed on where I've been...there's some quilty stuff next post...thanks for staying tuned! Cheers, tracey