Back to class!

I'm so excited! A couple of friends from my quilt group told me there was a quilt shop in town that I didn't know about, so today I went to find it. It's a nice little shop that specializes in heirloom sewing (the owner is a Martha Pullen Certified instructor) as well as quilting. They have a long-arm quilting machine, and they do quilts at a very reasonable rate; so I put my name on the list to have them do the red and green quilt. What's even better is that they give one-on-one classes on using the long-arm machine! I signed up for my first class next week. After a couple of classes they'll rent me the machine for short periods to do the quilting myself. This is exactly what I was hoping for! Now if I can just become proficient enough to do a decent job on the small quilts I have ready, I'll be so happy!

I am still trying to get started machine quilting one of the baby quilts. I am really nervous about it--I tried, had to pick out the first try, and haven't yet tried it again. I can't seem to coordinate the movement of the quilt with the speed of the machine.

DH saw the oncologist yesterday, and is having some tests run. On Monday he will finish the tests and can get his first dose of Sandostatin, a somatostatin analogue. It will help get rid of the serotonin buildup that is causing him to feel so ill. It won't help the carcinoid any--the oncologist agrees that chemo is not effective and radiation is contraindicated for carcinoid tumors. He does think there is a chance that radiofrequency ablation therapy may help shrink the liver tumors. We will not know that until DH has had his scans in September to judge the spread of the tumors. We like the oncologist; he seems quite knowledgeable about carcinoids so we trust him already. DH does not want to use any extreme means to treat it, so we'll just have to wait and see.