Quilting is Dangerous!

A while ago, I started making a quilt. It has been sitting in storage for the past 3 years, sad and unfinished. I've felt the desire to finish it up recently. I've worked on it regularly for the past couple weekends and it's almost done.
Last night my roommates were all gone. I was looking forward to a quiet evening alone; just me, Sex & the City re-runs, and this infernal quilt. I'm tying it with yarn so I need to use a rather fat needle. This makes the needle hard to push through the fabric, so I've been using a thimble.

Stop reading here if you're squeamish.

So around 10:30, I was almost done. Really almost done. I put the needle against the fabric, placed the thimble on top, and pressed down hard with my right index finger. The needle then shot up right through the thimble and into my finger, eye-side first.

Sorry, did I say into my finger? I meant through my finger.

Oh, it was horrible. The pain. And the blood. I hate blood. (Well, I hate blood that’s not inside someone. The kind inside is okay. It’s just when it comes outside of a person.) If I wasn’t in such pain, I wish I would’ve taken a picture. It was crazy. This big fat needle sticking in my finger pad and coming out right under my nail bed. Yuck. I was feeling pretty dizzy and nauseated, but I was worried about getting blood on my quilt (I know, the things I worry about . . .) so I stood over the kitchen sink letting the blood drip into the sink. I wadded up paper towels and tried to stem the flow, all the while worrying that I would pass out right there in the kitchen and no one would find me until Sunday night when my roommates were due home. (Well, Lily was still in town but, honestly, she wouldn’t have noticed if I had died in her bedroom.) It stopped bleeding after about 15 minutes and I put a neon green Band-Aid on it and then had a drink. Of Pepsi, Mom. Just Pepsi. Honestly.

And now it doesn’t look bad at all. Just a little red mark on either side of my finger. So I’m pretty much done with the quilt for a while. Or at least until I get a new (read: stronger) thimble.

This is where it went in . . .

and where it came out.