Post 598 The cupboards get fixed!

A quiet day at the Guild on Wednesday. I was very pleased when Phyllis arrived to do some financial work. We were able to chat for a bit on and off throughout the day. My major job was bringing in the bins. I got most of Hardanger Christmas ornament done, finishing the gold at home before I cut around the edges. There was fabric for one more in the kit, so I started it before I could change my mind.

Between posting off my Cancer Council (not, as I said last week, Heart Foundation!) bracelet with it's 7 days of data, Pilates and a family birthday dinner I as lucky enough to catch an Adelaide Rosella feeding on the native frangipani behind my balcony.

It was a great dinner, a cooperative effort by family members for their mother, every course a delight, and conversation just as good.

I had intended another visit to the Dangerously Modern exhibition on Friday, but last minute weekend commitments put paid to that. I needed to do the big shop for Monday night, prepare the bathrooms for cupboard installation and the spare room for Veronica to crash after a night sleeping out at the school in support of the homeless. Both bathroom cupboards needed to be emptied and contents stored out of the way. When all of that was done, I finished the last ornament from the kit - varying the pattern to suit my whim (and laziness)

I was concerned about parking for Will, the carpenter installing my cupboards on Saturday. It was a big job, with lots of panels and equipment to come up and down in the lift. Curiously, the street is always parked out on Saturday morning. I decided to park my car in the street to reserve a space, worrying about whether to do so on Friday night, or early Saturday. When I checked the street at 6pm, it was already parked out. I realised, for the first time, that most likely local residents without sufficient off-street parking, slip their cars in as soon as the weekday 2hr paid parking finishes on Fridays, taking advantage of free weekend parking. I checked anxiously every half an hour, then, around 8.30pm, I saw someone about to pull out directly opposite my apartment.  Still in my slippers, I dashed downstairs and moved my car into the space.   It proved fortuitous.

My car was, fortunately, still there, undamaged, the next morning - along with all the other cars. Veronica arrived just after 7.30am, quite bright eyed and bushy-tailed, ready for a shower, toast and Vegemite. Will arrived just after nine and our car transfer went smoothly. He was up and down for tools and timber all day, finally cleaning up and leaving at 4.10pm. Veronica left for work at 12.15. I stashed all her gear in my car to deliver that evening.

The cupboards are a perfect match to the old ones - as I wanted. This time the edge of the fascia is both painted and sealed in silicon, so should not absorb water for decades. The old one had a raw top edge. 

In the guest bathroom a miscalculation with a drill means screw holes in the two last pieces of vertical edging on either side of the door are too long not to and will be replaced, I presume because moisture could enter. From my point of view it was a really impressive day's work and result. 

In all of this, I missed the Chants Encounters concert at the cathedral. Katherine and I had tickets. I could have left Will to his own devices, but it seemed churlish when he was taking so much trouble to get it right. Katherine was behind in her schedule to make a 50 person birthday cake and biscuits for a friend's child's birthday the next day, so we both squibbed. I do like Gregorian chant, and the guest organist would have been worth hearing, but I can’t always have it all. 

In spare moments I finished off a mending experiment, detailed in my embroidery blog and got Monday night's Osso Bucco underway.

The sun rose joyously the next morning before the cloud descended for most of the day. It’s taking a while for the silicon seal smell to go from my en-suite. I had the fan on for several hours on Sunday and both balcony doors open to get a through breeze. A flannel flower, rose and geranium block in the bathroom helped too. It was largely gone when I left for dinner at a Prayer for the Wild at Heart with an old Sydney University friend here on his way to the Flinders Ranges.  We discussed our current lives and the state of the world. Good to know we still see eye to eye on most of it.

The Osso Bucco went down well, although I overcooked the vegetables. It is so good to be part of the lives of my family.

The shipment of indigo fabric arrived at Riverlea Quilts and I visited yesterday. There was only one good match, so I bought what I needed and got to work while the Osso Bucco simmered, finishing it off today. It has been tricky.  I have been in touch with the designer, who has been generous with information about her design process. I think the tablecloth might trigger a discussion at WES next year. In the meantime, I'm delighted with the result.

Post 597 Birds, bookmarks and a couple of exhibitions

Having spent last Wednesday reading and pottering, I was about to catch a few minutes of late afternoon sun when I noticed this noisy miner perched on my western balcony rail, surveying the Square. Birds rarely visit this balcony, so I was careful not to disturb, observing from inside until it flew away.

On the eastern balcony, however, the doves are visiting most days, exploring the new plants. They seem to approve. 

I am now booked to repeat the Mexican Embroidery gig at the Guild’s General Meeting in March next year. The technology arrangement should have improved by then.

On Thursday, just before Pilates, the post brought a bracelet from the Heart Research Foundation. I have agreed to take part in a data-gathering exercise. It involves wearing a bracelet for one week to measure directional movement. I put it on straight away - exactly 12.00pm, and will take it off at the same time next Thursday  to mail it in the return envelope provided. 

After Pilates I called at the Guild to catch one of the organisers of the pre-Christmas fund-raiser, who had asked for donations of Christmas ornaments and bookmarks. I have a supply of cardboard bookmarks I have had printed. I punch holes in them, add ribbon and use them as gift tags. The recipient gets a message on the back, and can use it as a bookmark if they read in hard copy. 

I wasn’t sure if these would be acceptable  for the sale, or whether they needed to be embroidered. Turns out they are acceptable, so I’ve been busy adding ribbons or cords. I expected to have to buy ribbon, but found enough bits and pieces in my stash.  A metre or so of  complementary silk ribbon helped a lot, once I ironed out the kinks. I now have 48 bookmarks ready to hand over.  

I also finished making a Santa ornament today (detail in my embroidery blog), and have a couple of other things in mind. 

On Friday I finally got myself organised to visit the Dangerously Modern Exhibition at the Art Gallery. It is really,  really good. As I expected, it is far too much to take in in a single visit, so I settled for a 40 minute walk of the whole exhibition, reading enough to get an idea of themes and pausing when something caught my eye (a lot!). I got to the end as my sciatica kicked in, so sat for a bit in front of Stella Bowen’s fabulously evocative  Embankment Gardens c1938, thinking that this was as my father, and other young Englishmen and women must have known the Embankment when war broke out in Autumn 1939. 

There is so much of interest here. I’m pleased I bought a season ticket. Amongst my favourites were the Margaret Preston Harbour Bridge, most of the pottery and Josephine Muritz-Adam’s A Gypsy belle c1896. 

The exhibition has another 5 weeks to run and I’ll try to get back a couple more times. I bought the excellent catalogue to be better prepared, before managing to find a table to enjoy what must be the best Caesar Salad in Adelaide.

Dinner on Saturday night was rich in food and netball news. The cat community will have been kept up to date by the silent presence in the corner.

The rest of my weekend was spent shopping for ingredients for Monday’s moussaka, and cooking the same. I usually get the ragu underway on the top of the stove, then slice and bake the eggplant. When both are done, I assemble the layers in a baking dish before making the sauce - a bechamel to which are added Kefalagraviera cheese (while the sauce is still hot) and egg yolks (once the sauce is cool). I then add the sauce to the top and refrigerate.

For some 50 years I’ve made this the day before  then baked it for an hour before serving. On Sunday, however, my sharpened awareness following recent food poisoning publicity made me pause to think about the egg yolks in the sauce - the only thing uncooked in the dish. Should I really leave them uncooked overnight? A bit of checking suggested a 24 hour maximum. To be absolutely sure I changed the habit of 50 years and baked the whole dish, before refrigerated it, then reheated it for dinner on Monday. Paranoid? Probably. But not sorry.

In between the overcast skies there were a couple of brilliant sunrises. I caught one as the bats returned to  Botanic Park from their overnight feeding. 

Both were gone 10 minutes later.

August is SALA month - South Australian Living Arts, when artists display their work in shops, public spaces and anywhere there's space. The Unley Shopping Centre has turned a vacant shop into a Gallery for the duration, showing the work of Bill McSwain. It looks great - lots of native birds, some in landscapes.  Also ceramic dishes.

I've observed with interest from outside. I have no wall space left and do not want to be tempted.. 

I have another busy week coming up - hostess duty at the Guild tomorrow, a birthday dinner on Thursday, my new bathroom cupboards arriving on Saturday morning, a concert in the afternoon and dinner with a visiting friend on Sunday. Not to mention knitting. 

Carpe diem.

Post 596 A lot of activity

On Wednesday afternoon I managed to find a warm spot on the Western balcony in the late afternoon, right next to a kalanchoe which is beginning to bloom. These are the first open buds and this is about 1.5 times actual size: such delicate flowers on such a tough plant.

The day had kicked off with an optometry appointment - a checkup on my Blephatitis & MGD, which has improved but not disappeared. As this wasn't ablout checking my spectacle prescription, I wore my current multifocals to read the chart and had significant trouble doing so. Rebecca, my brilliant optometrist was on the trail. She ran all the tests for Blephatitis & MGD, then for my vision. My vision was almost identically to the last time - and to my current prescription. Yet I could read the chart more clearly without my glasses! Rebecca kept investigating.   

My multifocal close range lens is set for screen reading, a suggestion made 4 years ago by a fitter, when my optometrist of the time refused to prescribe a pair of glasses specifically for embroidery on the grounds it was more flexible to use magnifiers over multifocals. While the screen lens has worked well for embroidery (and screens), it turns out that in a multifocal it limits the range of the distance lens. When we tested with a traditional reading lens the distance component performed normally and I could read the chart! So all that time I have been working with a sub-optimal distance lens! Fortunately, my distance vision is fairly good so I am not a danger on the road. I am not obliged to wear glasses to drive but usually wear multifocals all the time. I have ordered a new pair of multifocals with the correct balance and I am currently not wearing my glasses when out and about Even watching TV is better without them. I feel a bit of an idiot.

I had earmarked Friday to visit the Art Gallery for lunch and Dangerously Modern. However it was so miserably cold and wet I reneged, read a book, de-pilled my Aran jumper, progressed the last sashiko panel and finalised preparation for my Guild Conference presentation on Saturday. A late afternoon message asked me to bring my laptop - a big change in an organisation that insists on a clean usb as the only legitimate connector to the projector!  I had prepared all options anyway.                                                                                              I made a cheese toastie for lunch and managed to find enough in the fridge for a very pleasant dinner.                  

 The rain continued on Saturday but I had things to do. I shopped for Monday’s dinner, composed my handouts for Book Club and visited the market at St Margaret’s to find a couple of plants I needed - a ground cover for the casserole lid and a succulent for my last empty clay bead bottle. I also nabbed a pot of hyacinths.

Late in the afternoon, the drip in my living room wall returned for about 40 minutes -a drip sound about every 10 seconds. I reported it to our Strata rep. Seems there is still an unsealed spot somewhere on the roof. Good job the plaster repair to my ceiling from the last time had not been done! 

It didn’t stop me getting ready for my after-dinner talk on Embroidery of Mexico at the Embroiderers’ Guild State Conference Dinner . I got there early because of the rain and concerns about parking. I was lucky - got the only parking space left. The 50 or so conferees were talking and stitching.  The caterer was flexible, so the dinner of 3 meats, 6 salads and baked potatoes was brought forward to 5.30pm and I got to speak around 6.30. 

Just as well I took my laptop. The Guild laptop, which had been updated on Thursday, took 90 minutes to update again and load - it was ready when I finished speaking! 

I didn’t have an HDMI connector for my Mac with me, so that didn’t work. We have a camera that projects to the screen so Melissa  trained the camera on my laptop and projected the camera image to the screen. I spoke from the PowerPoint images on  my iPad, which Melissa could see from her seat near the camera, from where she manually progressed the image on my laptop - a very creative work-around! It worked well, the majority of the audience were engaged.  I noticed 2 fall asleep, no surprise since some had driven several hundred miles to arrive at the Conference for a 9.30 am start. My Otami dress was very well received and lots examined in detail the items I took along. I think the session was a success. The room eventually emptied and we packed up computers and exhibits. The organisers were exhausted, having been on site at 8.00am. I was home by 8pm - hugely relieved and very connected to my tribe.

Book Club on Sunday was again lively. Between us we had read 64 books in the last 5 weeks. Three of those are next month’s suggestions and there are a couple of others I will follow up.

I finished the last sashimi runner on Sunday night. I haven’t had a reply to my query about the designer which makes me suspicious. Rather than trying it out at dinner on Monday, I discussed the configuration with Niamh and we concluded a tablecloth is the best way to go, so I need to put a plain indigo border around it and fill in the centre gap.  That’s easier said than done. Dinner went well without it. It was great to have a relaxed catch up with everyone.

Today I called at Riverlea Quilts to buy matching fabric for a border, but we couldn’t get a close enough shade of indigo so I’m waiting on their next shipment to come in. I’ll write about it in my embroidery blog when it’s finished. 

Today has been busy. I had a hairdressing appointment at 1.00pm. Cleaners were due at 10.30, and leak investigators at 12. The cleaners has a cancellation and came an hour early. Then the leak investigators did the same. By 12.45, when I left for the hairdresser, they had removed a light fitting to insert a camera, climbed all over the roof, and were about to cut a hole in my ceiling. It isn’t load-bearing, so they can’t climb in, but they can stand on a ladder with head and shoulders in the ceiling. 

By the time I got home at 2.00 they had gone, leaving a neat cover over the hole (right), which they had carefully cut to coincide with the existing damage (above). All furniture was back as they found it and not a speck of plaster dust. They called me 40 minutes later. The view from inside the ceiling enabled them to see the passage of the leak from a missing screw under the flashing on the roof. They have now replaced the screw, repaired the flashing and provided the Strata with a quote to repair my ceiling. If I were wearing a hat on my newly cut hair I would take it off in tribute. Great workmanship.

Also this week, my lifetime Qantas frequent flier card was rejected as “expired” when I used it for points at a petrol station. I’ve contacted Qantas and it is being investigated. I suspect it is related to the recent hack of their database.

On a more positive note, I had several dove visits. The righthand photo shows,  above and to the right of the dove, the size of a Kalanchoe flower similar to the one at the top of this post.

Post595 Food and finishing

There was a lot to catch up with Panayoula on Wednesday morning. She had fabulous photos from a recent trip to Japan, such beautiful flowers, streetscapes, landscapes. We could have stayed all day, but both of us had other commitments. I dashed out to Create in Stitch to pick up something I’d bought online that morning, then to JBHiFi where I bought the Dyson heat/cool/purify appliance I’ve been investigating for a couple of weeks. It was recommended as a heater by Choice. I have an earlier version in my bedroom where it works really well. With the door closed it heats the whole room quickly and I turn it off in less than an hour. The room then stays warm for several hours. 

While my reverse cycle aircon works reasonably well, there are times when it’s cool recovery period (when the motor avoids overheating by going into cool mode) lasts longer than is comfortable. I then bring the Dyson from my bedroom to the larger living room. A second Dyson for the living room is a total luxury, but the Choice review, and a 40% discount sale, overcame my scruples. 

. Ticking off my list,  I went to my local chemist, had a prescription made up and bought the sunscreen most recommended by Choice, ducking to the shop next door for some calamari, tabouli and chips for my very late lunch. I ate at home while reading the 9th (and sadly last) of the Inspector David Graham books, with the new heater on trial. It worked well. The hourly cost seems to be 10-15%. less than the aircon.

The sunset (above) drew me away from the book. The skyscape doesn’t stay the same. 

On Thursday morning an article in the Washington Post caught my eye. It referenced a recent study in the journal PNSA USA comparing obesity and energy expenditure in developed and underdeveloped countries.  The results suggest that diet is a more critical factor than exercise in addressing obesity. There’s a lot more to be learned but I read a strong caution about processed foods. I don’t use a lot. For a while I was having a couple of frozen commercial pasta meals a week, but now only about one every month or so. I do have processed soups in my cupboard. Maybe stop that. Then there's icecream...

There was no danger of processed food on Friday when our roughly quarterly lunch group met at Lenzerheide. It has good food, excellent service and a very relaxing indoor garden: a most leisurely chance to catch up. I had thought of staying away because of my cold but by Thursday night , the 13th day, I had only the weakest of symptoms.

On Thursday evening, a bit bored with knitting the long rows of the Rowan shawl, I dug out my pile of Ink and Spindle  linens cut months ago into tote bag lengths. There are four bags cut from this Kangaroo Paw pattern. I used a motif from Evan Lewis’s A Garden of Curiosities to embroider ladybirds on one side. On Friday night  I embroidered over one of the flowers on what will be the other side of the tote - hopefully just enough to add interest and a little texture. There are a lot more of these to come, but I've put them away for another while, and focused my attention on the Sashiko Galaxy Dreaming panels - which are close to completion.

Three of these were completed and gifted by a friend in 2023 and 2024 to help me put together a table setting. Originally I intended the square ones as place mats, but decided they were too big. I amended the plan to joining them into a tablecloth, This week I finished embroidering the 8th square panel, so could lay them out on the table, unhemmed. I'm still not sure, but at the moment I am inclined towards keeping them as separate pieces which can be laid out to (mostly) cover the extended table.  I still have a runner to embroider. In the meantime I am hemming the squares by hand. I've started on the last one.

I am also now curious to know about the design process for these Australian panels. Yesterday I contacted the shop that produced them to ask about it. By next week I might have more information - and the last panel finished.

I’ve read a bit more this week, returning to Robert Thorogood for another Marlow Murder Mystery, and my first Death in Paradise book although I've watched most of the TV series.  I also discovered this week that my aversion to tension and needing to know the ending of books is a non-cognitive aversion strategy and quite a normal response. Spoiling the surprise protects your attachment to a character or community from being spoiled. Makes sense to me. The DI David Graham series I’ve just finished is a case in point. Things go wrong, there’s a mystery and changes, but the community will be there for another story.

The pressure is now on the students in the family, trial exam results for the two Year 12s , preparation for resumption of Uni next week for the other two. No dramas, but a lot of pressure.

Brigid is hopefully recovering quickly from a bug picked up on a flight from Sydney. I have plenty of left/over lambshanks to tide me over a couple of days while I finish the sashiko panels.  I had one serve for late lunch today.

I also had a couple of Craters crumpets this evening. I read about these Adelaide hand-made, no preservative crumpets several weeks ago, but couldn't find a local supplier. Yesterday Tony and Marks  my local greengrocer, had a supply and I bought some. They are indeed, light, fluffy and delicious.

On Sunday Katherine and I had tickets to another Ukaria concert, the German acapella group Sjaella. Although we are both fans of the group, we agreed to skip the concert . Katherine had work and I ran out of energy. It was ultimately too attractive to stay in the warm apartment with my book and stitching. A shame, but je ne regrette.

I've also had a couple of confronting scam messages, one purporting to be from PayPal and one demanding money via my website. I suspect they are a result of the Qantas hack. I am cautious and suspicious online, and was alert enough to pick up and check them out. Unpleasant and no room for complacency. It may be time for me to retire the website. Its value is now legacy and history..

Post 594 Cold of both kinds

I made it to World Embroidery on Wednesday, after a bit of coughing overnight but a fairly normal waking. The meeting went really well, largely thanks to Margaret’s skill and generosity in managing the setup of our new screen. It means we can all sit around the table in the foreground and see a presentation rather than being spread out around the room. Those present loved it (encouraged, perhaps, by the hummingbird cake brought by Pam).

There was interest in my effort to trace Celtic embroidery from motifs carved in stone, to metal engraving, to illuminated manuscripts to printed patterns.

It was a miserable day - maximum 10.1C (coldest for Adelaide since 2021) and 7cm of rain. I managed to get a bit cold and wet closing the gates as I left and within an hour I was sneezing, coughing and blowing my nose. 

I cancelled my Thursday Pilates, fell asleep on the couch, waking to make a lemon drink (someone had kindly left help-yourself lemons at the Guild) take Codral and fall into bed at 7.30pm. I woke a couple of times but basically slept for 10 hours. Thursday I stayed in, warm, dozing, using up the best part of a box of tissues, drinking a lot of tea in between hot lemon and weaned myself from Codral to paracetamol. By the end of the day I had enough energy to write up the summary of our meeting and  dig a piece of ham out of the freezer to boil with dried peas since I had run out of tinned and packet soups. It fit the bill and kept me going for a couple of days.                               .

I felt a lot better on Friday, but stayed indoors for most of the day, venturing out around 2pm to my local pub, which was surprisingly busy,  for calamari lunch, which I ate outside to avoid noise and hot air.It seems a few office workers have discovered POETS day. I nevertheless got served fairly promptly and was home by 3. I took Margaret Hickey’s An Ill Wind with me to read. I really enjoyed this one. She is an engaging writer.

On Saturday I ventured to the supermarket and stocked up on soups. I also bought some fresh chicken livers, bacon pieces and mushrooms to make myself chicken livers on Sunday and Monday. I'm not great on cooking for one, but I can whip this up quickly and I really like it. 

My cold is now following the five stages I find listed on a variety of websites. I am staying inside and warm most of the time, taking things easy, staying hydrated and using a lot of tissues. I'll continue until the symptoms completely disappear.   I'll make a decision about Thursday Pilates at noon tomorrow.  

Over the last 18 days I have read nine of Alison Golden's Instpector David Graham detective series set on Jersey. Obviously I am hooked.

I finished the Schwalm embroidery from Carol Stacey's May workshop. Details in my embroidery blog.      

I've taken concentration breaks from Schwalm by advancing the Rowan shawl. With 400+ stitches now on the needles, it takes me 20 minutes per row. I calculate I have about 90 more rows to go before I consider finishing it. I'll see how I feel in 30 knitting hours time.

I've been taking my cold to bed a little bit earlier than my norm. I managed to snap this before I fell asleep on Sunday, two nights after the full moon.  Tonight is cloudy with rain forecast and moonrise just before 10pm, so I'm unlikely to take a comparison photo.

Until next week.

Post593 Ticking off lists and testing

Wednesday was very cold for Adelaide. I stayed in, washed sheets and a jumper, read the fourth book in the Inspector David Grahame series and progressed the Glazig Butterfly embroidery. 

Thursday, however, was a different matter. I had an 8.45am appointment with my endodontist to finish the four root canals begun in May, so I broke my no-food-before 8am rule, suspecting, correctly, it would be several hours before I could eat. The tooth had to be opened up, cleaned out again and filled with the permanent gutta-percha and sealant. A couple of X-rays later and all was well. 

I came home spent an hour on the Butterfly embroidery and sealed up the box of plastic recycling that has stood next to my laundry door for 7 months. I wrote about it when I bought it in early December last year. I calculated that if I could make it last six months I’d regard it as worthwhile. It has comfortably lasted seven months. I could probably have pushed it to hold a little more. It weighed 4.2 kg. It was awkward to handle, and I used a lot of packaging tape to ensure it didn’t burst open, but there was no trouble depositing it at the post office with its prepaid label. I had already bought the next box when the company had an Earth Day 30% discount. It is working out at $23 a month to recycle my 600gm of soft plastic. I’d prefer it to be less, but I’ll continue. It seems fair that I should take some responsibility for dealing with my detritus. I'm aiming to make the next one last 8 months. In the meantime, local councils are slowly sourcing recycling services. Hopefully this is the last one I have to buy.

From the post office I went to Pilates, experiencing no ill effects from the dental treatment, then to the Brickworks to pick up a copy of the second in the NZ Bookshop detective series and the latest Margaret Hickey An Ill Wind. I took the opportunity to drop into Tony and Marks for breakfast grapes (ending up with three packets of stunning biscuits, 2 avocados, and two packets nuts and seeds as well) before

swinging past the Guild to drop off my pink silk lipstick holder and the wooden cotton reels I had promised Christine. This got me home right on 3pm, unfortunately just too late to have lunch at A Prayer for the Wild at Heart but in time to bring in the washing that had been out for 30 hours. I do like a day where the to-do list gets ticked off! It is not lost on me that my first excursion after posting the soft plastic recycling resulted in plastic bags with grapes, biscuits, nuts and seeds.

After all that activity, I settled in to finish the Glazig butterfly I mentioned last week.. I finished the embroidery and spent much of Friday constructing a bag with it. I am delighted with the result which is written up in my embroidery blog.

From there I moved on to those Japanese fabric remnants I mentioned last week. I spent most of the weekend cutting, ironing, machining, threading drawstrings and adding stoppers to the drawstrings. The plan I had to visit the Australian Women Artists' Exhibition at the Art Galley went by the board. I now have 21 lovely bags ready to contain gifts when occasions arise. Again, details in my embroidery blog.

In between, I gave my eyes a bit of a break by knitting another Scales of Justice Beanie. I now have ten ready for next year's walk.

Yesterday the herbal insect-repellants I ordered from Bell Art arrived. I want to make sure these beanies survive the ten months to the next Walk for Justice. They are now stashed in this bag with a couple of Kakadu Plum repellant blocks protecting them.

By Saturday my Adelaide family had all recovered from their encounter with COVID so I had a very relaxed evening with those not at an 18th birthday party. 

I woke yesterday with a sore throat and, in view of the upcoming WES meeting and all the effort that's gone into swapping and preparing my Celtic presentation, I was mildly panicked. Would I have to cancel?

Before 6am I was attempting to administer a Covid test to my self in bed. Unsurprisingly, the test didn't work. Around 8 I got up and administered a test properly, getting a negative result. I made myself a hot lemon drink with honey, and settled to read and advance the left-over Rowan wool shawl I started last year. I drank tea rather than coffee throughout the day. In the afternoon I ventured to the Chemist to purchase a test kit for Covid, RSV and Flu A & B. To my relief, the test was negative for all of them. It seems I have at worst, a head cold.

I have stayed inside all day today, drinking more hot lemon, tea and soup. I have an occasional cough and sneeze but my throat is less sore, so I'm hopeful I'll be OK for tomorrow. I have had a coffee this afternoon, so must be on the mend.

I also retrieved the Scwalm masterpiece I began in Carol Mullan's workshop in May. I have never tried Schwalm. We made and traced templates on to our linen. I hsd drawn myself a flannel flower and begun to outline the leaf in coral knots. Today I completed the coral knots around the whole thing, 

I am now about to work a row of chain stitch inside the coral knots. After that, I need to consult the book (also acquired at the workshop). 

It's a bit hard on the eyes, so I will alternate with knitting - that's after more lemon and checking my Celtic Embroidery PowerPoint.