Post 397: Family, friends, feathers and a few frustrations.

The best parts of this week were the twin's birthday dinner last Wednesday, Pilates and stitching with friends. In between those I had a few frustrations.

Monday evening brought back the lorikeets to the trees in front of my back balcony. I grabbed the DSLR, zoomed in and shot away. Very hit and miss - mostly miss. There were 3 pair on the tree, one pair out of my sight.

One pair performed all sorts of acrobatics to get at the juicy bits. They didn't appear to be competing, but going hell for leather to consume the best bits.

The other pair were equally engaged.

I had spent much of the day at the Guild. It was a Basics2Beyond day. Jennifer and Dawn joined the Guild, came to B2B and seemed to be enjoying themselves. 

I didn't get there until nearly 12. I stopped off in town on the way to drop of some jewellery that needed repair at Gerard McCabe. It is a long time since I've been into the city and there's a lot I had forgotten. I used to be there frequently. I had also forgotten about the repair jeweller in the Da Costa arcade. I had quite a bit repaired there once upon a time. Gerard McCable are quoting to replace an opal in a 5 opal ring but suggested I take the rest to the repairer. 

The most interesting piece is a duet brooch that belonged to my grandmother - one of those that is made up of two matching clips to put on the corners of square-necked dresses to hold straps in place. It has lost most of its stones but I'd love to see it restored. The repairer had a couple of suggestions and is going to see what stones they have and send me some photos.  What I had thought would be a 15 minute visit to Gerard McCabe turned into and hour visiting two places. It will, however, be quite satisfying and exciting if the brooch, in particular, can be repaired.

At B2B I worked on the embroidery on my purple coat - the design I did for Design on Line. It is going to take me a long time to do it at B2B but I don't need to wear the coat until next winter.

Gay had brought along the lucets that Peter made many years ago for a Guild class. Someone told me about it and I had asked Gay if Peter still had any. She thought there might be one lucet hanging around Peter's workshop. On Saturday she told me she had found 24! She also found two marudai and brought them in for me. Marudai are looms  for kumihimo - Japanese braid making. I see the connection, but it's a long way from Vikings!  I'll hang on to them for the WES meeting on 13 October. The lucets, however, are very relevant and will, I suspect, be snapped up.

While I was at the Guild, a parcel I had ordered from Taking Shape was returned to sender because it 'had the wrong address'.  It had the street address, but not the apartment number. It clearly wasn't delivered by my postie who would have known my name.  There are only 6 apartments at the address, Nuisance. 

There are new owner-occupiers moving into the apartment two floors below mine. They sought Strata permission to undertake renovations to the bathrooms and kitchen before moving in, which we granted. This is now happening. Because the kitchens and bathrooms are aligned in the centre of the apartments, the sound carries up the service shaft. As I write this there is a drill going. It started at 7.45am this morning. It isn't constant, but annoying when happening.  We also received notice today that the long awaited and much reorganised connection of our solar panels is to happen next Tuesday. This means no electricity for most of the day, and perhaps some of Wednesday, so I need to decide if I, once again, go away for a day or two.

The succulent at the Guild that I photographed a few weeks ago in bloom has progressed to the seeding stage and still looks spectacular.

as do the seed pods. 

I might make some cards out of these.photos. 

I spent most of the week working on editing my book in the BookWright software of Blurb. For several days I spent hours adjusting text and formatting to get the page flow as I wanted it. On Sunday was finished except for two headings that I needed to bold, but they kept slipping whenever I selected them. Then suddenly the pages slipped out of the template, introducing a whole range of problems. I haven't been able to retrieve the formatting I had. The only solution I could find was to copy the text, screen by screen,  back into a Word document, reformat, convert to .rtf file and start a new BookWright document! I am now in the process of doing just that but I am beginning to wonder if I am up for this. I have made several books with BookWright, but they were stories with loads of photos.  77,000 words is another matter altogether. One more try, then I look for publishing help.

I also decided to go for a typed heading on the cover.

The fabric I ordered from Missy Rose's print-on-demand service arrived today. These are the three designs, for which I have bag ideas.

I thought this blurred photo of a lorikeet would make lovely fabric - but I'm not going there!

I spent the afternoon talking and stitching with 2 Guild friends at the home of one of them. She also provided a lovely salad lunch. It was a very relaxing break from the book.  

The final frustration was another error I made - intending to upload 3 photos from my iPhotos to my computer, I managed to upload the whole of my iPhotos collection - 27, 551 photos, which I now have to delete, since they take up a lot of room. Deleting is also time consuming,  I have figured a way to choose and delete about 300 at a time. I'm not feeling clever this week. 

I am, however, feeling pleased with my weight loss, which is at 10kg today. This is the goal the renal specialist set me for mid-November, so hopefully I will be well ahead of the goal by then.

Also very pleased that come Monday all four grandchildren will have had their first Covid vaccination. Now that's good news.