Post 421: Goddesses, Glass and quarantine

This time two years ago I was in Stratford-upon-Avon, on the embroidery retreat that started this blog. 8 March, the day I'm posting this, was the last day of the retreat. Melody and I visited Holy Trinity Church which had been closed to visitors on our earlier visit. 

The retreat finished with drinks and canapes, and I won the lucky door prize.

Today, as more than 1 million flee war in Europe, and more than 2000 families in NSW have homes destroyed by flood,  I am writing in isolation as a close COVID contact. I tested negative last night and need to test again tomorrow night and Friday night. So far so good. I've cancelled all commitments this week.

I wrote in the post two years ago:

 It has been such a good 8 days. Amongst this group of people I find my tribe. We recognise each other, share not just embroidery, but values and experiences. We pick up where we left off and connect to each other in very fundamental ways.

I'm so glad I came.

I little thought, when I came home early and agreed to keep this blog going as I quarantined, that I would be still be posting, in quarantine, 2 years later and the world would be so changed. I'm still glad I went - and live in hope of reuniting physically with this part of my tribe one day, and the local part soon.

I spent a lot of time this week preparing presentations - a lot of searching for resources, reading books, articles and mining museum sites, finding threads of thought, organising and then telling the story. Much of it was done from my chair overlooking the back balcony, Next to embroidery, it's in this process I feel most relaxed and engaged. The whole dove family came on Thursday to keep me company, absorbing the heat from the tiles into their bodies, sharing the space with no sense of three's a crowd. The three were back today.

The urgent presentation was the one for tomorrow's World Embroidery Studies Group. I brought forward my Goddess in Embroidery offering from later in the year because the scheduled presenter couldn't do hers in March. This meant fast tracking my preparation, which is not as thorough as I'd have liked. Still, I have enough. One thing about ancient pagan goddesses is that they are attended by birds, originally swans, but later birds in general. So maybe the doves came to encourage me in the exercise.

In any case, I appreciated their presence. The presentation, of course, is now postponed and two other members have stepped in. The tribe again!

I mentioned last week that Margaret Adams had constructed and brought me the charts for the projects for my Bulgarian Embroidery workshop in August. This prompted me to stay on my presentation roll and prepare that one as well.  I already had the one I'd used for the WES Group last year, so I adapted it, prepared the notes, adding in the charts and sent them off to Officeworks for printing on Wednesday night. The charts need to be in colour but the notes could be printed in black and white. I also managed to print the illustrations of the projects in multiple smaller versions on 3 pages, then cut them out and paste them into the notes.  I dug out the Aida fabric I had been hoarding to use for these projects. I'm hoping to find a bit more, but can manage with what I have if necessary.  I'd have made a good Girl Guide~

On Friday I had lunch with four friends at the Magill Estate Kitchen. On the way there I stopped off at Heine's Nursery to buy another pot and another Mandevilla, this time white. A recent article confirmed my experience that they are very well suited to Adelaide. Now I have pink, red and white.

My GPS took me on a bit of a wild goose chase from the nursery to the restaurant but once I found my own way out of the maze, it was a very pleasant, relaxed lunch. 

I arrived home to find an undelivered parcel message in my letterbox.  It was the bookmarks I had ordered a couple of weeks ago, which, had they been packaged flat as I requested, would easily have fitted through the letterbox slot. As it was, each of the three bundles was encased in plastic, then placed together in a box, with bubblewrap to stop them rattling around. 

The box was then wrapped in plastic  before being encased in cardboard and placed in a padded postbag - which was then mailed inside a plastic Express Post bag!  6 layers of packaging for cardboard bookmarks that would have travelled safely in a heavy paper envelope and saved me a trip to the PO, a queue and the need to find a park! Grrr.  ( I am, nonetheless, pleased with the bookmarks!)

On  Wednesday  I had a phone appointment with me GP to report on my bloods. I took the opportunity to ask some questions about vaccinations - flu around May and 4th Covid probably sometime soonish. I am now out of the pre-diabetes range and my kidney readings are on the borderline of OK. It seems that is unlikely to change much. I continue with weight loss. 

Back in September last year I bought a second set of scales. The ones I was using were about 30 years old and gave varied readings within less than a minute. I have been using both sets in order to reassure myself of reliability. On the Saturday mornings that my cleaner comes I put the second set, which is glass, into a cupboard out of the way. This Saturday they slipped as I lifted them, and shattered on the tiled floor, like windscreen, into tiny fragments. I backed out, put on shoes and cleaned it up.

When my cleaner arrived I warned him there might be residual glass. He told me that in Pakistan there is a strong superstition that when glass or ceramic shatters in this way it is a sign that someone has wished you ill and the ill-will has been taken into the shattered object and dispersed! I'm grateful! Doubly so three days later with a negative COVID test.

On Saturday Niamh's basketball brunch prevented her going to JEMS so I managed to shop for Monday dinner and buy a bag of potting mix to move the Duranta repens, "Geisha Girl" I bought three weeks ago (another reported Adelaide-friendly bush) into the pot I bought on Friday. Hopefully, in this pot, it will grow to a reasonable balcony size.  It's very pretty.  

Dinner on Saturday was at Grange Jetty. It was windy and overcast and the wind surfers were out. I arrived home in time to catch something of the atmosphere from the city.

I tried a new potato recipe on Monday - Spanish potatoes - with the Chicken Maryland, eggplant parmigiana and greens. Very easy. Fionn and Niamh were at their respective football trainings. 

 

The eggplant parmigiana didn't brown as much as I wanted, but it tasted fine and everything else worked well, 

It was only later in the evening that I discovered a member of my family has COVID and I am a close contact. I used a RAT for the first time. It requires a UV torch which comes in the test kit, partially assembled. I completed the assembly but couldn't get it to work no matter how many times I tried. I discovered online that others had similar problems. Some three hours later, after booking myself in for a PCR test, I pulled the torch completely apart and reassembled it - voila! a UV light and a negative result. It was a huge relief, both to be negative and also to be competent to conduct a test!

I have made some progress on the final Bush Sentinelle and the Mosaic Carpet Bag, but not enough to add photos. Hopefully there will be a lot to show next week.

Post 359

Up early for cleaning this morning. It was still pretty warm today, and unusually humid. It's still 28C at 10pm with 61% humidity. My dove friends visited to nibble on the seed, but perhaps more to access the shade created by my closed Vergola roof. She looked fine against the sky.

The view South from the balcony is less attractive. The building work progresses. There is now another floor in place, about a metre below my floor.  When the next section of wall goes up I will lose my sneak preview of what is happening - but it will also gradually take the activity and noise to a higher level. It will block some of my view, but by no means all, nor is it the most important.

I spent a bit more time this morning reading Sheila Paine's book. This is a sketch of a terracotta figure of the Great Goddess found in Razgrad, Bulgaria and dating around 4000 BC. The raised arms is common and this became a common figure in embroidery. I am very interested in these figures and symbols. I discovered that Sheila Paine travelled widely researching magic, ancient religious cults, amulets and motifs. She wrote other books. 

I located an early edition of Embroidered Textiles  and a copy of Amulets: Sacred Charms of Power and Protectionand ordered both. A glutton for punishment! 

Today was a JEMS day. I took Brigid's flowers to her when I went to pick Niamh up. Some of the flowers are past their best, but some are still looking fabulous. There were 5 girls at JEMS today - gradually returning towards pre-COVID  numbers. 

Before leaving for JEMS I had taken the blocking pins out of the Owl Service and added the gimp. I had to do it carefully, holding the linen outside the circular design so I wouldn't crush the work. I didn't want to have to block it again as I suspect the gimp will run. I then put a row of stitches about 5cm outside the edge of the circle and gathered it over the outer ring.

I chose this patterned linen to cover the back. I think it's a remnant from Ink and Spindle, but I'm not sure. I cut it to fit and pinned it, then took it with me to pick up Niamh. We had milkshakes at Queen St Cafe and then went on to their place, where I struggled to stay awake, but managed to stitch this down.

I added a hanging loop from the gimp.

I'm very pleased with this. I'm not sure it will mean much to visitors to the Guild Exhibition. I plan to add a note to the back in an archival pen to acknowledge the quote. A job for tomorrow afternoon, I think, after Book Club.