Post 314 Running around

It was a running around kind of day. In between my various appointments and tasks I was, of course, checking news bulletins to follow what was happening in Washington DC, as well as the latest Australian Covid news. I have chosen to focus the 314 posts of this blog on daily life rather than current affairs and don't intend to change, but it IS a record of a Covid year and the significance of today's events did reach Australia and needs to be acknowledged.

It was the day of my six monthly dental check up,  even though I had seen both dentist and hygienist three months ago. Unusually, I had been unable to get adjacent appointments, so saw my dentist at 10.00am but the hygienist at 2.30pm. My dentist is expecting her baby on 1 February, so her appointments were a bit tentative. 

She ordered some Xrays to be taken this afternoon by the hygienist.

From there I went on to Create in Stitch to get the extra threads I needed. I'm afraid the sale won't make their day!

At Unley Village I called at Taking Shape. Yesterday I received a $65 loyalty voucher from the shop, so thought I'd use it to offset the cost of this top I saw last week. In a pandemic there doesn't seem a lot of point holding on to an unexpected gift horse.

 My car purchase three years ago came with free monthly car washes. I haven't been for several months, so headed there on my way home. It was a bit of a wait today but I had my Kindle and the coffee is good - and the precautions are in place and monitored. 

The attendant who washed my car kindly adjusted the clock to daylight saving time for me - which shows how long it is since I had the car cleaned!

I managed about an hour at home for lunch, then headed back to the dentist. The Xrays were helpful and the hygienist took nearly an hour. We are all happy about the extraction I am booked for with a periodontist in February.

I just had time to call at Frewville for milk, watermelon and some prawns before heading to the optometrist. He is happy with the progress of my damaged eye surface and I need to keep the treatment up for another month. 

My computer/embroidery/distance glasses were ready and the fitter had clip-on magnifiers for me to try. I settled for the 2.5x magnification clip-ons which seem to work well with these. This is for embroidery, especially in group situations.  I have spared readers the sight of the clip-ons.

I finished up most of the carrot salad with the prawns and fresh bread for dinner.

Around sunset, I heard the distinctive call of the Adelaide Rosella and grabbed my SLR. It was a single bird, sitting on the very top of a tree some 10-15 metres behind the apartment building. There was an answering call some distance away, but I didn't see the second bird. 

The long tail isn't visible here, so the rosella looks a bit smaller than it is.

I haven't seen one in these trees for a while.

With all the running around I was lucky to get two squares crocheted today.  

The blocking is now complete. I will roll it up tomorrow so it doesn't get crushed while I'm finishing the last two pieces to complete the chair. I won't take the cover off the chair until all three are finished.

Tomorrow I head for Normanville for a week.  It's only about 90 minutes drive and I'm can't book in until 2pm so there's no hurry.  I haven't done any packing, although I have thought about it. I also need to soak the plants before I leave tomorrow, and get petrol - which unfortunately is on the expensive end of the cost cycle. It will be a fairly busy morning.

Post 313 Mostly crochet and getting organised

I took this photo last night, looking East at sunset - and forgot to post it yesterday. I don't live in or near a jungle, but there are some great glimpses of trees and the Adelaide Hills.

And I do love the pot of purple petunias.

While I was reading this morning, the two young doves arrived , polished off the few seeds remaining from yesterday then came to the container of seed just outside my door and stood beside it. Blush even pecked at the plastic sides!

I didn't obey immediately, but when they had given up I went out and put out some seeds. 

The photos were taken through glass and fly wire, but I quite like the effect.

I adjusted the pins on the blocking twice during the day. It's looking good but still slightly damp.   

                                        

In the meantime I sorted out my Appleton's threads and hooped up the Phoenix and Tree. I have most of the threads I need, but need some very pale greens and a more gold yellow. Tomorrow I have a running around day so will call at either the Bobbin Tree or Create in Stitch, both of which I now know have reopened after holiday closures.

I haven't started the Phoenix. I gave myself a break and relaxed with some more crocheted squares.   I've been trying to work out whether to roll more small balls off the humungous 200 gram balls to take to Normanville. It's hard to judge how much I will need, so maybe I'll roll off a few small balls and put the big ones in my car.

I've now made 25 squares. The colours are randomly chosen. I'm considering whether they should be directly joined or have a single colour border. There's plenty of time before I have to decide.

I also got out the two remaining Nicola Jarvis birds I have to embroider, along with the Ink and Spindle linens that will make the bags on which they eventually perch. I'm planning to take these to Normanville as well. 

I wouldn't want to run out of things to stitch. 

What kind of birds will they be?

It was a mild, charming sunset. I rather like the ones that have a lot of grey cloud

Someone finding this blog in a future world might tag me as a tree worshiper.

I completed another two squares this evening . The last one (bottom) has better joins than the others, thanks to a tip in a book I've been reading - but more of that another day. 

Tomorrow, if, as Hank Williams used to say, the Good Lord is willing and the creeks don't rise,  I have two dental appointments, an optometrist appointment and a shopping list. I could have done the shopping today, but it seemed more efficient to do it while I have to be out and about anyway. 

We'll see how it turns out.

Post 312. They are coming - and Lady Anne is blocking!

 

It's 9.30 pm as I begin this post and I have just blocked Lady Anne's Flowers. Progress photos follow below, but I thought the blocked finish deserved to lead the post. 

Most of the day was spent working on this piece. I had to move the hoop again before I finished the hillocks. (I can see from the photo that the blending in the high hillock needs adjusting!)

I used a smaller hoop to finish the last section. I didn't photograph the raggy-looking piece when I took it out of the hoop. I couldn't wait to block it!

Today's good news is that Alison and Karl have booked to come to Adelaide for a weekend later this month. I knew they were hoping to come, but had not allowed myself to believe it would happen in the current lockdowns. The surprise sent me look at the Barbara Hanrahan linocut print hanging in my hall. She made it in 1975 to celebrate the return of her partner, Jo Steele, after a long absence. I've always liked the fine detail of it - the repeated depictions of joy and celebration.              .

It shows numerous faces with emissions from their mouths and eyes - sight and speech. but in a Covid context, looking like a social distancing warning.      This is very much a Barbara Hanrahan work. It does not transfer, but it captures her excitement and joy in a specific circumstance.                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                          I feel I should make a banner saying 
"They are coming" and hang it from my balcony.                                                                                                                                                                                                                                            Instead, I paid my tax bill for 2019-20. It's not due for another month, but I want a clean slate. I checked and double checked the reference number before hitting the button. Ridiculous I know. It feels very good to have it out of the way. 

I have the Phoenix and Tree linen to set up as my next Crewel project tomorrow. I think I'm a bit short on light green and brown Appleton's wools for this project so I might need a trip to The Bobbin Tree this Thursday to ensure I have enough to take to Normanville on Friday. Tonight I'm relaxing with another crochet square.

Post 311 I moved my hoop!

 

As I had hoped, I managed to do quite a bit on Lady Anne's Flowers. This afternoon I finished as much as I could with the hoop as it was. I moved to a smaller hoop to complete the sections at the bottom

In the morning I had put on some washing before heading out to collect the parcel I missed last Thursday. As I expected it was a pair of jeans. I went on to Unley Village to get some fruit and a few other bits. I also called at Taking Shape to use up the refund I got there last week for the underwear I returned. I didn't want to carry around the docket for any length of time - too easy to lose. I should have worked out for myself the tip that Susie, who served me, gave me - photograph the barcode on the docket. In any case, I bought two tops, the green in bamboo and the red stripe in polyester. I am now in love with bamboo. The green is the only colour in that stye that I didn't have (orange, pink and black being the others). I've had my eye on the red stripe for a while. It is light and vibrant, so I can forgive the polyester. The blue underneath is the jeans. 

I hung out the washing when I got back from shopping. My being on the balcony brought Turtle out to look for seed and water, so I obliged before doing some work with the spreadsheet, sorting my Baby Boomer stories into categories. I think that will work better than one long series in the order I conducted the conversations. There are, however, many ways I could group them, so I think I will just have to pick a category and see how it plays out.

I had another look today at what Jeannine Baker has to say in this book about Louise Mack, whose school novels I had read as a young girl and who I knew to be an Old Girl of Sydney High. Mack left her bankrupt and alcoholic husband and went to England in 1901. She made ends meet by writing. In 1914 she persuaded a newspaper editor to send her to Europe as a war correspondent. She used various subterfuges to get into occupied territory, mostly in Belgium. She was clever and brave. After the War she made the most of her experiences on a lecture circuit, unfortunately seeing fit to embellish significantly to give audiences the excitement they and her promoters wanted.

It's an interesting story - quite a long way from the school stories I so enjoyed.

I made good progress on two of Lady Anne's hillocks. I've worked out the colours and threads for the others. A couple more days should see this finished.

Post 310 Mostly buried in a spreadsheet.

 

My library booking for an electronic copy of this came up yesterday, so I downloaded and began reading. This was drawn to my attention by Ann Borthwick. She and my late husband worked with Natalie Conyer on the Myer Committee in the 1990s, working on a national set of key competencies for high school graduates.

This is Conyer's first novel, a crime mystery set in Cape Town. It creates a strong sense of time and place, is well-paced with memorable characters and no stereotype in sight. While it is a legitimately described as a police procedural, it is overwhelmingly an exploration of state corruption, more comparable to Le Carre's Cold War espionage novels than traditional police procedurals. I found its world hard to come to terms with and wanted the plot to move faster. I will be very interested to see the series develop - there's a sequel in the pipeline..

While I was reading there were visits from a dove or two, then two Magpie-larks turned up. I think my friend Vivienne may be right when she suggested they find spiders on apartment balconies. They paid attention to a railing container that has a web on it. They didn't stay long.

I spent several hours throughout the day on my spread sheet. By the end of the day I had completed it and made a summary of some of the statistics. I'm very pleased to have done this. It is fairly tedious work, but makes the next writing task possible - and more enjoyable. It's been a reminder of how good some of these stories are. That's where the strength lies, rather than in analysis.

It was a very pleasant day in Adelaide - or so it seemed from my windows, which was the only way I saw it. It is lovely to have the doors open on to both balconies and get a breeze through. I'm grateful for this comfortable weather.

My 2019 Christmas poinsettia, which is doing quite well on the Western balcony, has a single red leaf that catches the sun and the eye in the last rays of the sun. I don't mind that the other leaves are all green. One red leaf is enough.

On Thursday, when I missed the parcel delivery I had been thinking that Monday, as well as Friday, was a public holiday. It isn't, of course, which means I can pick up th e parcel tomorrow.

It hasn't been a big stitching day, but I did make some progress on Lady Anne's Flowers. I'm now well into the tree trunk, which will occupy time tomorrow, when I am not picking up parcels

Post 309

 

I spent a couple of hours this morning on a spread sheet of data from my Baby Boomer Teacher Conversations. I managed to set up the columns and rows I wanted and to work through half of the stories - 25 -, ticking boxes, counting and making notes. 

I decided to stop there for today. I'll try to work through the remaining 24 tomorrow. 

I had a coffee and finished reading the Ann Cleeves Telling Tales. It was a good read.

The dove pair visited several times. Black Tips came right up to the door to peer insid

I spent some time this afternoon at Katherine's place while she made plum jam and sauce. She has a surfeit of fruit, which she can't give away in their raw state because there is a fruit fly outbreak in the area.  It is OK to preserve them and give away to product.

As we were having dinner outside a flock of white cockatoos flew over. They make a great racket and look great.

Throughout the day I managed to complete five new squares. I wound a few more balls of cotton off the 200gm balls for convenience - including a green I had missed before. I now have 23 sqares.

Since arriving home I have added another leaf to Lady Anne's Flowers. It's not quite finished.

There have been more Corona virus cases identified in both NSW and Victoria today and borders are once again closing and restrictions tightening. We are becoming used to this process. Flexibility was, I think, nominated as the word of 2020. It's clearly a basic skill for 2021. 

Post 308 Quiet New Year's Day.

There's not a lot to report today. New Year's Day has to be the quietest day on the calendar. I spent much of the morning, after New Year catch up with overseas friends via email and messenger, reading Telling Tales, Ann Cleeves' second Vera Stanhope book. It's the first of this series that I have read. 

It took me a while to adapt to the style - until Vera enters the action. It is impossible to read it without making comparisons with the TV series episode - which I don't remember in detail. I haven't finished the book yet.

While I was reading there were visits from my bird friends, first Turtle

then the younger pair. It is so interesting to observe the companionship and relationship between them. 

I had planned to begin work on a spreadsheet of data from my Baby Boomer Teacher Conversations. A large sheet of graph paper is waiting on the dining table. I want to see it on one sheet in front of me (and I'm also not that good at Excel!). However, the sheet remains untouched today. 

I have been conscientious about my eye drops and heat pad throughout the day.

This evening I made a big dish of carrot, coriander and sesame seed salad and had some of it with the cold duck breast I cooked yesterday. while I watched Dolly Parton's 50 Yeats at The Opry. It was OK but I might have been better off listening to some of her recordings. 

It reached 29C in Adelaide today but I was very comfortable with the front and back balcony doors open and a light breeze through the apartment. The city around me was very quiet, 

The pot of petunias on the back balcony are looking great - such a fabulous colour.

  I finished the day working on Lady Anne's Flowers and watching an episode of Midsomer Murders that I haven't seen for quite a while. 

I worked the top right corner. The tree trunk is the biggest challenge.          There's still a way to go.