Post 425 Mostly botanical

It's been a slightly cooler, and overcast week here in Adelaide - appropriate for the end of daylight saving and a change of State government. 

Our Covid numbers and hospitalisations continue to rise - as predicted. More hospital beds are found, plans are hastily made to find more frontline workers and promises of fewer restrictions are reiterated. 

I remain cautious where I go. I wear my mask and keep my distance. 4 days to my second booster.

I saw my optometrist on Thursday. I had reduced the steroid cream to every 36 hours. The inflammation had reduced but not gone. The young optometrist has had experience of the problem through previous work with an ophthalmologist. She is knowledgeable and an excellent communicator. It seems that the risk of permanent damage from the inflammation is, in my case, greater than the risk from the steroid, so I am now back to steroid cream twice a day and monitoring every three months for any sign of glaucoma - which can be fed by the steroid. I feel very grateful to have access to this expertise - and to be able to continue using my eyes as much as I do.

The plants on both balconies are having a bit of an Autumn fling and keeping me cheerful

Making the most of being out and about, between the optometrist and Pilates I called at Create in Stitch and managed to nab a copy to this very inspiring book. I've got some ideas for it - including cutting up the jeans that are now too big for me.

The medical monitoring continued yesterday with an annual (more or less!) audiology appointment. I found it challenging to listen for the 'beeps' over the sound of my breathing while wearing a mask. The audiologist was alarmed at my holding my breath! There is a slight decline in my hearing of high sounds and my hearing aids were adjusted accordingly. Again, I'm fortunate.

It's been a busy week too for grandchildren. Both Brigid and Niamh umpired Netball matches on Saturday, meaning Brigid didn't get to play in her team's final and Niamh left JEMS a little early. Yesterday we celebrated Fionn's birthday with an excellent dinner at NNQ, all converging there from school, tutoring, football, work and dashes home to get changed. 

Katherine and I also did a little catching up with knitting on Saturday evening.

I've done a bit of reading and think I've found the books to recommend for my Bookclub next month. I won't give it away just yet! I stumbled over another book about sugar control, and managed to source a copy in Adelaide. It reports an interesting piece of research  suggesting the sequence in which we eat particular foods in a meal can improve metabolism - always beginning with vegetable fibre ahead of protein and carbs, reserving sugars  (if we must!) until last.

As I wrote this the abseilers were at work - clumping around on the roof rather than abseiling most of the time. There seems to be a lot of detailed finishing happening in the newly built apartment block.

I've watched quite a bit of Norse-Celtic related television while stitching this week, including Britain's Secret Islands and Exploring Northern Ireland. I'll soon need to start organising my reading and thoughts for the Anglo-Saxon and Celtic Embroidery discussion I've undertaken to lead at WES later this year. It all helps.

That extra hour on Sunday was put to good use (several times!)  with the Aesop Frame.I'm particularly pleased with this corner of fox and owl. 

I'm now working on the peacock after which I'll write up my progress more comprehensively in my embroidery blog before the last step of blocking and applying it to the chair.

By then the new washed linens I ordered from Ink and Spindle will have arrived - and together with that Botanicals book above there will be no end of projects in the pipeline......

Post 424: Books, a bird, booster bookings and St Brigid.

Who knew there was an Orthodox monastery on Mull? It wasn't there when I visited 50 years ago! My Viking Embroidery research reminded me that the Celtic monastery and church of St Cuthbert and St Ninian, established in the 6th Century on the site of Ninian's Holy Well at Kilninian on Mull, had been abandoned as a result of Viking raids in the 10th Century. The church was rebuilt in 1755 and had since been deconsecrated.  I then discovered that the Orthodox Monastery of All Celtic Saints has been founded there in 2010 and is now operating as a community. One of their fund-raising ventures is the production of Embroidered House Blessings featuring the blessings of Celtic Saints on wool tweed cloth from both Mull and Harris.  

Of course, I ordered one. This is a house blessing from St Brigid, on Mull tweed, now hanging just inside the entrance to my apartment. It arrived this week, bearing this extraordinary sender address . It seems those who join the order take the title 'Seraphim'.

This is my last nostalgia photo for a while - March 2017 in Keswick, catching up with cousins and drifting along Derwent Water. I haven't given up hope of seeing either my cousins or Derwent Water again, but I am, as ever, so glad we got together when we could. 

On Thursday morning I finished the second attempt at the Mosaic Carpet Bag. I'm pleased with the result - and also pleased to have finished it. There's an account of the finish in my embroidery blog.

I'm sure some readers will have noted that I am posting more frequently to my embroidery blog. I've returned to my pre-Covid habit of using it as a record of my embroidery projects (for my own benefit as much as anything) rather than filling this blog with embroidery detail.    

While I was stitching the lining on my machine, I appliqued a couple of motifs over the holes on a bamboo top (those pesky zip holes keep appearing!). The motifs were embroidered on silk by WES members and not claimed after a display. I like the look.

On Wednesday I had coffee with Zoe from the Uni SA fundraising branch. I'm interested in the innovative work in remote learning now underway. 

I was back at Pilates on Thursday and a bit sore on Friday. My instructor and her daughter have had Covid in the two weeks I was isolating. The daughter ended up in hospital and is now recovering. I did a bit of food shopping on the way home, Adairs were having a sale so I called in to buy another plant stand and pot, then filled it with a philodendron from Barrow and Bench on Friday. I really like these bamboo stands which sit so lightly on the carpet. I now have three of them.

I also bought a cactus euphorbia and 

an Ascot Rainbow euphorbia - which look nothing like each other, perhaps not surprising as it turns out there are over 2000 species in the genus.

On Saturday I attended the Guild's Certificate Workshop where Arrienne took us through some Turkish stitches. Like most things, it took a while to get the hang of it, then became fairly straightforward. 

I haven't worked on the Aesop Frame since June of last year and haven't posted a photo since May 2021 when I finished the peahen.  This week I have finished the green woodpecker and am now on the hare, in the bottom left hand corner of the frame. 

On Sunday the Crime Book Club successfully met at my place - after last month's postponement due to water works in the street. We covered a wide range of books and generally enjoyed ourselves. I'm the picker next month (for what we read for May) so I'd better get my brain into gear.

Monday's dinner was a bit of a relay - 6 people coming from and going to various work, school, sport and church commitments. A lot of fun for me - it's what dynamic families do.

I keep getting notifications from Academia, a service I don't subscribe to, notifying me of mentions of the half a dozen papers I wrote between 2000 and 2009 while completing a Masters. I have, it seems, just had my 100th mention. Since I don't subscribe, I can't view the mentions, so have no idea if it's positive or negative. 

That was then. I'm glad others have found it useful as they build knowledge.

Sunsets here are my regular Vesper doxology, it's less frequently that I open the blinds to that first blush of a new day with all its promise. Yesterday I reread 'East Coker', the second of Eliot's Four Quartets which begins In my beginning is my end, and finishes In my end is my beginning.  I still find it profound. 

Today that promise was amply fulfilled as Panayoula and I spent two hours reflecting on Life and the Universe as we do each month. We've agreed to learn about 'sovereignty' before we meet next month.

My original mandevilla is loving its larger pot, rewarding me with both height and flowers. I might end up moving the others to the eastern balcony. Morning sun seems to be more to their liking than afternoon.

On Saturday the Australian Government authorised a second 'winter' booster from 4 April for those with underlying conditions and over 65s, so I immediately booked at my local pharmacy for 9 April.  Today I booked my flu shot for 20 April. My weight loss has slowed but not stopped. I've now lost 22 kg, and am losing about 1kg per month.

Post 423 Bats and Ballots

Continuing my theme of 'March in recent years', this is 21 March three years ago with my cousin Pen and Mark in Lynton, Exmoor. Again, I am so pleased I was able to visit them when I did. We created so many memories to hang on to. 

In contrast, "abundance of caution" has made this a very quiet week. In line with SA Health Guidelines for close contacts (7 days isolation 7 days caution), I have avoided all those crowds I usually mix with(!). On Wednesday I had a problem-solving session with a Guild member - at an outside table in a coffee shop. Seemed to work. Although my Pilates class is never more than 4 people, it is indoors and I cancelled to be safe. I did a bit of food shopping and visited Create in Stitch to replenish my supplies of DMC Etoile thread, used up on the Bush Sentinelles.

The big event of the week was our State election on Saturday. I had mailed my postal vote last week. I spent election night having dinner and watching the count at friends' place - an old tradition. Pre-polls suggested a tight result with a probable change of government. It turned out to be a landslide change. Once I might have been excited by this. Now I have very mixed feelings. I am really over the tribalism. I can no longer see the two Party system (indeed the Party system itself) as efficient, effective - or decent and honest. I don't believe the promises and claims. I want cooperation and collaboration. At least this result is clear-cut. That makes a bit of a change in SA. I'm hopeful we will all now get on with doing the very best possible for our community. Today at the hairdresser I overheard several conversations from the adjoining barber - middle-aged men born in Eastern Europe, sharing their fears, knowledge and hope in the face of the Ukraine crisis -geographically removed, but utterly connected.. It strikes me we need to draw on the depths of experience and understanding in our diverse community to find workable solutions to both local and global issues - we are in this world, this State, together.

On Thursday night I had an idea that sent me back to Create in Stitch again the next day for a large wooden hoop. 5 members of my Adelaide family were still in lockdown. Because they had isolated as a family, rather than make the infected member isolate in their room alone, they had 14, rather than 7, days of isolation. The infected member, on the other hand, was free to leave the house once negative. It was hard to be missing school, work and sporting finals. So I designed and worked a little tribute for their release from quarantine today.  

That took up most of Saturday and Sunday along with making a couple of moussaka and an eggplant parmigiana (bought too many eggplant!). I delivered them to the lockdown house in the hour that our water was off due to the installation of new taps in the basement carpark. 

My neighbour called me late in the afternoon because she had a leak in her bathroom roof - I'm not sure how plumbers in the basement results in leaks in the roof, but hopefully it will be solved soon. The same neighbour had called in last Friday to talk to me about her experiences growing up in Adelaide in the 1950s - triggered by reading Conversations with Baby Boomer Teachers. 

After she left on Monday, I was enticed again by the bats - the dots high in the sky,

 

then a discernible shape 

and my favourite - curved shape  on an almost impressionist landscape.

Today's hairdressing visit took a while but I'm happy with the result. My hair is thinning and the grey is increasing, but I will pass with a push, as my mother would have said.   

I'm now finishing off the Mosaic Carpet Bag, and setting up the Aesop Frame which I will be working on for weeks to come. It's time.

Post 422 Out of isolation with an abundance of caution

My most displayable achievement for this work is the completion of the 4th, and last, Bush Sentinelle cushion cover. I have written about its completion in my embroidery blog.

I tested negative with RATs on both my 5th isolation day  and 7th (Saturday). My daughter's family is still in isolation and all members have tested negative on their 7th day. They have another week to go, because they chose not to isolate from their Covid-infected member. 

The days tended to flow into one another. Barbara and Margaret M stepped in to manage Wednesday's WES meeting. 7 people gathered and discussed Indian Quilts under Barbara's leadership and Margaret's quick PowerPoint  construction. It's a great group.

Pilates went by the board and Friday's dinner got tentatively moved to Sunday. I spent my days reading, doing bits of research, working on the 4th, and last Bush Sentinelle - and voting. Our State election is on next Saturday and I registered for a postal vote. When the voting package arrived it took a while to work through. The lower house was straightforward enough, but in the upper house, there were 19 political parties fielding candidates.  Under our preferential system you either vote for one Party, or for at least 12 individual candidates. I chose the latter, and it was hard. I posted it today.

I emerged from isolation on Saturday evening. This week, as per SAHealth recommendation, I am avoiding crowds and "unnecessary activities".  Several friends rang and had long conversations, including one I had lost touch with - fabulous to talk to each of them. 

I had enough food to get me through this week and ordered a delivery on Friday from the Adelaide Central Markets in the hope that  I'd test negative so Sunday lunch here could go ahead with two friends. The delivery worked well (meat is in the polystyrene box) and lunch went ahead. I repeated the duck with nectarines and potatoes recipe from the City Mag a few weeks ago. I had every intention of taking a photo, but as usual, was too focused on serving it to remember. It worked well. We had a lovely relaxed meal and catch up. The birds at sunset and bats as darkness began to fall put on a good show for us.

A couple of parcels came during the week. The coloured continuous zips I had ordered to share with a friend at the Guild fitted into the letterbox as did the fabric for the cushion. I haven't had a chance yet to share.

Unfortunately, a book I had ordered was delivered on Saturday morning and I mistook the deliverer's single buzz for a birdcall. I picked the book up today. The book itself was 16x23x2.5cm. The stiff cardboard packaging was 45x36x2.5cm. Had the packaging been closer to the size of the book, it would have easily gone into my letterbox. I know I carry on about this. I have written to the retailer.

This time two years ago my cousin Christine and her husband Eddie were generous enough to come from Cheltenham to pick me up in Stratford-upon-Avon and take me for a day of exploring the towns in Buckinghamshire that had been home to my maternal grandfather's ancestors. We visited Piddington, where my 7x GGrandfather was born in 1657. His son Thomas married Margery Mukell here at St Nicholas's Church in 1697.

We also spent time at St Mary the Virgin Marsh Gibbon, where the 7 children of my 5xGGrandfather John Ray and his wife Sarah were baptised. It was a fabulous day, both in terms of company and what I experienced. Thanks so much Christine and Eddie.

I cut my UK stay short, leaving on 17 March to get home before Australia shuts its border. I'm glad I went, and glad I got home.

Having finished the cushions, I finished off the  pouch I was making from the Viking embroidery examples I'd prepared for the Certificate Course workshop. I'd left it unfinished so the inside could be examined.  I added lining and a zip. 

I find these zip pouches quite useful - as pencil cases or for tools for a particular project. 

I'm now turning my attention back to knitting the Mosaic Carpet Bag. There are lots of projects waiting to be started or finished, so I need to get on with it. I'm edging closer to continuing the Aesop Frame.

It's been a warm week - most days 30-33C with warm nights. This is tonight's moonrise, taken about 6.40pm. The 7 faint dots in the sky are birds returning to roost.

As my Adelaide family is locked down for another week, I will spend Saturday night with friends watching the election count on TV- a very old arrangement. Postal, absentee and early votes, which are up because of Covid, are not counted on the night, so a result is unlikely for several days. I'm not complaining.  I'm grateful that our community is voting, managing Covid, and functioning, that my family is able to quarantine and keep each other safe, and that I can isolate in my home yet stay in touch. None of it can be taken for granted.

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.