Tuesday 24th May - Full Schedule

Yesterday, we took 5 hours to travel 62 miles; 60 miles in the car, and 2 miles on foot.

We drove up to London (now I really understand why the train is so much easier, but we are still not venturing on public transport at the moment), parked in a pre-booked space in Sloane Square car park, and walked across to the Royal Brompton Hospital a scant mile, for my routine lung function appointment. My average walking speed is around one mile per hour these days, especially is it is even slightly uphill. Wearing any kind of mask also slows me down. That accounts for two of the miles, and two of the hours. 

But I did enjoy the walk. It is such a pretty part of London, and as it was the day before the opening of the Chelsea Flower show, there was plenty to see. Many of the shops, even in the back streets, had exuberant floral decorations spilling out onto the pavement.

 I shall find out more about the results when I speak to someone at the clinic (over zoom) next week, but the lovely man who was operating the machine talked me through the figures in outline, and they were pretty reassuring. I'm always such a doom-merchant as the time for the tests draws near, and usually discover that I have been worrying over nothing.

The drive is only 30 miles each way, but once you get anywhere close to London the the speed of travel slows dramatically!

Both of us were pretty well zombified by the day - it is the most public outing we have been on since March 2020, even including the two trips to the Royal Free Hospital last year, once for routine tests, once for a 'right heart catheter', a procedure like an angiogram, but on the other side, to measure internal blood pressures in the heart. I find myself having these every five years or so, to see how things are progressing ( so far the results have been stable, which is good).

Today I did my experimental sewing for the postcard project. I've bought some stuff called 'magic paper'. According to the information, you can draw on the paper (what kind of pen, I would like to know??), cut out your design, peel it off the backing and stick it on the fabric. Then embroider, using stranded cotton or perle embroidery cotton. Finally you dissolve the magic paper with cool water. 

So I did all that today;

I used a frixion pen to draw the picture. The magic paper sticks nicely to the linen, giving it a satisfactory stiffness which makes it easier to sew. I used some black perle cotton.

The finished embroidery - as usual things changed as I went along...

And when I dunked the sewing in a bowl of cool water, the paper turned into a sticky goo within seconds. I shall know tomorrow when the fabric has dried whether all the goo has come off.

 I'm very pleased with how simple it was to use.

So now you know the theme for my picture this month...