Tuesday September 27 - Zonked

 I had a Covid vaccination on Sunday afternoon, and felt final that evening, but the next day.... suffice it to say that my step total for the day was 500. Yup. I spent the day mostly sitting on the settee with a book or the knitting and feeling below par. Although I did cheer up after I cancelled my piano teaching for the evening...

Today is another story, and although I am not exactly bright-eyed and bushy-tailed, neither am I feeling quite so stupid and slow.

The post card I sent Ang has arrived, so I can show you my design;

A first attempt at using blackstitch patterns to fill in spaces. It looks fine from a distance. but close up you can see where ll too often one mis-placed stitch has derailed the overall pattern!   

I think (1) I enjoyed it; and shall invest in some aida fabric and proper tapestry needles to give it a fair trial.

I've started knitting hats for the 'Shoe-boxes for Roumania' appeal. I'm not sure how many I will get done by the end of the month, but will be glad to use up some stash. I have a feeling I've got one or two in a bag somewhere which I will have a rummage for in due course. 

Sketch-a-day is still happening - here's a week's worth from the beginning of the month;

I must have boiled the blackberry cough remedy mixture for too long, because now that it is cooled and bottled it is nearer the consistency of jelly than syrup. But is tastes....interesting and efficacious without being either too nasty or too delicious  

The gash in my father's head is all but healed (Thursday 8th Sept) and th jasmine has recovered from being trained along the fence. 

We are trying to rethink how and where I sit to type things (lessons, blogs, other stuff) on my laptop. Sitting at the dining room table really isn't comfortable - I'm perched on top of three cushions, tipped forwards in an precarious and unbalanced position.

The weather has been so variable recently - on the 13th we postponed an outdoor meeting with family for handing over birthday presents, and it rained all day. On the following afternoon I was able to spend time standing in the warm sun chatting with a friends.   

The cat approved the new patio table, and there are a couple of roses left in the garden among other flowers.

It's not really 'news', is it - just burbling along with how life carries on. I've just finished re-reading 'The Diary of a Provincial Lady' by E M Delafield for the umpteenth time - I guess it will son be time to think about whether I want to pot up hyacinths for winter flowering. No, actually, I've thought about it, and it's more trouble than I want to go to. I've just as happy to look at pots full of spring bulbs in the garden... must soon be time to get on with planting them up. I've got my eye on the pots vacated by the tomato plants.

 

Friday 23rd September - Life on Steroids

Hooray - I'm back! The last two months have been aptly summed up by this poem

It turns out that my total lack of 'oomph' was entirely due to the reduction in the dose of steroids I take, and now that I am back at the original dose everything has changed. I'm walking faster and further, have more energy and am 'sitting up and taking an interest' as my Northern Irish relatives would say.

The one thing to take away from the whole experience is that I can be sure I am on the optimal dose for me!

So, what has been happening to me in the past fortnight?

The Queen - ah yes, the Queen. We watched the funeral on television, so moving, so beautifully done. My heart went out to the Royal Family - it has been such a strain on them. It would have been for anyone - but most of us do our grieving with friends and family, not with the whole world watching and commenting and analyzing our every move, gesture, item of clothing, angle of hat or veil... I hope they have managed to find some time and space to kick their shoes off and have some peace and quiet.

One of the families I teach went to London; they arrived at The Mall early in the morning to find that the closest they could get was already six rows back. Everyone was very pleasant, and someone let the three children go to the front. However it took them several hours afterwards to walk back to Victoria Station; the crowds were so huge that there were police and security shepherding them all, holding lines of people back to let other columns cross and so on.

 Sewing

I have at last finished the August (!) embroidery postcard. I'm not posting a picture here as I will wait until Ang has received the parcel first. It took longer than I thought (as usual) and this coupled with energy depletion made it take a lot longer than usual.

I have to admit to being unfaithful to the embroidery for a few hours;

I bought a very cheap version of a speedy weave loom

It is for mending holes in textiles - cloth or knitwear - and apparently had their heyday in the 1940s

No textiles are safe in our house at the moment - luckily we have a lot of tattered tea towels for me to practice on. 

My loom and accessories was only about £10 - and I can see why. The loom itself is tin plate, roughly finished where it was cut from the sheet of tin. But it is good enough to do the job. 

Visible mending is enjoying a resurgence at the moment. The loom method is a bit fiddly to get started, but very soothing once you've got it going.

Family

The actual day of the Queen's death, as I said in the last post, were overshadowed by our own family drama when my father had an accident and cut his head. I am glad to report that he has had the stitches out and it seems to be healing well. He is having it checked over in the next few days.

We (best beloved and I) met up with the offsprings last weekend at out favourite Farm Shop Cafe. The weather was great - bright and sunny - if a bit cold. Getting together is very weather-dependent now that we are properly into Autumn

My cousin is due over from France next weekend. She will be able to stay in the guest accommodation at my father's flats, and plans have been made for us to have supper outside on a couple of evenings. BUT, these plans were made back in August! I have a feeling that supper in the garden is NOT going to be such a good idea at the beginning of October! We shall have to think again.

Drawings

I'm keeping up with the 'sketch-a-day' book. The current photograph is a bit fuzzy, so I will post the drawings anther time.
    

Monday 12th September - where have I been?

 I've been nowhere, but September has slithered through my grasp. The longer I leave something, the harder I find it to get going again. And then the grumpier I get while I am in that waiting period between wishing I was getting something done, and the actual getting that something done. Someone like Joan Didion (but it might not have been her) said 'The enemy of apathy is action' and she's (for it was a woman who said that) is not wrong.

Today I have been 'Action Woman' - it is only just gone 10 am and I have changed the pillowcases, cleaned the bathroom, done the ballet exercises, had a 'doorstep meeting' with a friend from church to talk about the upcoming Harvest Supper, made and drunk a 'second coffee' and am now clearing the next of the items on my list - writing a blog.

The Queen - everyone needs to acknowledge the Queen, not to do so would seem wrong. She was, and is, a remarkable woman, of great insight, honesty, integrity, intelligence, and makes most of the current public figures look at best light-weight and and worst just plain tawdry. 

However we were rather unaware of the Royal events of last Thursday, as my father lost his balance while changing the printer ink in his printer, gashed his head on a wardrobe and bled profusely onto his study carpet. The first I heard of it was a phone call from him (halfway through a piano lesson I was teaching) shortly after 4pm saying he was fine, the carers had got him onto his bed and called an ambulance, and could I ask his cleaner to come round and get the blood out of the carpet.

To cut a longer story shorter, we shot straight round to his flat. After three hours the ambulance arrived, and took him off to the local (!) hospital 20 miles away. He was scanned, sewn back together with 13 stitches and sent home the next morning, and is now back to his normal self. But it is not surprising that the Queen took second place in our thoughts that day.

What of the previous 8 days? Ah indeed. Luckily I have my sketch-a-day reminders and photographs on my phone or I would never be able to remember.

Ang's embroidery postcard arrived on the 2nd. She sent me a card of Dorset Buttons, made by her own hands, including matching thread for when I find something suitable to sew them to. The bicycle is her picture for August, using two more Dorset buttons - so ingenious - for wheels. We have agreed to add a note about the Queen to the September embroideries. 

I'm still busy working on the August one - about three or four weeks slipped by with me gradually having less and less energy. It came to a head on The Thursday, when I was so breathless that the paramedics seemed as concerned about me as they were for my father. We've tracked this back to reducing my steroids throughout July and August, as requested by the clinic, down from 7.5mg daily to 5mg. I was able to talk to a nurse who recommended increasing them, and already I feel better. But this explains why I was getting less and less done.

Ah yes, raking up leaves and acorns, both still green, but falling steadily. Sunday was a thunderstorm which woke me with a start. We have stopped collecting grey water for the garden, as we were collecting about a bucketful of water every night and not watering the garden with it!

I had a fine time on Wednesday 7th making blackberry cough syrup from the punnet of blackberries a friend brought round. It is absolutely delicious, and I can't wait to get a cough in order to have an excuse to indulge. Well, maybe not. Perhaps, at the merest suggestion of a tickle I should take a couple of teaspoons just in case? I made two small bottles, so I could share one with the friend.

Gosh! Was blackberry cough syrup-making only last Wednesday? It seems to me that is was a lifetime ago. Time seems to contract and expand in the most extraordinary fashion. 

The jasmine is looking very sorry for itself having been untangled tied to the fence. Vicky almost disappeared at one point, trying to bring order to the rose that has had life all its own way for decades now. At the moment that corner of the garden looks all disheveled and unhappy, but I expect it will recover quite quickly in this lovely Autumn weather - damp, sunny, warm - perfect for weeds and plants alike!  

 There we are. Here we are. And on we go....