Monday 4th April - Exercises and sewing and Windows 11

 This arrived in the post for me today;

My Medal! I started 'walking' the South Downs Way on Boxing Day last year, and completed the 100 miles last Saturday. Let's be honest here; it s a virtual walk, where you enter the distance in km, miles or steps and you can see the course of your travels plotted on a map. I've been aiming for a daily step count of 2000 by the end of each day - not much, but it has kept me active. If I do NOTHING but sit and red, sit and knit, sit and watch television, my step counter can be less than 500 by bedtime. So this has been a real incentive to walk those extra steps, usually 'on the spot' while watching television.

One side shows Beachy Head, and the other King Arthur's Round Table, which is at Winchester. The disc rotates, showing various landmarks along the route on the Beachy Head side, and the names of the Knights on the other.   

I'm going to try talking my ancient and reluctant relative (mentioning no names) through a short and simple set of chair exercises several times a week as part of my phone call - I phone most days. He used to go to a proper Chair Exercise class, but that stopped some time ago. He has become a bit wobbly, partly s a result of being unwell recently. I'm no trained fitness instructor, but I reckon this will do us both good; - everything to be done gently and easily without strain...

1. wriggle your toes, flex your ankles up and down a coupe of times, rotate them a couple of times clockwise and then anticlockwise.
2. raise your foot and lower legs up, and lower a coupe of times (do each let separately)
3. see if you can get your knees to touch the underside if your table in turn (I know he is sitting in a chair with arms at his desk)
4. hands and wrists; stretch your fingers, and loosely relax them into a fist, repeat. Wriggle your fingers as though you were drumming them on a table top, or playing a piano. Bend your wrist up, then down, up, then down. Rotate your wrists one way, then the other, and repeat.
5. shoulders; raise and lower each shoulder in turn, make them go forwards and back in turn, rotate one way and the other.
6. neck; slowly look to the left, and the to the right, and then left and right again.
7. You're done! 

"Really," he said in surprise.

"Yup. was that okay?"

"Well, yes. More trivial than I was expecting. Thought you were planning something much more strenuous".

I hope he will be happy to do this again - it only takes just over 5 minutes. I'm assuming he did try and do it all - I did point out that there was no way I could tell if he was joining in, so he could just pretend and that would keep me happy...

This was the next thing to arrive;

A small brown paper bag with a square of orange furnishing material, two other scraps of cotton, a square of wadding and a little clear bag of notions - buttons, a ribbon, embroidery floss. It's for a project that our local eco group is running (not the church one but the town one), to collect embroidered squares and sew them into a sort of cloak.

I didn't choose the colours, and am a bit non-plussed. The theme is nature; they are the colours of the desert burned dry by the sun. I knew that if I ferreted through the bags that a friend brought round I would get lost, so just picked the first one.

Can you see what it is yet? 

No? Well neither can I.

So far I have made a quilted background - not quite finished. I've added some of the pieces of brown and dark red lace that Ang sent me right at the beginning of the postcard project, and I think I will add the green sequins she included, to be seeds. Then what? Belum tahu, as they say in Indonesia, one of the few phrases I remember from over 50 years ago. It means 'don't know'.

My Cross Country Collaboration has arrived with Ang, so I can post the picture now;

 I'm tempted to leave it small - it's meant to be daffodils on the banks of Ullswater. Oh, let's go large!

Finally - Windows 11 - a 'heads up' - I haven't moved to windows 11 on this computer, although my husband has moved his. It's ok, but a bit different to Windows 10. The messages 'inviting' me to upgrade are coming thick and fast now, and need careful reading or you will find yourself upgraded willy-nilly. That might be fine for you - or it moght not.