Lockdown, extended

 A few days ago already media (politicians quoted in media) were talking about the fact that most likely our lockdown would be extended. Numbers of infections were considered unreliable because all those holidays, assumption of reduced testing, laboratories not working at full speed, the Robert-Koch-Institut neither... and by now the fact has been completed. At least until the end of this month, no shops open, no restaurants, no schooling in person. Even if one has been expecting it – it is getting hard to bear! I look at my penned up 15-yr-old who is denied his basketball practice, who may not meet his friends in person, while ‘Professional Sports’ is allowed to continue. A lot of money involved. But what is this being holed up in homes without sufficient contact doing to this generation? What will be the psychological price they will have to pay in the future?

We had reports about too many people trying to get outside between Christmas and the New Year, hitting the mountains, sledding slopes, even just going for walks. Not enough distance, not enough care taken to avoid infection. And by now, as post-holidays work schedules are being resumed, we see that numbers are indeed still rising.

Working in ER over the holidays was strange because for a large part of my scheduled shifts the hospital was not taking any ‘regular’ emergency cases due to an outbreak of corona amongst staff on one ward, which resulted in the closure of the ward, and the intensive care unit was full. So it was boring – but perhaps better than the complete catastrophe?

Vaccination for staff of the hospital started on Monday – but nursing students were not considered worthy of being put on the list. Which really pisses me off. There are quite a few things already that make me consider seriously whether I would or will apply for a position in this hospital... although I assume it is not much better in any other hospital, and this one has the definite advantage that my ‘commute’ to work of either 5 minutes by bike or approximately 11 minutes when walking is so very convenient. But ... nothing has been decided yet.

I did a lot of spinning and knitting. My first finish of the year happened on January 1 when I got to spend a few hours with my knitting and completed the yoke sweater from hand-spun yarn I had been working on for a few weeks and mentioned in my last post. 

 

However, although I announced differently I will not start on a new knitting project right now, despite the fact that my fingers are itching and I have swatched several options and could start at least three or four different ones. I have decided to finish some more UFOs first before I allow myself another cast-on. After all, there are several quilts still waiting to be finished, and several other knitting projects as well. So I took out my pieces for a “Freewheeling Single Girl” made with templates by Denyse Schmidt which had stalled a while ago, and continued with those, a bit mindlessly sewing just to keep busy. I actually like what is happening. I am cutting up a number of workshop samples that have accumulated over years, never were thrown out, but never developed into anything either. At least that part of the stash is being recuced a bit.

Cutting up a stalled/faltered project which is completely
'not my colors' and won't ever go anywhere unless I do
something dramatic to it.

In progress. It will be larger.

We have had snow. For the first time in several years. I think we have not had this much snow since before I stopped my business for hand-dyed fabrics, because I remember my stash of snow-dyed fabrics was dwindling when I decided to stop the business. When I was awoken by our new neighbors' boys shoveling snow on January 6 at 7 a.m. I fondly remembered how a snowfall would put me into action. I would have prepared several pieces of fabric by soaking them in soda and dried them off and I would be as eager to do a bit of snow shoveling as these young boys to make sure I got enough snow to fill several boxes and set them to drip-melt... I was getting rather nostalgic about this even, but then later on during the day I also was relieved that I could just enjoy the snow on my walk and did not have to work the boxes, washing machine etc. 

 

In addition, I have no pfd-fabric in the house right now, and at the moment I am not planning on getting any, either. Use up more of what is there first!