Succumbed.

 

After two and a half years of ever prolonged lockdown periods, wearing face masks either all over the place, but definitely at work all the time, three shots of vaccination, being prudent and careful, months on end of social distancing and lack of contacts, a deeply felt lack of cultural input because so much wasn’t possible, recently offending people by single-handedly (excuse the pun) trying to change the unhygienic habit of hand-shakes as a greeting the virus has caught up with me. I sort of was expecting to catch it at some point sooner or later, and I am relieved that it happened now, and not a day before we are planning to go on vacation in August. But...

Not sure whether I got it from that colleague whom I hugged (without a mask) when saying good-bye at the OR (but the scratchy throat started that evening right away and she was reported sick only a few days later, so perhaps she caught it from me?) The unfortunate part of it all is that I had only four days at the new job before I was tested positive, which, of course, is not exactly what an employer wants from a new employee. But what’s there to do in a pandemic?

The test result had come in on Saturday, and the weekend was terrible, because I did not have any medication to deal with the coughing. That has changed, and at least I am not coughing my guts out anymore. Weakly lying in the hammock for long stretches of time, 

 

but every once in a while I gather enough strength to spin along with the #tourdefleece2022. 

Sometimes I spin along as they ride, although, to be honest,
my interest in the tour as such is minor.

 I am spinning a fine thread, so the project will take a while, but I have spun almost 50% of the sample pack I started out with. In the end, I will need a thrid thread, though, to make it a good 3-ply, I will be working on this longer than the tour, even though I plan to spin along until the end of the month, including the Tour des Femmes as well.

That’s not too exhausting. Thinking hasn’t been possible, but perhaps the next few days will show a bit of improvement.

I watch my flock of chickens, 

This is 2/5ths of the flock.

 

look up at the leaves of the magnolia 

 

and wait for the world, and my cough, to improve.

Towards an exhibition

 

text messages: Vilhelm Lundström,
made in response to a challenge for the group 12 by the Dozen,
2018, 40 x 40 cm

Today I took a (sort of) inventory of my quilts. I have an exhibition coming up in October, in our local museum. This is not an art museum, it has a standard exhibition that concentrates on local history of pottery as it was common here in the 18^th to early 20th centuries. The museum has won prizes and is famous amongst pottery circles, the early 20^th century e.g. was a time when migrant workers came here from northern Italy. Special exhibitions are shown regularly, though, and recently there have been exhibitions about the times of World War II, or the history of water in the city. The new director (who is the first director with an academic background and not doing this as a volunteer and has been here for a couple of years by now) is trying to diversify in terms of topics that will be dealt with. Currently they are showing a recollection of the 40 years of the city’s professional women’s volleyball team which has been playing in the first national league for several years.

Greening Rothko, 2016, 45 x 80 cm,
made as contribution to one of the challenges for
International Threads

 

I was offered to do this exhibition in the context of the attempt at diversification of topics, and as 2017 recipient of the Kulturpreis (Cultural Prize) of the city. Indeed, during my nursing course I had at some point thought I would not ever again try to do a solo show, I felt so drained artistically, and there wasn’t much time to spend on planning, designing, executing (enough) quilts that satisfied my personal standards regarding artistic merit. But the museum is not too big, so when the director and the city’s cultural manager approached me with this idea, I agreed to this adventure. I figured it might perhaps be another incentive to spark my creative impulses.

Mapping my inner world,
2018,58 x 105 cm

 

Hanging in the museum is going to be a bit tricky because the display cases are glass-fronted cases with some unusual shapes and widths. Although the city is having a few display walls made, I will mostly need to refer back to smaller sizes, and I really had no clue as to how many smaller quilts I have in stock. It was an interesting dive into my history of quilt making, and a rediscovery of some I had more or less forgotten. That happens when the website is unsufficiently maintained (and it has been disfunctional for a while now anyway, that’s another thing I need to get fixed before the exhibitions is actually on). Most (or at least many) of them have never been exhibited because they were made as group challenge quilts. Some of them I was surprised to see with a temporal distance and realize that they werent’t bad at all.

 

Challenge 3, 2014, 40 x 80 cm,
made for a challenge of International Threads

I concocted a list of what I have, measured some (or most) of them and was relieved that I should be able to fill the space of the museum with smaller quilts, but the actual matching of the widths with the plans of display cases still remains to be done. I also have to clarify with the cultural manager how many display walls there are indeed going to be so I would be able to hang a few larger or at least not really small quilts as well.

The piece which is currently traveling with the SAQA-exhibition “Forced to Flee” is bound to return home at some point in the fall, as the Festival of Quilts is supposed to be the last place where the exhibition will be shown, at least that is the current state of affairs. The picture currently shown at the top of the blog is a detail from that piece. That is one of the bigger quilts that I really would like to show. But, ironically, after FoQ the show will go back to the States before the individual quilts are being sent back to their owners, and that turnover may take longer than the opening date for my exhibition. We will see. The inventory session at least has given me the secure feeling that I will be able to hang enough quilts, even if it may not be an entirely coherent show.

Decisions and preparations

The decision-making process I had mentioned here has been completed. I have signed a new contract to start work at a different place, and I have handed in the resignation at the hospital. There I will be until the end of June, and then on July 1^st I will begin work in a center for dialysis patients. That’s what the car is for that I wrote about in the last post already. I have been feeling quite a bit of tension about this whole process, and it’s not over entirely.  But everything will be alright, I hope. I will indeed feel very sorry not to be continuing with several of the members of the team, but as I was being introduced to more different kinds of operations, I realized that anything regarding joints, bones, or broken stuff just wasn’t the right thing for me. I would have been fine if it would have been possible to say ‘I will only do visceral, gyneacology and the other soft stuff’, but because the hospital is rather small, that would not have been possible. At the new place I will be earning more money, not working on Sundays, no night-shifts – that’s the stuff on the plus side. I will be getting up a lot earlier, and the commute is much longer (30 minutes by car vs. 7 minutes by bike right now), that’s the stuff on the not so bright side. But I am looking forward to it.

At the same time it seems that changes aren’t finished yet. As the garden season started 

Trying to grow herbs in pots...

... and once again, an attempt at sunflowers.

 

and my few attempts at working in the garden were again, as every year, severely marred by slugs already out and feasting I had to decide whether was I going to give up any pretense at gardening altogether or was I going to get really serious about the battle against the slugs. I don’t want to run around picking them up as they tend to be out in abundance at night, when I want to sleep. Chemical means are expensive and not very effective either. Tips in gardening journals include “don’t have a compost heap in your garden”. But I love my compost heap. Desperate people put out beer in dishes, which has the effect of drawing even more of them, definitely not diminishing their numbers. BUT.

A new friend had told me that she has absolutely no problems with slugs anymore ever since she has started keeping chicken. When I last saw her, I asked about this in a bit more detail, how hard is it to keep them... and last Saturday she came for a visit with a trial delegation from her little chicken farm. 

 

Four hens and a rooster tested our grounds, my friend had a serious look around and was very pleased with the possibilities for chicken roaming we have to offer. I am now in the process of buying a chicken coop and the organic battle against slugs will soon be on. Never ever had I thought I would be doing this, and it is a bit of an investment. But perhaps working in the garden will give me more pleasure once the chicken have done their work.

Some quilting is going on, too. I am working on my next piece for the upcoming reveal for 20perspectives on the theme of windows/doors/portals. Almost there.

"Between Portals" - detail, pre-finished

 

Lots going on that is not necessarily quilting...

I had to pick up my oleander pots from the gardener where they had spent the winter in late March, and they had to face the temperatures on the terrace. I admit, I did not understand they were delicate towards what we have been experiencing in terms of weather because during the past years it has never been a problem. But this time around, as we are having a rather dry spell with temperatures that are probably much closer to ‘adequate according to long-term average’ than they were during the recent years, so leaving them out on the terrace uncovered during the night was not a good idea at all. Last year I could come up with a gorgeous photo of a ‘tomato oleander’ in its full glory (alas it has been lost to photo clean up on the phone),but at the moment the leaves look rather sad.

 

I will cut them back even further and hope they will recover when it gets warmer. They have been banned from the terrace by my husband, now they are waiting for warmer days just outside the garden door, and when they resprout I will argue for their return to the terrace.

It’s been a week full of events and decisions. (Not exactly how I had planned to spend my first week of vacation.) One of these decisions was the signing of a leasing contract for a brand-new car which I will need soon to accomodate the new situation. I never believed I would ever be the owner of a new car, in fact, I had sort of decided that I wasn’t going to be relying on a car for work commute in my remaining work life. But we live in an area where public transport is virtually non-existant, and certainly nothing to be dealt with in the direction I will be heading for work starting July 1^st. So we did a quick search, one test drive, a calculation, and signed the contract. Of course, it being a lease arrangement, strictly speaking I will not be the owner of the car, unless we buy it off the dealer in four years. I feel much better now (not primarily because of the car) and more at ease, so I suppose it was the right thing to do, although the coming weeks might be a bit of a challenge still, to bring it all to a civilized ending. And then something new will begin.

I finished a sort-of-red sweater, which was knit on rather thicker needles than I had been knitting on for a long time. 

 

A history of tendonitis in my lower right arm had kept me from going above 4mm needles ever since I started back to knitting, and I have always been careful not to overdo it, in order to stay on the safe side. But I wanted to try this three-strand combination, and it required 6mm needles. This sweater was started only a few weeks earlier this year, and as it was so much fun to knit, I actually got very close to overdoing it at some point. So I scaled back in amount of time I would spend knitting in general, and this sweater in particular. But it’s finished now. I used up every little bit of this salmon colored silk lace yarn I still had in my stash, 

 

and almost everything of a handspun sari-silk-thread that had severely discolored when I washed it after taking it off the bobbin. Which was actually the reason why I combined it with the red baby alpaca and the silk lace yarn, as the brownish result of the discoloring had left me rather frustrated.

This is a swatch for another knitting pattern which I received as a
present last week, made from that same sari-silk thread, just to get the hang of the pattern.

 

And this week was a first time for me, ordering a piece of fabric printed with my own photo. This is going to be my next contribution to the 20perspectives challenge, and because the deadline is looming I can’t really change my mind. I like the photo, but am not very happy with the fabric, I had imagined something different. 

 

I will do my best with as it is, but if it were not for the pressure of time I would try to find a different solution. Curious to see how this behaves when being quilted, and how it will turn out.