End of silence...?

So much has happened since I last wrote, and, unfortunately, not much of it conducive to art making. Life’s priorities have definitely changed since I started nursing training, and it is much more difficult to squeeze in time for art making than it used to be. The little moments I can find are easier filled by picking up a pair of knitting needles than whizzing into the studio and concentrating on what’s on the design wall. (Is there something on the design wall? Yes, there is:

)

So I turned back to sock knitting, wanting to use the remnants to make a blanket of remnants, but because the little balls of left-over from socks somehow still felt too big for getting used in the blanket, so insert another step: baby booties. Quickly made, and then the leftovers can be added to the bag for the blanket. 

If you would like to support the children's charity, send me a mail and
we can negotiate how you can come by 'your' pair of booties!

No, I am not expecting a baby, and no, I am not being made a grandmother yet (my 'baby' is 14...). But I thought it might be a possibility to give these booties away in exchange for a donation, which I will then pass on to the children’s charity for which I have donated before, when I ran the knit-along scarf. So right now I use little time windows for knitting the booties, and will try out different options where they might find interest and change hands in exchange for a donation. The idea for the baby booties came when I was doing a practicum session on the gyneacology ward – which was then followed by 10 days in the hospice. Quite the two opposites of the life span, and both very interesting. And I could collect the first two donations for 2 pairs of booties from a colleague in the hospice.

I have been a member of team “Berlin spinnt!” for the ravelry Tour de Fleece for the past weeks alongside the Tour de France, and  completed what I had set myself as a goal: I finished spinning the remainder of the fibre advent calendar from last year, and plied it completely. Now I have to decide on what I am going to make from these 480 grams of yarn. It is a colour gradient, so this decision is everything but easy!

And stuff has been happening on the political side, too, that I feel more and more disillusioned about the current state of political affairs in all aspects, which, too, is puts a  brake on creativity. But I am not going to talk about that. It is just too disheartening.

I have spent hours trying to clear up my studio, and at least the floor is visible again now. This morning I started packing my suitcase for South Africa. As I am taking the German part of the exhibition “Interchange – Threads connected” I need to plan carefully as to how to pack and what to take. I have booked an overweight suitcase, but not a second piece of lugggage, so wanted to find out how much room there is in the suitcase for my own things. I won’t have to take too many clothes as I am planning to rinse out things in the sink, and I am not going for a long trip anyway. But it will need just a little bit of planning and sorting as there is not much room left in the checked luggage suitcase, and everything else will have to go into hand luggage.

Meanwhile I am directing myself back to the sewing machine, and have dug out leftover blocks from a previous (long-ago!) project which I have been meaning to do something with for quite a while but just never had a good idea. Right now I am adding narrow lines and will see where it takes me.

As I was taking the individual blocks down to add the lines,
the wall was emptying, so now I have taken them all down
and put them on a stack.

Before I go to South Africa, though, I get to go to Birmingham, the well-loved Festival of Quilts is coming up, and I am really looking forward to that. Not a whole lot of time as I won't be there for long and the whole Saturday is taken up with the EQA meeting, but at least several very interesting exhibitions are there, and I have two quilts there, too.