It was a weird last week at work, with quite a bit of taste of the pandemic. An outbreak amongst patients and staff on the neighboring, supposedly non-infectious ward resulted in closure of the ward and reshuffling of personnel. The ones who had not been tested positive started working on our ward, while being retested regularly, and personnel on our ward had to be tested, too. I have been tested negative twice tested again twice this week.
Lockdown is being tightened bit by bit because despite all pleas to abide by hygiene regulations, keep distance, minimize contacts outside the immediate family circle, numbers of infection and the death rate keep rising. Somehow it seems unreal, how little understanding people have developed during the past nine months. What bothers me most are those people who keep insisting on their personal rights and liberties, who refuse to wear masks and keep saying the virus isn’t real, or at least the people who are dyeing aren’t dyeing because of the virus, only, perhaps, ‘with’ it. But we have had rather disturbing articles in the newspaper, too, that it makes all sense in the world that people who are not working in the health care system don’t understand what is going on. Quite frankly, repeatedly I thought that even my colleagues don’t seem to understand the mechanisms of what is happening, either. But I kept my mouth shut, after all, I have not passed my nursing exams yet, I am not going to say much. Day after tomorrow, on Wednesday, a strict lockdown is coming. Again shops (except for supermarkets, drug stores, and a few others) will be closed. Restaurants only serve take out meals. Home office wherever possible, schools and day care institutions close down. ‘Germany is closing down’ it was called in the news this evening. Until January 10, at least. Perhaps longer, who knows. Minimize contacts. No fireworks on New Years’ Eve, and I really like that one. I have always thought that a particularly stupid thing. Blowing zillions of euros into the air, with all the dirt that needs to be cleared up afterwards, the air pollution that you can feel for days, and when I used to have a cat I would stay home on that evening anyway to keep the cat company whom I would keep inside all day if possible to have her inside when the whole thing started, when she would start to panic from the noise. Apart from keeping people apart and thus avoiding infection, it was also a condition on the side of the hospitals, I heard, which said that with all the infections going on they could not handle the injuries which always happen during that night due to incompetent handling of fireworks. So the next few weeks will be a very different kind of end of the year.
For a special reason Berlin has been on my mind for the last few days, and it seemed ages ago that I went there with my son for a weekend – yet it was only 10 months ago.
Nobody was wearing masks then, hardly anybody was even taking the virus seriously back then. And then three weeks later we entered the first phase of lockdown in the middle of March. When I first sewed masks in April after they were finally made mandatory in shops and some other spots (and hated every minute of it!) I did not imagine I would still be sewing more by the end of the year. But here I am, even though I try to keep production at a minimum. At work we have to wear the industrial ones, and as I feel very constricted beneath them, I prefer self-made ones when outside the hospital. But I do believe in the efficacy of the industrial ones at work. At least so far I have not caught it yet...
And still I am not surprised it all happened like this. I am not an optimist, and sometimes I wish I were ... but I guess I would call myself a realist rather than a negative thinker. So, especially after learning so much about the pandemic of the Spanish Flu from my beloved book Pale Rider, this whole thing is just what I expected. And we will have to see what happens.
This morning I listened to a podcast about ‘happy pessimism’ (terrible sound quality – one thing I hate about these self-made podcasts where private people record their interview partner via zoom or whatever it is... why don’t they do good telephone connections, which we had for many years, why does it have to be online?) and that guy said something about ‘accepting what is right now’, and being happy in this specific moment, which could change within the next 10 minutes, but at least acknowledge this moment, especially if it is free of anxiety. That sounded good. We had an afternoon of unexpected sunshine (after too many days, yet again, of dark and grey), so I went walking and feel good and tired now.
I have finished the first top for the instructions I mentioned in my last post in German, of the block pattern "Burgoyne Surrounded" or "Road to California", and as I just took a commission off the longarm I should be able to quilt it soon.
The Patchwork Gilde has not decided how exactly we are going to put it to use for the members, and until then I will occasionally work on blocks from the same pattern, but with a very different interpretation and color choice and thus a completely different kind of quilt. This picture is a computer simulation, when I had just made one block.
At that point I was not sure I would be making more, because although I do like working small somehow that first block had seemed rather tedious. By now I have made several more, am changing color and might actually be using up a lot of my light blue fabrics, if I continue. This is not art, but it keeps me busy, entertained, occupied, and is soothing to sew.
I am mending that blanket and slowly making progress.
I am knitting that other blanket, which is requiring a lot of stamina right now and I keep asking myself why on earth I had this idea to knit a blanket of HST from sock yarn remnants... Now I have counted how many there are left to do (and I even shortened it by a whole row) and realized that I need to make around 2 squares per day for a number of days to get it finished by the time it is supposed to be finished (it’s been promised for a birthday in March). And then I probably won’t have the binding finished... But I do hope the person who will receive it (who actually sees me knitting it very frequently) will appreciate the number of hours that went/are still going into this piece.
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