Life in April '22

I am in a process of decisionmaking that hasn’t been completed yet but takes a lot of time and energy. (Perhaps that's what behind my procrastination tactics I wrote about in my last post.) So it may be good to get back to being creative and sorting my plans and projects in that area to take my mind off the other stuff and let that sort itself a bit under the radar.

When you work in hospital you have to leave any kind of green-minded heart outside the front door. This holds true for working on a standard ward, but even more so when working in the operating room. The amount of packaging waste that is produced every day is unbelievable. I have seen a colleague save the blue wrapping from inside the containers for medical instruments for her house decoration projects, and sort of got into the habit of keeping them back for her. Now she has declared she doesn’t need them anymore really and every time I open one of those containers I find myself faced with one of those sheets. 

 

As you can see, I have kept a few of them for myself and want to try out how well they are suited for storing quilts in, but it won’t be long before all of the quilts I have that are currently unprotected will be covered in blue. Then I will most likely stop saving the blue wrappers. I suppose they could be used to make reusable bags, but I am not a person who loves making bags – or if I make a bag, it must be from fabric and last, this material will not last as long as fabric. So that’s not my kind of thing.

Then I start thinking about all the hospitals in the world, and the amount of waste they produce in the service of health, and I realize that my saving those sheets from landfill is really not going to make a difference in that global context. And if I don’t know what to do with them?

The same containers are sealed after sterilization with red clips, which need to be undamaged before we start preparations for an operation. If not, the container is not properly sterile, and will be sent back for sterilization. Sometimes I keep these opened red clips. 

 

Not all of the ones I handle, I would already be swamped if I did that. But the collection is growing, and I am considering how to include them in my intended piece for SAQA’s call for entry for RED.

Which I better get started on soon, or else I will be in dire straits about a deadline again.  And there are two more pressing-deadline-pieces on my worktable as well, these need to be done first.

Queen of Procrastination

 Life has been busy. A lot. Infringing on creative impulses. Stuff like ageing parents, an injured son (ankle - no basketball playing right now, my husband is doing a lot of driving him around, which I can't do due to work schedule), continued challenging situations in getting included in the team at work (while I think I am slowly finding my bearings). I won't go into detail on any of these. But when I come home from work it is difficult to sit down and sew, usually I can only sit down and knit. Which I have been doing a bit. 

Currently I am working on a sweater from one strand of handspun silk, combined with a strand of baby alpaca and some other silk.

Excuse the lack of smile, I am not good at all at taking selfies...

It's been cold, which has definitely been a hindrance to the garden, although the rhubarb is peeking out. The first cake of the season (yesterday) was, however, made from store bought.

We did go to sort of celebrate a belated 20th wedding anniversary by having a meal at the restaurant where we ate after the civil ceremony way back then, at the Hotel Grauer Bär in Kochel. The weather was less agreeable than on the day, and it wasn't really meant as a celebration, but it was as delicious as then. And the view just as good, even without sunshine. (I was stunned that two people on the personnel were there who had already been there more than 20 years ago.)

And I took part in a private spinning 'class' on controlled spinning of various thickness of yarn, which helped me unterstand my spinning wheel much better than before. Looking forward to results, this picture is only a sample from the afternoon, I don't have any of the orange.

Hope that things slow down, cheer up a bit, spring takes over, whatever, to get my creative juices going again.