Diary of Recovery - ‘Negative’

Day before yesterday I was tested for the virus. Yesterday I received the result, negative, but the doctor said I should stay home two more days. I had only experienced minor symptoms which, in a ‘normal’ situation, probably would not have made me think twice, I would just have started my usual ‘deal with a beginning cold’ protocol and gone to work as always. However, I am working on the Covid19-suspects ward right now, and had turned to a different degree of awareness. First of all, it is a place where infections can happen, even though precautionary measures are taken all around. Secondly, it is a place where you don’t want to be the one bringing it in… And thirdly, I wanted to be sure that I wasn’t the one endangering my husband who has allergies and is in a state right now where the doctor said he must definitely NOT get it.

I had been feeling slightly more energetic since last week when restrictions began to be lifted. And this feeling still continues, although I am ‘sick at home’ right now. Drinking lots of tea, keeping my mind and hands busy. Having time to think. So many people are keeping a kind of documentation of these times. @sara.impey is making one-meter calico strips with words on them as a lockdown diary, Kathleen Loomis is posting a ‘plague diary’ on her blog, and there are many others out there. I have sort of stopped keeping a diary when the lockdown started, although I have been doing so most of my life, and pretty regularly. I just didn’t want to keep dwelling in these what I feared would be negative developments by writing them down on top of experiencing it all. For example, this photo was taken on the day when the supermarket introduced the limited numbers of custormers inside, and people had to wait in line outside. 

Quite an aggressive tone came from the people in line when I inattentively walked past them because I had been completely focussed on something and not noticed that they were standing there. I remember wondering where our way of interacting with each other was going, how quickly does a sort of civilized manner deteriorate?

I know that keeping a diary, writing about good and bad experiences is supposed to help you deal with it better, but I just didn’t feel up to it then. But now as I am beginning to feel better I have decided to work on a ‘diary of recovery’. Of myself, and hopefully, of the overall situation in the country here, and for the entire world. It may be a while before recovery really becomes noticeable, but searching for good, pleasant, beautiful things might be a way for me to deal with it, to find courage to wait out until it actually happens?

I suppose starting it on the day after I received the verdict ‘negative’ is as good a day to start that project as any. Who knows, it might not be my last test or result… but next week we are going back to school, so at least the danger of infection through direct contact to patients is reduced, for a few weeks at least. Perhaps the posts are not going to differ that much from the way I have been posting before, I don’t know yet. 

We will see how it goes. As I was going through my photos on the phone I came across this one I took when I went on a spontaneous trip to Berlin with my son end of February/beginning of March. At that point I certainly had not realized that there would be a shutdown, or any of the pandemy scenario we have now become used to. It was 10 weeks ago, and seems almost a lifetime away.

at the Holocaust memorial in Berlin, February 29

During the lockdown I had received an email (a chain letter) from a friend of mine who I have always considered a very sensible and intelligent woman. This one was a surprise, because I never thought she would join in on something like this. I have made it a principle never to react to any chain letters – which is why I also have a hard time joining in ‘challenge and nominate’-acitivities on facebook. The mildly interesting part in this one was that you were supposed to send a favorite poem to the sender and the email address just above hers. The week before somebody had sent me the same thing about recipes. (No thank you, I have more than enough recipes piling up on my desk because I can’t resist clipping them from wherever I see some, and then I cook differently anyway.) What was so surprising, though, is that the whole situation seemed to be getting even to the most sensible people, reducing their alertness, falling into traps. I did send her a letter with a copy of one of my favorite poems today, because I liked the idea of sending a poem. But I don’t want to receive them from strangers.  This particular friend is also currently being a carer for her husband who suffers from vascular dementia and has developed complications that are keeping her at home now completely. Not that she could have gone anywhere lately, but still. I had sent her my recently finished improvisational wedding ring quilt which I had started in the workshop with Diana Vandeyar as comfort.

Today I posted another quilt as a gift. Recently returned from the WQC tour, I had sort of forgotten that it existed: a quilt I had called ‘Stairway to heaven’ for lack of a better idea. It had been intended as a quilty quilt from the beginning, never really meant to go on the wall. But because it had taken me so long to finish, and I wanted to participate in WQC last year, I just whipped a sleeve up, came up with a name. 

The sleeve had not been meant to last, but it was well fastened...

Now that it was back I thought I would make it my own – as usual, I do want to have a really nice cuddly quilt for myself, but I seem to be giving them away,  always telling myself I can make myself another beautiful one, it doesn’t have to be this one.

So "Stairway to heaven" took a trip to Sweden today, to my friend’s mother who has given me the most successful recipe in my life: the original Swedish Cinnamon Roll, which wins me friends whenever I make it to bring to a party, or at home. She lives in a retirement home in Sweden now, and yesterday I read in the paper that Sweden’s path of openness has taken an unexpected toll amongst the elderly, who were supposed to be ‘well-protected’ despite the different path in Swedish policies. I hope it will be with her for many years to come!

I lost count.

As lockdown here has been relieved slightly, some school classes are beginning to go back and my son is asking my why he can’t stay in home schooling for the rest of his school years. This, although he still has several weeks before his class will be called back, in two-weekly intervals only, and so he will see the school building from the inside probably not much more than three weeks or so before summer vacation. Of course, the way our conversations go on a regular basis I know very well that home schooling him would never work in our combination of temperaments, and it is not allowed in Germany anyway. He has lost count of how many weeks he has not been in school. (I do worry about how his education is going to continue, though. Not clear on how it all will go on…)

I myself have lost count of the numbers of UFOs I have spread out through the house, the studio, my knitting baskets. Some of them old and rediscovered. But at least half a dozen of them pandemically new. Well, who knows how long this thing will laslt, perhaps they will not stay unfinished forever, perhaps not even for long? I know that sounds and is ambitious – but I can announce that I did indeed finish two of mine, and a quilting commission for a friend.

My first finish – and I mean complete finish, with a sleeve, and a title and a sign that states the title, is my contribution to the SAQA benefit auction. It is a woven quilt, made from silk strips I bought in Birmingham, it must have been two years ago or so, including two pieces of ribbons that had been splattered amidst the heap of debris on my working table. One of the ribbons has LOVE written on it repeatedly, and the other REPEAT. Add a fragment of a handmade mask as they have so quickly come to be all over, made from an old dish towel. And then earth and some continents in contour stitched over that – “Love. Protect. Repeat.” As there is text involved, I figured it should be part of my “text messages” series. Unfortunately I seem to have somehow lost count of how many pieces there are in the series by now. At least in my mind. So I guessed it might be number 20. Made the label.

But: As I am clearing up the working table in my studio I keep stumbling over reminiscences of “oh yeah, that one, too…” The disappearance of some of my data due to the loss of my laptop doesn’t help in this case, either – but lo and behold, I did save most of my pictures in October as a precaution (however, not the document data, stupid me). So when I figured out which of the four external hard drives I have accumulated indeed holds these files of pictures I got to look up the appropriate number. As it turns out, there is a number 20 already touring France, or, being lockdowned in France I should say these days. And as I have another text piece in the works, this one is 22. So do I redo the label, which is stitched on the sleeve… or what? Oh dear, the kind of problems we have these days!

Correct Number: 22
"Love. Protect. Repeat. (text messages 22)"

The other piece is the finished black and yellow top , but I will write about that when it comes off the longarm (which it is going on to later today). Certainly have to figure out which number that one is, too, because it has been so long since I added a piece to the series Play of Lines!

Ode to the Big D

My good friend Kathy Loomis and I have been writing e-mails to each other, sometimes daily, for almost ten years now (this was what I wrote about our Daily MailProject, and we have done others). Right now, due to the circumstances, we are writing under the self-imposed title “No C”, meaning that we won’t mention the virus or discuss the illness. Of course, the whole world’s life is not only influenced by what is happening but our lives are affected just as well, but we are both trying to look at and write about the things that we would be doing without the virus, such as cleaning our studios or working on some pieces of art. Making masks, again, is something we would not have done if… but it can be mentioned. As you see, the title is intentional, and we can take our certain liberties.  In any case, the “No C” has given me the idea of writing an ode to the big D.

Because it is dandelion time here right now. 

And I love dandelions. 

In all their shapes, stages, forms. 

After the rain...

in company...

amongst peers...

On Instagram I saw a post by @lizzigodden about how she had used dandelions as artistic inspiration, and that, of course, is much more sophisticated than anything I am going to do with dandelions here. Just photos.

I know, they are considered a weed by serious gardeners. But I am only a gardener with limited abilities, certainly only a limited amount of dedication to maintaining a tidy and neat garden, and I simply love flowers. And ‘weed’ is a classification by definition only, a very subjective way of naming this flower. 

It could equally well be called a wildflower, and everybody would be perfectly happy. So when I found myself taking lots of pictures of dandelions these days, and came across that post on IG by Lizzie,  I decided to chant and sing the ode to the D here, as it had been brewing in my head already anyway. They are great for bees (and bees need anything easy to get in these times!) and I like the honey that comes from mainly dandelion fields, they are incredibly yellow (and I love yellow) and the have these fantastic stages of mutation from the yellow half circle to the fluffy white balls with each and every seed and a private paraglider to start off into another life cycle. 

Wouldn't it be nice to be able to do that - let the hair grow out into a little paraglider and take off, to start over, anew, at a different place...