New Normal

Lockdown is well and truly back. Melbourne is stage 4 which makes it impossible to see my children and difficult to see my mother. I have been trying to find out the right way to go about delivering  the groceries and personal sanitary items and medication which I take to her once a fortnight. I am not a registered carer, but as she cannot drive and cannot walk as far as her local shops , I have to take her those things. I also used to stay the night- and cook things for her freezer, but I can't do that anymore either until stage 4 restrictions lift. Sometimes all of this is overwhelming and it is hard to get motivated. I have started walking in a Bushland Reserve close to my home, as I had been missing the bush a lot. It seems to be working, and at least I am exercising and often I am the only person walking so I have the whole 100 acres of the reserve to myself.

This spot is called Tortoise Dam and often there are ducks swimming around. It is quite peaceful even though the noise of birds is anything but. There is a lot of birdlife in this little reserve and I am so glad I found it. The walk is helping blow the cobwebs out, and I like seeing minor changes from day to day.

I also had some good news  recently , a grant from  Creative Victoria , Sustaining Creative Worker's Grant. It is to help me create some better videos with a videographer, and to create new on-line courses and just improve my on-line delivery of things, as it looks like  teaching in this way will be one of the ways forward in this new world. So I am extremely grateful to have succeeded in obtaining a grant .

I have finally finished embroidering all the circles on my One World Traveller's Blanket- all 87 of them! Now for the background stitching. I did start with a dark coloured burgundy thread- but I am not sure I am liking it. I started in the middle if you look closely, I am thinking I need to be using a brighter colour. 

A lot of stitching needs to be done!

I was doing a bit of poking around as I am trying to locate my Tifaifai Renaissance book ( I have two copies and the one I found has some blank pages so I need to find the other) and came across my Plaids Nomades book which I had also been looking for. Sometimes it is lovely to see things in print!

The little stitch maps remind of  maps in general. I suppose "reading" a traveller's blanket is a bit like reading a map, each embroidered circle something in its own right but connected to all other things with stitch, visual weight and colour.  There is still time to join the on-line Traveller's Blanket class I am starting on 8 August. You work in a size of your own choice and also use motifs to reflect your story. There is a Paypal button on my previous blog post.