I know last year was a terrible year in many ways, but not blogging at all in 2020 is inexcusable!
I have still been designing I have also been beavering away at my day time job, which is one of the main reasons for the radio silence on blog. Being the Network manager rather than the underling takes up so much more time!
The other one was that I have been dealing with my father, who is in the early stages of Vascular Dementia. Lockdown was a nightmare. Due to my own health issues I was sheltering for 14 weeks so was unable to visit Dad, leaving all of the burden on my brother and his family, who were real troupers.
Dad is fine when he is in his routine, but as soon as it is disrupted he becomes agitated and confused, at the height of the problems he was being visited 4 times a day by carers and telephoning both Bro and I up to a dozen times a day. The final straw came with two A and E visits in 2 days and the wonderful medical staff on the island degreed that he was no longer fit to live alone at home. After a stay in hospital to build him up we were able to get him a place at a wonderful Dementia facility that is close to both of us – let’s be honest nowhere is far on this island 😉 . It is expensive, but worth every penny, because we know he is safe and well cared for and we can visit anytime.
For those of you currently under lockdown in this awful pandemic must be scratching your heads a little at my previous comments. I am fortunate enough to live on a small island of around 60,000 inhabitants. Our Director of Health happens to be a trained virologist. She very quickly advised our government put us into lockdown and put in strict measures at the borders which has meant that since July last year we have been living more or less normally within our little island bubble. We have no community seeding and we can’t go anywhere off island without doing at least 14 days quarantine on the way day in, but pubs cafes gym’s theatre’s etc are all open as normal.
So what have I been doing with all of my time while “stuck” on my little island?
I have been designing, so much designing! I have had several patterns out in Knotions
And that was just for Knotions
we also did some more Mystery KALs, despite the pandemic
and Arabian Nights
We are just starting our first KAL of 2021, something cuddly and cheerful – Goldilocks 😉
I’ll show you more of that one as we progress.
I also managed to slip in a sock for the Scary Sock KAL – I have done at least one for every year that it has been going.
I leave you with a photo taken yesterday at the Gentlemen’s Pool at La Valette. A group of Victorian bathing pools that are still in use today.
I was doing a spot of sewing on my new machine which came to a grinding halt, when I realised that I had accidentally sewn the two fronts and the two backs of a pair of trousers togther and was going to have to take a stitch ripper to them and unpick every single seam.
The answer was to step away and do something different for a while, so we drove down there for our second swim of the weekend. Sea Swimming in the middle of Winter is not for the faint hearted, but is so invigorating ;-). Air temp was 5 degrees and the sea is still hovering just above 10 degrees C.
Ok so not quite sea swimming, but it is ideal on a low tide. No scrambling over the rocks, but you still get to swim in fresh ( in more ways than one) sea water. The Castle in the background is Castle Cornet, built by King John in the 12 century to keep the French out after he lost Calais.
A la prochaine!
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