The skirt

Here is the skirt that I reclaimed from the failed dress. It is very simple, and quite hard to photograph ... although my husband took twenty and these are the only ones in focus (and they are only just in focus). To be fair, I was moving around a lot, and the dog was getting in the way.

There is not much to say about it anyway - darts at the front, elastic at the back, and a lot of shaping of the side seams to get a reasonably streamlined line. I put a back seam in too to come in under the butt, not that you can really notice. I can't take two stairs at a time in it but other than that it is exremely comfortable.

The fabric is a printed scuba knit from Spotlight so it's heavy, will never fray, and is only turned once at the hem. It is also slightly shiny (but in a good way) and has a pink stripe that goes with my favourite pink coat. It is very nice to have a sewing success for once!

EDITED TO ADD: My son doesn't have COVID (not that we thought he did) - they texted him on Monday morning which was very efficient, and meant that he could leave the house if he wanted to. I don't think he has yet.

And..... this is my 1000th post!!!! It is every bit as trivial as the previous 999, but that is OK by me.

Escape to the beach

I siezed the moment and took myself to the beach for the weekend - taking a day off on Friday for no reason other than trying to keep myself sane in an insane world. I'm glad I did though, not only was it lovely to have a bit of extra time but Friday's weather was glorious. The water was the glassy green that you usually only get in summer .... but cold. I did think about swimming but the air was not warm enough.



Isn't that lovely? You can tell there have been big swells with the sand banks eaten away. We are not under any sort of lockdown at the moment but I decided not to go into any shops; got my groceries before I left Canberra and didn't even buy a newspaper or a coffee once I was down there. It is a bit unlikely but I'd hate to be the one who brought the virus to a coastal backwater - or brought it back to Canberra. Australia is not looking good at the moment as we struggle to contain the Melbourne outbreak, and different hot spots keep coming up, so I would rather just avoid everybody and stay safe. Which coincides very nicely with my natural instincts.



Other than two 10 km walks I did a heap of sewing - turned that ugly tshirt dress into a skirt (chopped it off, added elastic) which I am wearing today and it's great. I'll take a photo if I remember. I also made a cardigan style jacket that I might wear tomorrow, although I'm not 100% sure about it. It might need a day in the office as a test. I also made a face mask as proof of concept - we are not wearing masks yet in Canberra but they are compulsory in Melbourne so I thought I would give it a go. It's quite easy, so if needs be I can whip them up.



Saturday the weather started to deterioriate, ready for the most astonishing 24 hours of rain from Saturday evening. And probably there today as well looking at the weather radar. It was like a waterfall ... thank heavens for sandy soil that just drains it away. I nearly turned back when I started my drive home because the visibility was so poor. I thought "I'll turn at Batemans Bay if this doesn't get any better" but it did so I continued on. Which was a bit of a shame, I could have lasted another day at the beach, but I really did have to be at work this morning.



Number one son was feeling a bit off colour when I got home - my immediate response was - has he had a covid test? He didn't quite have the right symptoms but they say go in for anything at all so he popped down to the un-used field hospital that they have sensibly turned into a testing centre and was home in fifteen minutes. Not very impressed with the brain picking swab but he's exactly the type that would have no symptoms and spread it to vulnerable old people i.e. me. What times we live in.

An extraction

It was a quiet weekend here in Canberra heights - my husband had a wisdom tooth out on Friday under general anaesthetic and he was a bit sore and swollen. Not as bad as we both thought it would be, but still not exactly a barrel of laughs, poor baby. We probably needed a break from the social frenzy of the weekend before; I went for some long walks and he ate soft food. The most excitement was when I had to do a mall run to get a new stick blender ... there weren't many people out and about which was good.

I had to go to a couple of places to get the correct brand of stick blender (and even then I couldn't find it) including a shopping centre I haven't been to for years - it has animatronic zoo animals. This is the zebra and it moves and neighs ... it is every bit as creepy and offputting as that sounds. The lions were worse because they were also slightly motheaten.  Other than that number two son went for a picnic with friends to mark the end of the school holidays and number one son helped another friend move into his own apartment! And then a bunch of them stayed the night! And went to a pub for dinner! Such grownupness.

Friday again

And another week has whooshed by! It has been busy at work, and the weekend was enjoyable but not very productive ... an eight hour boozy lunch with friends on Saturday and a four hour not-so-boozy (for me) lunch with friends on Sunday. Which didn't leave much time for anything except a couple of long walks to offset all that food. It was cold and rainy but we were warm and fat. The boys came to the first lunch which was lovely - we carefully went in two cars so they could leave whenever they wanted, I don't force them to socialise with my friends any more - but they stayed on enjoying the food and even possibly the company.

My contribution to the feast was the cheese - or fromage because we had a French theme for the lunch, beaucoup de language was mangled by tout le monde - so I happily picked out some French cheeses from the best cheese room in town. I had to take photos of the labels because there is no way I'm going to remember what they are when someone asks me at the very end of the meal ... after a lot of wine..... That chebris was amazing, I'll get it again.

Here's the road on Sunday afternoon as I waddled up the hill. It was starting to rain but the sun was breaking through the clouds behind me. I'm not sure this photo gives the full effect but it was very pretty!

All a bit dull

Nothing exciting going on in here in the Canberra winter at all. How many boring facts can I fit into a post? Let's see.

• My arm is much better and I didn't need a second round of antibiotics (just a slight lecture from the doctor about always putting on antiseptic cream). 
• We ran out of firebricks and the only place that makes them has a waiting list until October so we had to get actual bits of cut up tree delivered to the front verge, which we then had to carry down to the garage and stack. It took a while but it burns well.
• The doctor reminded me of all the things I should have been checked for and haven't, so I had a skin cancer check. My skin is "perfectly normal".
• I finished an excellent biography of Evelyn Waugh that had been sitting in the pile for a while - 700 pages and it flew by. I have read some but not all of the author's other biographies so I will dig them out.
• My husband is back in the office so I reclaimed my weaving table and put a warp on. It's fun! I am trying to do very light scarves, not the chunky ones.
• The upstairs toilet is backing up, we are on first name terms with Helen at the plumber's office.
• I went for my  normal injection at the chemo ward and they used it as a learning opportunity for a student nurse. It took a long time. Did you know that hypodermic needles have a bevel? I always assumed they were round, like sewing needles, but no. So you have to put the leading edge in a certain way, to reduce the circumference entering the skin. They demonstrated .... slooooooowlyyyyyyyy......
• The organisation I did a live webinar for last week sent me a link to the recording. An HOUR of myself talking. I watched about eight seconds. 
• The stretch of road I drive down to work and back is the "kangaroo collision" hotspot of the ACT. No surprises there, although I have always managed to slam on my brakes in time.
• The weather has been lovely and I've been on three 10km walks; more this weekend unless we get lots of rain.

Goodness, that was dull. Australia has had a coronavirus spike - biggest yet - that has put the state of Victoria back into lockdown, and closed borders in and out of the state. There were even three cases in Canberra! All in one household, and back from a trip to Melbourne, but that's a bit close to home after weeks of nothing. A reminder that we are still a long way from normal.

The good ... and the bad

The good is a beautiful weekend down the beach. I wasn't in the mood to do much of anything (after the recent sewing disasters I have lost my mojo a little bit) except read, eat and go for long walks. So that is what I did! The sea sparkled and sparkled in the sun.



I went for a drive-by of a house which I really shouldn't do. We are planning to retire to acreage down the coast; I have a real estate weekly search that emails me properties within my parameters, and there is always something wrong with them. Except for this one, that looks just perfect, so of course I had to drive by and check it out to see what the flaw was. Except there isn't one, at least not from the road, so now we have to decide whether to call the agent and have a proper look or just accept that we can't quite afford it at the moment, and we should Stop Looking. Retirement is still a few years off yet.



But the drive meant I stopped and strolled along other beaches, which was lovely on a crisp and largely deserted winter weekend. I can just sit and watch the sea with no other entertainment. I think I might have been a whale in a previous life (no blubber comments thank you very much).



Unfortunately there was also a bad - Sunday morning I noticed a couple of red dots on my arm, like insect bites, but ignored it and went for a five-mile walk, pottered about, packed up the house and drove back to Canberra ... and when I got home my whole arm was covered in a red rash, and swollen and hot. By the time I got to a doctor at 8 pm that night I was sick and shivery and in pain - I thought it was cellulitis and I was right, and it was horrible! I have no lymph nodes on that side, and I'd had a mild graze on my elbow (putting on a t-shirt in the corridor, oops) which was enough to let the bacteria in and result in a runaway infection.



This is the arm two days later when the antibiotics had finally started to kick in. I had three days at home, and am fully recovered now but it was very scary how quickly it took hold and how rotten I felt. I am SO grateful for antibiotics, I would be completely dead without them. And I will pay more attention to disinfecting even the tiniest cut in future!