Wednesday, May 20, 2020

In for the Long Haul...day 68 or so..but who's counting?


Well, I've tried to count the days we've been mostly at home so far. I think it's at least sixty-eight by now. When I say "mostly at home" I mean we've not visited friends and only had one brief trip to see family early in April. Our outside activities include placing online orders for groceries from Walmart (our ONLY grocery store option in town) and picking them up in the parking lot, taking masked trips to the post office (1), the bank (2), and one or two other places for curbside pickups (6 or 7). I've continued my daily walks and those are done early enough that there aren't any other people around.

When I'm out to walk I almost always photograph one or more things. In fact, on Facebook I usually post a "Good morning, Dahlonega" photo each day. It's something that catches my attention--even sometimes making me stop in my tracks to take another look. I don't go out looking for what might be found... but there are so many wonderful details in the multiplicity of things that make up the world that something will be there. Here's what I posted yesterday:


We have a few friends who've stopped by to drop off fresh eggs and to have a conversation through the open window. My husband had a nice chat with a friend who was driving by when he walked out to the mail box last week--she in her truck across the street and he on the sidewalk.

Our big excitement was to get a haircut at our house last week. The fellow who cuts our hair was willing to come over and use the "salon" we'd set up with a chair on the back porch. My husband and I each had a turn getting our pandemic dos altered into something less scary. All of us masked throughout. It was nice to see the lawn, blue sky and clouds while getting shorn!


My studio work is slower now, even the daily tapestry diary parts I weave. My focus for monthly images to inset into the days is feathers this year. So far, I'm lagging behind in getting the one for May well underway. I've selected the feather (blue jay), drawn it and have woven to the point of starting the feather itself. I have now eleven days to complete it.



I've done a bit of other weaving for another project and sewn the tapestries into a couple of things:

This pillow has the tapestry center sewn into the larger cotton flannel fabric borders.
And, this pincushion is about 3" square.



In early March before the virus began to take its own horrific march through our state I borrowed a Mirrix loom from a friend (thanks, Dinah!) to weave a couple of small tapestries, each based on a photograph of a periwinkle I made earlier this spring. These are for an upcoming project that I'll talk more about later when the time's right.

I hope soon to be able to adjust to whatever the new normal will look like in our world. In the meantime, I have more masks to make and give away.  

Health and safety wishes to all!