Friday 17 April 2020

I wonder what day it is

EDIT: There is an issue with Blogger, which is causing photos to be replaced with a minus sign in a circle.  I have just replaced them but wonder if they will stay

Despite my best intentions to blog more often, over a week has passed with no post and not much progress on other projects either.  I blame it on the general feeling of being unsettled, something that is affecting most of us at the moment.

I have been walking almost every day.  Today I saw two moorhens with chicks.


It's well into Autumn here, probably too late for chicks so small but I was amused when one of the adults dived for a tasty morsel for the chick's lunch - it was the middle of the day - offered it to the chick, who probably like many other young local residents, gave it the 'I'm not eating that for lunch' look, made me laugh.

Here's a few more of the local water birds,                                                        


Pacific Black ducks on the left, a Dusky Moorhen like the ones with the chicks in the middle with a rather splendid Purple Swamphen behind it and a couple of Wood ducks on the right.

Just to prove it's Autumn, there are acorns on the Pin Oaks                                


and on the English Oaks                                                                                  


as well a a few sunny paper daisies.                                                                 


I wonder what the story is behind this poor lost zebra, resting on a post.



When I went past a few days later, it was gone, hopefully re-united with its proper owner.

It's amazing how busy it is on the walking/bike path.  I think many of the locals are in training for the Tour de France (don't they know it's been cancelled), more a Tour de Fleece person myself.  I had to wait for 8 cyclists and a dog to pass when I wanted to cross the path, so I've been going along the gravel paths where it's quieter and safer.

I have done a lot of knitting.  My jacket is almost finished, just a couple inches left on the second sleeve, then a bath to get rid of the gutter stain and smell and blocking.  I was a bit anxious about getting the right size needles for the sleeve, knitted in the round.  About the same time as I bought the bathers and the headband mentioned in a previous post, I knitted this magnificent Scandinavian jumper from a Villawool pattern - that was really great yarn.




It was an interesting construction - it was knitted in the round from the bottom, all the way to the shoulders.  After that the shoulders were grafted, the armholes were steeked and the sleeves knitted in the round. At this  point there was no going back. Once I had opened up the armholes I was finally able to try it on and found to my dismay that it was far too tight - I thought it was because I knitted more tightly doing plain in the round than regular stocking stitch or maybe it was the colourwork.  Whatever the cause, I finished it and gave it to a smaller friend.  It was of course a lesson I never forgot, but in the end, I found a set of needles the same size as I had used for the rest of the cardigan.  The only other ones in the stash were much larger or much smaller so I just went with what I had and the sleeves were just fine, pictures next time.

I have been doing some sewing. I made a set of masks for my family in Los Angeles. 



I posted them before Easter but there has been no update on the tracking website, maybe they are still at the local post office.  I do hope there are still cargo planes flying to the US.

I made a few more for the window display at work.  Even though we don't have to wear masks, a lot of people are, and I wanted the window models to fit in.



I've been in to work a couple of times but it's been very quiet so I've been trying to get some admin tasks sorted.  I ran into trouble when I had to verify my ID for a government document and found that for the 4 verification sources they suggested, my name was slightly different on each one.  The worst was my birth certificate, where in answer to the question 'name and whether present or not', I found that my name was 'Helen, not present'. Imagine not realising that my surname was 'not present' for all this time.  No wonder the powers that be are having trouble working out just who I am.  They are ringing back, I wonder how long that would take.

I have just about finished with the damage from the hailstorm back in January, seems like years ago.  I had the painter here yesterday and this morning. It all looks much better.  Just after he'd gone next door to work on my neighbour's painting, I heard footsteps on my roof and thought he'd come back but it was the tiler come to replace the 20 to 30 tiles broken in the storm.  There's only a little paperwork to finalise the insurance claim and it will all be complete.

I wish I could tell you that the tea towels are off the loom.  They're not.  I have finished the blue one and have done just one repeat of the next which is grey.  I hope I'll be able to report more progress next time

Helen

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