I’m drinking my little pot of coffee kind of late this morning, but I have already taken Theo to the vet for a bit of maintenance on his back side and taken my car to the carwash. I actually had to wash my car in order to drive it to the carwash – it was that covered in bird poop. During weekdays parking on the street is scarce and if I have to park my car in the driveway under the maple tree this time of year, it only takes a couple of hours for the birds to ruin it. Hopefully I will not have to park it under the tree again for a while. The robins and cardinals are back in town and they love their holly berries.
Last weekend I finished weaving the last scarf on the loom from before my surgery and I wove off the rest of the warp in a firm weft-faced plain weave to make a book cover for a sketchbook. This week I am measuring some warp for another set of scarves and I am going to play with Danish medallions and more plain weave variations. Seems like I always come back to plain weave in some form. I like the simplicity and the focus I can make on color rather than a complicated threading and treadling pattern.
Excuse the crooked orientation, but here’s a little journal with stenciled and color-washed pages that I’ve been working on forever, seems like. I’m about to take all these down to the gallery and I can’t seem to get great photos, so I’m making do with these because I have other stuff to do.
I’m about to buy our plane tickets for our 25th wedding anniversary trip to Ireland in May. After playing around on Google maps and getting a good idea of where certain sites are and the distance between them, I was pleased to realize that Ireland is really not that much bigger than North Carolina. My only real worry is adjusting to driving on the right side of the road, and I’d rather we didn’t start out that way in the heavy traffic around Dublin. But I’m probably looking for reasons to worry. We’re thinking that we’ll spend a couple of days in Dublin, then head to the Giant’s Causeway (a UNESCO World Heritage site) on the north coast of Northern Ireland, then drive back down the western coast to the Ring of Kerry and see what we can before we have to drive back to Dublin. We are more interested in ancient sites and the scenery so we’ll have to make a lot of hard choices along the way in order to make it all the way to the south. I wanted to hit both UNESCO sites in Ireland, but Skellig Michael is eight miles out at sea, and I get terribly seasick. Plus we may get there and the weather will keep us from going. Since the two sites are on direct opposites sides of the island, we’re going to hit the Giant’s Causeway first in the north.
I feel relieved just to have made the decision.
Handwise – I did a lot of stitching last night and my left hand is not happy this morning. I’m trying not to be dismayed that doing the test for de Quervain’s this morning hurts like hell. I really have run out of patience with all this, and I thought that my recovery would be complete by now. I’m supposed to see Dr. Weingold for my “last” visit on Tuesday, and was supposed to be finished with PT, but my therapist said that he wouldn’t be happy with the results of my strength tests so I am going to see her first to redo them. If I did all the exercises I have been assigned for my at-home therapy every day I would not have time to do anything else. I’m working with putty for strengthening. I think that my expectations were too high, but I was going by what the doctor told me. The therapist told me that I am going through a normal period of pain and inflammation. Argh.
Anyway, most activities do not hurt me at all but I just want to get this healed and over with! It is such a relief to be able to weave and stitch again. Some good news is that I finally got out my sewing machine and it is a good experience. My other sewing machines were so frustrating and this one is easy and unintimidating. If I have to roll back my handstitching again I won’t feel so bad if I can sew on the machine. The problem is gripping the cloth with my left hand.
slowly she turned 