Is it wrong to feel like a trip to Tesco (on my own! on a bus!) is a bit of an adventure? That was my Friday afternoon, anyway. I queued for about half an hour to get in – it’s all very organised, with taped off areas in the car park, and marshals, and its equally organised inside now as well. The one way system is a good idea, but relies on people following it rather than parking their trolley at the top and running down the wrong way to ‘just get one thing’. I can’t help feeling that this defeats the object of the system…
Anyway, I put my time in the queue to good use – I expected to be waiting for a while so took my crochet project with me. Socks are not only mindful to make, but completely portable. When the marshal at the front of the line asked how long I’d been queuing, I don’t think ‘about an inch and a half’ was the answer he was expecting!
The Tesco trip was the first time I’d left the village since the last week of March, and it’s a whole new world out there – I had to call into Boots as well, where the staff are wearing full PPE behind the counters including plastic full-face visors. It was a stark reminder that the virus is still a very real threat, despite what seem to be very premature conversations in the media about raising lockdown. I hope that the government take a look outside the UK (that’s the polite version) at countries who have started to raise their lockdowns and are seeing infections rise again. I realise that on their current form this is unlikely, of course. Hopefully the GIANT shop I did will see us through the next month (apart from milk and essentials) so I don’t have to leave again. I also managed to score a 16-kilo sack of flour on Amazon and some overpriced yeast and cinnamon (why is there a cinnamon shortage??), so Thing 2 can maintain her baking habit.
Enough about my grocery shopping!
My ankle has improved enough to make walking enjoyable again (and also less of a hobble), so I’ve been out and about round the Common and the local woods this week in between rain showers. Is there a reason spring flowers come in different colour phases, do you think? At the moment white is the dominant shade, but earlier in the spring we have the yellow phase with the daffs and primroses and so on.
It’s been a slow sewing week – more crochet than usual, as I’d been asked to send a Frontline Hero bear off to Canada, and I also had an overwhelming urge to make some socks. This mean heading off to the shed to search out all the sock yarn in the stash before going online and indulging, and as it turned out I had quite a lot in various boxes. Some is big brand self-patterning yarn but there is also some lovely gradient sets that I’ve bought at yarn shows as well as some plains that I like to use for heels and cuffs. My original plan was to use up lots of scraps, but then I didn’t have a lot of scraps – so I used the tail end of a Regia yarn to do the cuffs, a plain for the heel and will see what happens with the toes!
I have done some sewing, of course – a pair of shortie pyjamas for Thing 2 from some jersey , and I refashioned a pillowcase (from a duvet set that I’d bought to make a Marvel skirt) to make a pair of sleep shorts for Thing 1.
I love duvet sets as a source of fabric – if you buy a double, you’re looking at about 8 metres of fabric plus pillowcases, and there’s lots of fun geeky prints out there. I love my Marvel and Doctor Who skirts, and I also made the Walkaway dress with a Wonderwoman front and plain black back. Scraps can also be used to make secretly geeky pockets on work clothes – a very respectable Vogue V9075 in denim has secret Dalek pockets.
So following this trend – and once again inspired by GBSB – I bought a Julian Charles puffin bed set and plan to make a retro Butterick B6318 tea dress. I’m going to use the striped fabric to make the bodice and the puffin print to make the skirt. I’ve cut out the paper pattern but then the scrubs arrived…
This was my first delivery of ‘official’ scrubs with ready cut out fabric, and they’ve been occupying my time most mornings as in trying to make a pattern quick to sew they have also made them more complicated (two pieces of fabric have become five – how does that work?). These are for a hospital trust in East London and Essex, where one of my friends works, so it’s pretty important to me to make sure she and her colleagues are safe!
I’m now being nagged by Thing 2 to come and help her make dinner – she’s doing her chicken, mozzarella and pesto parcels which were a hit last time. So, I’ll leave this here and see you at the end of week seven!
Kirsty x
What I’ve been reading:
La’s Orchestra Saves The World – Alexander McCall Smith
The Tent, The Bucket and Me – Emma Kennedy
The Night Fire – Michael Connelly
This week’s soundtrack:
Mott the Hoople, Slade, The Airborne Toxic Event, The Sweet
Flip Back – Andrew Cartmel (Audible)
What Kirsty did next 