Waiting

 Turns out the pollen scale goes up to 12 and today is at 10.8. Tomorrow is supposed to be 11.1. This may be the last you hear from me. I may not survive.

Yesterday I carried the trash and recycling out to the cans wearing a mask, one of our good masks, a KF94 from Korea. I think if I stay indoors and wear a mask on the regrettable occasions when I have to go out, I should be okay. 

(This is reminding me of something else though. . .)

Yesterday I told one of my friends something a bit rude: Her mother is a trump-championing, reality-defying republican (are there any other kinds?) who recently took the Johnson & Johnson one-shot vaccine. (Why? I thought this whole thing was a hoax.) The J&J vaccine has been shown to be moderately more effective than the Moderna or Pfizer vaccines against one of the more deadlier Covid variants, the South African one that is emerging now and which of course you know is going to spread here. I told my friend: "If your mother survives this because she got the J&J vaccine and we don't because we got the Pfizer and Moderna vaccine, I'm going to come back as a ghost and push your mother down a flight of stairs."

She agreed that this was the only sensible thing to do, thankfully.

Dave is still feeling a bit puny from his second shot, just headachy and tired and out of it, though not feverish. He had a few things to do yesterday, but when he got home, he changed into his pajamas and spent a good part of the day in bed resting. (I did, too, though I don't have the excuse of having vaccination side effects.) 

I did some sewing yesterday, putting together a two-color improvisational block in purple and orange. (It's as bad as it sounds.) I'm trying to find some really offensive color combinations and try them out together. Why do we respond to particular combinations of colors in a negative way, I wonder. Even just sewing them together soured part of my day. So I'll persist with other colors and see what happens. (I have a lot of fabric in solid colors, the result of a birthday gift from Dave of about 45 yards of solids from a local quilt shop.) I want to make a two-color combination quilt from such disharmonious pairs. 

(Sorry, I just went down the internet rabbit hole of color theory. Me and color have a very...basic relationship. In my mind, high contrast and screaming colors are great. The basic set of 8 Crayolas could have gotten me through life, man. Beyond that, color confuses my brain and sophisticated colors make me feel dull.) 

Anyway, let's move on. I don't have any new quilts to show you, but if you're interested, I can show you the backs of some of the quilts I've already shown you.

When I put backing on quilts, I tend to do it in big chunks because of how I quilt and assemble quilt tops. That top is from the crumb blocks sashed in shades of green quilt that I tied instead of quilting. The fabrics are all insect (mostly butterfly) related. For the part at the furthest right, I only had a small piece of that particular butterfly print, so I put a honeycomb print on either side. 

I am not a butterfly person, but I collect butterfly prints because butterflies are a symbol of the psyche (because of their similar transformation) and to me, all quilting is a kind of therapy. Which reminds me, I should show you my actual therapy quilt sometime. (I'll have to get a picture.)

That is the backing from the Covid quilt I made from the appliqued off-cuts from making masks. I had been saving polka dot prints up because I wanted to make a polka dot quilt. When the pandemic hit, I thought, if I don't survive this, I want to have used these polka dot fabrics, so I put them on the back of each panel as I quilted it. When I sashed it together to finish the quilt, I paid attention to the front layout, but not the back and this was the result. (Each of those big blocks is about the size of a fat quarter or approximately 18" x 22.")

At the bottom  of the quilt (backing the border) is a Tula Pink print of pink bananas on a yellow background. (This whole time has been bananas, hasn't it?) When I put this quilt on the bed to sleep under, I put the polka dot side up--so maybe it's not the "back" of the quilt? Maybe it's just the "other side" of the quilt?--because the Covid side is too intense for me.

Speaking of intense, this is the back of the bright colors mixed with black-and-white prints quilt I gave to Kelly and Kevin. Doesn't that just burn itself into your retinas? What's not to love about that? 

That quilt, by the way, was inspired by a bunch of pigments that Kelly and Kevin brought me from a couple of their trips to Venice (I think all the pigments came from Venice) that are bright and happy and terrifying. I have yet to use them. I pet them a lot though. Recently, however, I decided that I want to try them with an egg tempura medium. Egg tempura medium can be made from fresh egg yolks and not much else (that's how the Old Masters guys did it), but I am loathe to handle eggs so I ordered some pre-made medium. The egg tempura medium I ordered is from a reputable, old school company called Sennelier. Sennelier is a Parisian company, founded in 1887. They are a not inexpensive source of pigments, paints and media, but what the hell? You only live through a pandemic once (most of us, I hope), so I bought the medium.

Of course it arrived having leaked from the jar, so I contacted the company and was advised to throw the leaky jar away and await my new jar in the post. So that is what I'm doing now, awaiting my new jar in the post.

Actually, what I'm doing right now is sitting at my sewing table drinking coffee and writing this. Active waiting is what I'm doing.