I Am Still Here

My intention was to try and get a picture before the eagle was obscured by foliage. I can't really complain. The hubby and I had a lovely walk along River Road and we kept seeing eagles. Most of the time, we could see 2 of them, but for awhile there were three of them and we could hear them calling or yelling at each other.

I'm still playing the game where I don't crop of change my photos.

Still Lacking Focus

I started drawing / doodling a bit, but overall I am lacking the focus to draw or paint at present. That’s just how it is at the moment. I’ve been doing some knitting and have also enjoyed taking pictures on my twice a day walks with the hubby.

Here are the first flowers which bloomed in my yard on Saturday.

These are the same flowers, yesterday.

Here they are today.

I think the early blooming Spring flowers in Minnesota more than meet the definition of resilience.

The Neighborhood, Plus A Placeholder To Remember

Sunday will be the end of the 4th week of the stay-at-home order. Yesterday, the stay-at-home order was extended to May 4th. Each week seems to have its own predominant theme, including worry week, over-busy week, and slothful week. One constant during this very strange time has been going for walks after lunch and after work with my hubby. While we've been somewhat random, I've also been interested in trying to cover each of the four directions from our house. While the streets are good, the the alleys are better.

Here are some of the things I've photographed while on our walks. For now, I'm sticking with my camera phone.

This is the first spring flower that I saw.  This was on 03/24.

Several days later, I saw my first PURPLE spring flower. Don't worry the subject matter gets more varied from her.

People in the neighborhood are decorating in a various ways as a morale booster. We also have a poetry wall close by, but I don't have a picture of that.

These next several pictures are from the walking the alleys. So far, this has been the disheveled garage we've come across. 

This was a great bumper sticker on an Art car which was parked in an alley.

This last one was from a blacked out garage window of someone we know.

As part of capturing this point of time, I copied the following from a Facebook post of a friend of mine. She copied it and shared it from elsewhere, so I can't credit the person who wrote it. It was written by someone from a different state which felt the impacts of the Covid-19 virus earlier than my state given the date it was written. If had been given an advance copy of this list as 2019 was drawing to a close, this would have seemed more like a science fiction than reality.

Just so I never forget..... This is the Novel Coronavirus (Covid19) Pandemic, declared March 11th, 2020.

• Gas prices in Minneapolis are $1.49.
• School cancelled.
• Self distancing measures on the rise.
• Tape on the floors at grocery stores and others to help distance shoppers (6ft) from each other.
• Limited number of people inside stores, therefore, lineups outside the store doors.
• Nonessential stores and businesses mandated closed.
• Parks, trails, entire cities locked up.
• Entire sports seasons cancelled.
• Concerts, tours, festivals, entertainment events cancelled.
• Weddings, family celebrations, holiday gatherings cancelled.
• No masses, churches are closed.
• No gatherings of 50 or more, then 20 or more, now 10 or more.
• Don't socialize with anyone outside of your home.
• Children's outdoor play parks are closed.
• 6 feet social distancing.
• Shortage of masks, gowns, gloves for our front-line workers.
• Shortage of ventilators for the critically ill.
• Panic buying sets in and we have no toilet paper, no disinfecting supplies, no paper towels, and no hand sanitizer.
• Shelves are bare.
• Manufacturers, distilleries and other businesses switch their lines to help make visors, masks, hand sanitizer and PPE.
• Government closes the border to all nonessential travel.
• Fines are established for breaking the rules.
• Stadiums and recreation facilities open up for the overflow of Covid19 patients.
• Press conferences daily from the President and the governess. Daily updates on new cases, recoveries, and deaths.
• Government incentives to stay home.
• Barely anyone on the roads.
• People wearing masks and gloves outside.
• Essential service workers are terrified to go to work.
• Medical field workers are afraid to go home to their families.

Why, you ask, do I write this status? One day it will show up in my memory feed, and it will be a yearly reminder that life is precious and not to take the things we dearly love for granted.

Going Into Maker Mode

Yesterday, I figured out how to sew a face mask. This might not sound like much, but I have limited sewing abilities, was using a new sewing machine, and selected a challenging pattern.

My friend’s mother bought a fancy, used machine at a garage sale (a Pfaff Passport 3.0) and gave it to me. It has all sorts of bells and whistles. As much exciting as this is, I have been intimidated by the new machine, since my old machine was simple and basic and I’ve had it since 6th grade. In 6 months, I have set up the new machine one time and figured out how to wind a bobbin, thread it and sew a straight stitch. It was long enough ago that I had forgotten all of that and it took me 3 times to get the new machine threaded properly.

Would anyone who knows me be surprised that I have to pick the most complicated pattern I found with instructions which were hard for me to figure out, because I thought it would have the best fit? If you sew, it would not be that hard, but for me it brought memories of my early days and knitting and trying to decipher the new language of knitting instructions.

I like this pattern because it has an opening where you can add your own filter between the layers of the mask and the pattern and offers some options, such as part of a vacuum cleaner bag or coffee filter, which aren’t perfect, but add some protection. It also has a channel where you can put some wire in, which means the mask fits better around a nose. The person who designed the pattern is a University of Minnesota graduate with a degree in apparel design and a master’s in medical device innovation. You can find the pattern here.

I’m not going to say how long to took me to make this. I also haven’t figured out exactly where to position the needle at the beginning of end of a seam, since there’s an auto-feature at the start and one you can select at the end which anchors your thread for you. These parts of my seams are a bit of a mess. Still, it fits. It fits really well. It even fits securely over my hubby’s beard. For this design, I think the ties work better than elastic.

I am keeping this one and will make several others to keep. These are the practice ones. After that, I am going sew up more to donate.