TYOM W12 20 December 2021

Lost and found. A dog wandered across our busy road and in the absence of a tag or contact details, we took her in for the night. A lethal tail wag. A positive use of Facebook. Angel by name and nature was reunited with her family. A first for me - cheffing for a stray dog - a stray that understood the direction and flow of air-conditioning vents and best position on the rug.

First time we met, but didn't, our neighbours. Angel lives next door. Cause to think about life and loss, of needy people who appear to exploit their position and the caring of those around them, and playing the "card". A week of much reflection and re-evaluating relationships. Running around after someone who has no perception of the disruption they cause and no care to minimise their impact on others. Being taken aback by their sense of self, and apparent faults of everyone else. Working it all out - one a catastrophist, the other a drama queen and then having to ask who am I in all that? The exaggerator? Am lost and found all at once.

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The peaceful rhythm of quilting

Three or four hundred upper thread and bobbin changes over the past four weeks. There's a textural effect I'm trying to create with the quilting - that compliments the imperfect shapes of the pieced fabrics. Something akin to wabi, sabi and shibui. The infinite ways that dense, linear quilting can be used to create story are coming to life, one piece at a time. Sometimes barely visible, sometimes contrasting. There is an uneven fullness in the seams that help create miniscule bumps at the end of each line. There are also the seamless directional changes absorbed into the looser weave of some fabrics. Every change and every bobbin. Testing tensions, adjusting for the different threads as each shape submits to the process. It is a peace-filled activity, permanently set up so I can work for several minutes at a time. Never wasting moments. I get immersed in the meditative quality of the quilting and thinking only about the stitch. Some of the combinations I use: using the same ...

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TYOM W1 5 October 2021

Midnight came and went. Seven more hours of suffering before we go to hospital and that was probably the best birthday decision of all. Turning 60 in the ER. Another 4 days before I am home and the positive takeaway is there WAS a stone blocking the duct to the liver, and it WAS the cause of me turning yellow. It WAS NOT copious, continuous comsumption of champagne. They had landed that one on me 8 weeks previously, and I obediently and conscientiously avoided said champagne for almost 7 weeks until the weekend immediately prior to TYOM. So there WAS a bottle of Dom Perignon 2010 consumed between four of us - deliciously sipped down to the last drop. It WAS true the pain started sometime in the next 24 hours and truer that I thought this was the end my relationship with champagne. How blessed to be wrong. They had managed to rule out all forms of known hepatitis, some novel considerations including HIV, drug use in my younger years, clots in one or more vital organs, a...

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