July & August

I'm so happy it's September because the past two months haven't been good. 

Firstly, my right heel suddenly stopped working. Like one day I couldn't even step on my right foot. Due to COVID-19, I've not gone running at all because you can't wear masks when running and I don't want to take any chances as the running area I go to is packed with humans. One day I got sick of my ever growing tummy and I decided to go for a long walk at the canal. Since I'm only walking, it's fine to wear masks. At first I walked a short distance of around 3 to 4km. Then I got fitter and the distance increased to 8km. My son got interested and joined me on the walks. We walked every day. I guess I walked too much because my right heel hurt so bad I couldn't walk anymore. Hubs said he had a similar injury before and he recovered from it so I felt less anxious. I checked out some youtube videos and religiously followed some heel exercises and massages. After a couple of weeks, my heel did get better. Now I'm all good but I'm cautiously taking it slow and have not gone back to long walks. 

Secondly, I had a fermentation incident. I used to do quite a bit of fermentation to make bread a few years ago - water kefir, milk kefir, raisins, grapes, oranges. Then I gave it up because it was tiring. Anyway, recently I wanted to bake bread using raisins fermented water but for some reason, after a week of fermenting, there was no activity. So I tried again this time using grapes. The thing about fermenting with fruits is you need to degas the bottle at least twice a day. I do it 4 times a day to be safe. So it was the 3rd day of fermentation and I was supposed to degas in the morning. There was hardly any activity in the water the day before so I wasn't concerned. Unfortunately I missed the window to go to the kitchen. My son was sitting for an online exam and during the exam, he couldn't have anyone walk behind him. So I stayed in my room until noon when my son came to tell me his exam was over. I immediately went to the kitchen to degas the bottle. Hubs followed me, I think to go to the kitchen toilet and I was talking to him while taking the bottle to the kitchen sink to degas. As I touched the bottle cap, there was a loud explosion and the cap flew out, hit my hand and disappeared into thin air. It was so scary. My son ran into the kitchen to ask what had happened. I was so stunned. Then I realised my hand hurt like shit. There were 2 bruises where the bottle cap had hit. Hubs said if I had pointed the bottle at him, it could have hit him instead. Honestly, I would never point a fermenting bottle at anyone. Anyway, the explosion scared the shit out of me and I guess I'll never ferment any more fruits. By the way, the bottle did not even crack. And we never found the bottle cap. Luckily the bruise was minor and my hand still works!

Thirdly, as you know, it's been mandatory to wear masks in Singapore since April. I've noticed that the area where the mask touches the face can get quite irritable. Anyway, I noticed that I have something on my face below my eye bags that could be a clogged pore or let's just call it a skin imperfection. Because the masks touches it, I get a bit bothered by it and I wanted to get rid of it.

Last Saturday, I used my daughter's pimple cream. I had used it once or twice before but I only used a tiny bit each time. Unfortunately I squeezed too much out, like maybe a 5 cent coin's worth and instead of wiping the excess off, I casually smeared it on my face just below the imperfection. Then I went about my day. For some reason I decided to tidy my fabric stash. I was also babying my sourdough as I was baking two loaves of bread. Anyway, when I touch fabric, it's normal for me to feel itchy. So I ignored the itchy sensation on my face all day as I was touching fabric and flour throughout. Finally in the late evening, I had finished with my dough and I went to wash my face to get rid of the itch. To my horror, I realised that something terrible had gone wrong. Below my left eye, on my face, there was a big triangle of deep angry red. OMG, my skin had become burned. Burned! Hubs and my daughter had just come home and he said it'll go away but I didn't believe him. Also, my skin felt raw, itchy and burned. Burned! Another worrying thing was I could feel my left eye was weird because the redness was quite close to my eye. I felt so upset and anxious I honestly don't know how I managed to sleep. Anyway, I set my alarm clock because the first thing in the morning I was running to my GP. It being Sunday, the GP was only open in the morning. Thank goodness the doctor I like was on duty. He listened to my sad story without laughing and prescribed me 6 different medication and 1 cream. He said the red mark won't be permanent so I felt relieved. After staring at my face a million times, finally on Thursday, the red mark faded. There's still a teeny tiny shadow but I'm sure it'll fade over time. Anyway, my face is already naturally reddish so I think no one will notice. I guess I'm never applying pimple cream on my face ever again. 

What else could go wrong huh? Well, all the medication I took gave me a bad tummy so that's a whole other problem.

I hope September will be good to me. I think I need to make better decisions. Seriously.

So what have I made in between my sufferings? 

I knitted Kate to keep Kate's kitten company.

I finished my Arne and Carlos doll. It's a boy doll. I'm still unsure about the hair so I'll work on it some more. I love the technique used to knit this doll but I don't love the giant feet and wobbly head. It's hard to dress the doll! The pattern is from Arne & Carlos Greatest Knits.

Last year I spent quite a bit of time on projects to use up my fabric scraps. It didn't decrease my fabric scraps by much but I did end up with a few art quilts which I was rather pleased with. This year I wanted to continue with this project but somehow I wasn't inspired. I'm blaming COVID-19. It sucks all my energy there's none left for creative projects. Recently I remembered I had foolishly painted some calico which had yellowed. So I was staring at the blue calico and all I could think of was sky. What's in the sky? Sun. What else? Birds. Birds fly in the sky towards sun. Then I felt the quilt was too bare and I wanted to channel my applique hero Janet Bolton using her giant leaves in the sky. But at the last minute, I flipped the leaf and it became a balloon. Yup, my ideas for my quilts are usually very simple. I'm naming this quilt: Sky, Sun, Bird, Balloon. For the backing I used my mother's never ending batik. The binding is also a fabric I want to get rid of. 

Lastly, the Twin Clutch is new in my shop. And there's a 30% discount off all bag patterns until 8th Sep.