My cousin has auto-immune nmda-encephalitis and is in the hospital. My heart is broken, and I feel very emotionally and physically drained since being here. There is nothing in the world that can prepare you for something like this - nothing you see on TV, no amount of medical training, no amount of preparation. We're being positive about her recovery and look every day for a sign of something changing, something happening.
They say she won't remember the experience of being in the hospital for the period that she has been in a coma or not-quite-conscious, and they say that she isn't feeling pain now. Still. It has been nearly seven weeks.
We just all want her to wake up.
It's a funny thing, home. I've been back in Cape Town for almost two weeks now, and though I wish it were under better circumstances, I feel as if everything is still wonderfully the same - despite the distance - while we all fit our lives around family trauma.
And so, there's really no place like home. Things have changed more than I expected, since I was last here. My dog, Milo, got old and grey and deaf - but he still remembers me. My favourite shops and restaurants have gone or changed - but the new ones are lovely and offer more variety than before. The money changed and the notes are now printed in Monopoly Money colours - but they're also printed with Nelson Mandela's face. And even though there's a lot of heartache and hoping happening here, we've still got our family.
True story.
After all that waiting, after all that suspense.
The quilt wadding finally arrived.
I know it looks snuggly and wonderfully warm. But, can you believe it, in my excitement and enthusiasm: I ordered the wrong loft. Yessum. This winter quilt is a measly 2mm thick.
The threads that I ordered with the quilt wadding are perfect. I'm enjoying just looking at them, for now, and deciding which one is going to be used where because there sure isn't going to be any actual quilting with only 2mm of wadding happening here.
By the by, I'm going to quilt straight lines around the blocks in the middle of the quilt, with a floral motif in the larger blocks, and a floral border around the white areas. I may use colour-on-colour, and white-on-white, but who knows where the spur of the quilting moment might take me?
Okay, there is an upside to the wadding-that-failed-to-impress. A teeny glimmer of hope to this uncrafty Wednesday Work In Progress update.
This disastrous I-don't-want-to-talk-about-it wadding arrived on Thursday. My wonderfully supportive and encouraging husband urged me to replace it with a new, loftier loft version of the wadding. "Besides," he added, "it always helps to have spare wadding, doesn't it?"
He's my very own Handmade Ryan Gosling, this guy.
So, amazingly, the replacement wadding (ordered from somewhere completely different) arrived on Saturday morning. It's a 1/4" thick, and it's perfect.
But, as you already know, my Saturday was rather busy, and was taken up entirely by scones and EEWI so there wasn't a sewing machine in sight. And Sunday. Oh, Sunday.
Sunday was the day of the much-awaited Mother-in-Law arrival at Heathrow Airport at 6am. We were there early, we were excited, we didn't care that it took an hour and a bit to drive there. From Heathrow to Oxford and on to Farringdon: we met up with the rest of the Clan and enjoyed a hearty catch-up as we pub-hopped, drank wine, ate pub snacks, and enjoyed fruit scones.
Luckily for us, our Monday was spent in much the same way - but with more shopping, more "sightseeing" and a good dose of cheery family fun.
As we walked around the village of Farringdon, admiring the doors and the fabulous architecture, I noticed these cheeky pink pigeons nesting in the window above the Market Restaurant. Aren't they wonderful?
I digress.
This weekend we're off again to family events and visits, so alack! no quilting in the near future. I have, however, ordered some embroidery thread so I have a new portable project which can travel North with me.
There's going to be a lot of blue stitchery happening at Bakercourt, it seems. I'm not sure about the red, but let's see where this takes us. Counted cross-stitch might be more time consuming and, erm, frustrating - but you do have the luxury of changing colours on a whim should you not feel terribly inclined to the rhubarb red scallop trim on your hot air balloon.
Watch this space: next Wednesday WIP is going to be flying high with blue beams and a hot air balloon!
Hello Blogland! I'm back in the land of high-speed internet and long, grey clouds! I missed you all with your cheery comments and visits very much.
I had a wonderful trip home, aside from 'flu and work (of course), I spent a lot of time with my family, we almost sorted out the wedding dress (!) and I have 1,602 photographs to show for it. Of course I'm not going to bog you down with millions of photographs (tempting though it is) so forgive me just a little as I show you a quick view of Cape Town in photos ~ I'll keep it down to a minimum, promise.
Can you believe that I went home in winter? That's winter up there in that photograph by the way - not so bad, hmm? I miss the beaches and surprisingly of all, I miss the mountains. I think that's a Cape Town thing and not a general South Africa thing, but still. This (above and below) is Hout Bay Harbour and Beach where you can sunbathe on the sands, go for a swim in the icy waters, or turn around and enjoy fresh fish (if you like that kind of thing) from one of the many fish-and-chips shops along the harbour-side. I don't eat fish, for the record, but I do like the harbour and I especially like ice cream.
This is the beach-side restaurant and take-aways Mariner's Wharf - and that's a boat set into the second level of the building overhanging the parking lot rather precariously.
On this particular day we sat on the rocks and ate ice-creams as we watched the fishing boats and the seals. There were about seven very large seals romping around the boats just in front of us!
... Even the rocks are pretty. It might just be my nostalgia and my love of colour continuity, but I like 'em.
Further along the coastline, on Milnerton Beach, we were able to watch the sun go down from my aunt's pretty beach-side apartment.
Isn't that an amazing view? Imagine waking up to that every morning!
If you zip up the mountain you reach UCT (the University of Cape Town) where the views are panoramic and are particularly beautiful in the hazy mornings:
I popped in to my old haunts to see my dear friends Isa and Shihaam in the English Department, Tanya in the Rare Books Library, and Jessica, my former supervisor for my Honours and MA dissertations. Much sadness that Jessica was out and about being awesome and touring the wide world as an elite academic, but delighted to see everyone else looking so very happy and healthy.
Even further up from here is Rhodes Memorial, and the Rhodes Memorial Tea Garden.
... and because I can't possibly put a blog post up here on Bakercourt without referring to food, let me show you what we ate at the Rhodes Memorial Tea Garden:
Food is served on elaborate, elongated platters. This is my Tikka Chicken Sandwich served with chips and salad. Below, my mom's giant scone served with butter, cream and jams.
I even managed to fit in a visit to the aquarium as part of a baby-sitting excursion.
Speaking of babysitting and play areas - things are quite different when you're holidaying with two small children. Meal times are different, meal contents are different, and you have to go to places that will entertain the children for long enough so that you can sip your coffee slowly and nibble on a biscuit if you want to. If you don't choose your places properly, you end up chasing the children around and answering a lot of "but what can I doooooooooooo?" questions. So, one of the family's favourite places to have tea (and to play) is the pretty little Millstone Eco Village in Pinelands.
It's a large area of land made up of a riding school, a play centre, a bakery and coffee shop, a outdoors play area and a school.
Plus, there are horses.
Millstone is the coffee shop serving baked goods (like beetroot and chocolate cake) and breakfasts. You sit on old wine crates around wooden tables in a pretty garden while dogs, cats and occasionally miniature pigs come to visit you for snacks. That, in the picture, is a giant treehouse shaped like a ship. That was enormously popular with all the children, and especially Daniel (my half-brother).
Finally, before you disappear because I'm boring you with photographs of how wonderful my holiday was (*gush*), have a look at the pretty mountains and dam at Worcester Yacht Club:
Now, this was a cold day. There was snow on the mountains. We wore jumpers and jackets and scarves and boots. The cloud cover was particularly pretty, though, and it seemed to change all the colours of the scenery to make it more brilliant and stand-out-ish. (Yes, 'ishing' is permissible when words fail you.)
Just look at that sky! Pretty pretty pretty. I could write here!
Further along the dam you come to a pretty open grass area where campers are allowed to set up tents and children run around delightedly. Makes for good photographs, too.
Here's Emma enjoying the Worcester Yacht Club swings with her polka dot wellies. This picture is pretty much how I feel about my whole trip home - glee!
I had a wonderful trip home, aside from 'flu and work (of course), I spent a lot of time with my family, we almost sorted out the wedding dress (!) and I have 1,602 photographs to show for it. Of course I'm not going to bog you down with millions of photographs (tempting though it is) so forgive me just a little as I show you a quick view of Cape Town in photos ~ I'll keep it down to a minimum, promise.
Can you believe that I went home in winter? That's winter up there in that photograph by the way - not so bad, hmm? I miss the beaches and surprisingly of all, I miss the mountains. I think that's a Cape Town thing and not a general South Africa thing, but still. This (above and below) is Hout Bay Harbour and Beach where you can sunbathe on the sands, go for a swim in the icy waters, or turn around and enjoy fresh fish (if you like that kind of thing) from one of the many fish-and-chips shops along the harbour-side. I don't eat fish, for the record, but I do like the harbour and I especially like ice cream.
This is the beach-side restaurant and take-aways Mariner's Wharf - and that's a boat set into the second level of the building overhanging the parking lot rather precariously.
On this particular day we sat on the rocks and ate ice-creams as we watched the fishing boats and the seals. There were about seven very large seals romping around the boats just in front of us!
... Even the rocks are pretty. It might just be my nostalgia and my love of colour continuity, but I like 'em.
Further along the coastline, on Milnerton Beach, we were able to watch the sun go down from my aunt's pretty beach-side apartment.
Isn't that an amazing view? Imagine waking up to that every morning!
If you zip up the mountain you reach UCT (the University of Cape Town) where the views are panoramic and are particularly beautiful in the hazy mornings:
I popped in to my old haunts to see my dear friends Isa and Shihaam in the English Department, Tanya in the Rare Books Library, and Jessica, my former supervisor for my Honours and MA dissertations. Much sadness that Jessica was out and about being awesome and touring the wide world as an elite academic, but delighted to see everyone else looking so very happy and healthy.
Even further up from here is Rhodes Memorial, and the Rhodes Memorial Tea Garden.
... and because I can't possibly put a blog post up here on Bakercourt without referring to food, let me show you what we ate at the Rhodes Memorial Tea Garden:
Food is served on elaborate, elongated platters. This is my Tikka Chicken Sandwich served with chips and salad. Below, my mom's giant scone served with butter, cream and jams.
I even managed to fit in a visit to the aquarium as part of a baby-sitting excursion.
Speaking of babysitting and play areas - things are quite different when you're holidaying with two small children. Meal times are different, meal contents are different, and you have to go to places that will entertain the children for long enough so that you can sip your coffee slowly and nibble on a biscuit if you want to. If you don't choose your places properly, you end up chasing the children around and answering a lot of "but what can I doooooooooooo?" questions. So, one of the family's favourite places to have tea (and to play) is the pretty little Millstone Eco Village in Pinelands.
It's a large area of land made up of a riding school, a play centre, a bakery and coffee shop, a outdoors play area and a school.
Plus, there are horses.
Millstone is the coffee shop serving baked goods (like beetroot and chocolate cake) and breakfasts. You sit on old wine crates around wooden tables in a pretty garden while dogs, cats and occasionally miniature pigs come to visit you for snacks. That, in the picture, is a giant treehouse shaped like a ship. That was enormously popular with all the children, and especially Daniel (my half-brother).
Finally, before you disappear because I'm boring you with photographs of how wonderful my holiday was (*gush*), have a look at the pretty mountains and dam at Worcester Yacht Club:
Now, this was a cold day. There was snow on the mountains. We wore jumpers and jackets and scarves and boots. The cloud cover was particularly pretty, though, and it seemed to change all the colours of the scenery to make it more brilliant and stand-out-ish. (Yes, 'ishing' is permissible when words fail you.)
Just look at that sky! Pretty pretty pretty. I could write here!
Further along the dam you come to a pretty open grass area where campers are allowed to set up tents and children run around delightedly. Makes for good photographs, too.
Here's Emma enjoying the Worcester Yacht Club swings with her polka dot wellies. This picture is pretty much how I feel about my whole trip home - glee!
