Exciting Mail and a Disappointing Cancellation

After looking through Jeanette's magazines from The Cross Stitch Guild in the UK, I decided to join and signed up last Monday. My magazine #139, catalogue, and welcome package arrived today - only 6 days after it was mailed.

The welcome stuff all came in this little folder.

It contained a floss card, my membership card, a postcard, 

a general tips sheet outlining the basics of cross stitch, French knots, backstitch, satin stitch and three quarter cross stitch.

There was also a free sample of Madeira 6-strand floss,

and a colour card with conversions to Coats and DMC.

There was the 2021 catalogue with many kits that can be ordered - from past magazines. There was more than one kit I am seriously considering ordering, particularly since I get free shipping now that I am a member of The Guild.

There was a needle guide in a protective sleeve with two gold-plated needles. 

On the back was the fabric size calculator.

The needle guide is clear plastic. You can identify your needle size by laying it on the actual size needle guides.

The magazine is issued 5x a year and contains lots of beautiful charts for all kinds of counted embroidery including Hardanger, blackwork, cross stitch, pulled and drawn hemwork, and canvaswork.

In the magazines Jeanette showed me at StitchNorth, I saw many projects that inspired me to design my own. There were lots of smalls designs which I could adapt using different patterns and colours. In fact, I have designed and created an item inspired by one of the projects in a recent magazine Jeanette shared with me.

I got the rest of the red on the house done during this morning's Zoom chat.

All that is left is the windows, bees, and centre of the flower. The pattern has an alternate chart which could be used for the cover of a needlebook.

That could be the front cover and the alphabet could be on the back cover. Those bees are so dang cute.

I have made the difficult decision not to attend Elim at the end of this month. I'm really bummed out about it but for me, it is the right thing to do. I was quite wary at StitchNorth with all those folks and always wore my well-sealing, KN95 mask when I was out of my chair. We sat in the far corner where no other people would pass by. The ventilation was good. But the odds of someone in that group of almost 200 people having COVID was always on my mind. Then when one was reported, I started thinking about not exposing myself to that risk again. Our mask and vaccine mandates and capacity limits which kept us pretty safe these past two years are gone. Our Chief Medical Officer of Health and all doctors strongly encourage mask wearing indoors in a public setting yet our government doesn't. The government now only focuses on hospital numbers and seems to care nothing for long-term effects COVID could have on the general population. 2nd boosters are strongly encouraged but are not available for most of us yet. The 42,000 doses of the antiviral drug are in Ontario but not yet available to its citizens. Not sure what they're waiting for. 

Skip and I both have medical issues which, although are under control, are a cause for concern. We are both vaccinated as much as we can be at this stage but do not want to risk being in that statistically insignificant group of people who become seriously ill or die from COVID. 

I was very comfortable going to Elim last fall when our COVID numbers in Ontario were at their lowest since the beginning of the pandemic. We all wore masks, all were vaccinated, sat one table apart, had only 4 per table at meals, and had our own lodgings for sleeping.  This spring is completely different.

We hope to visit my family sometime in early May and I don't want to risk transmitting the virus to them during that visit.

I just spent a week staying away from Skip after returning from StitchNorth. I slept in the guest room. I wore a mask when we were in the same room. I sat at the opposite end of the kitchen table at meals, I did most activities in another room from where Skip was. I rapid-tested myself every day or so to ensure a negative result. I don't want to have to do all that again.

I'm so bummed out and also very angry. I may be undertaking some serious retail therapy over the next few weeks.