I made that!

I've been a busy bee and want to share some of my "honey." 

First up is a special issue of a German-studies journal that I co-edited with a colleague at another institution. Neither of us had edited anything before, so we figured out together how to write a call for papers, publicize it, sift through the abstracts, and select a group of papers to shepherd through the writing, editing, and publication process. The two of us wrote the introduction and selected artistic images for the cover and between the essays, which is why I was disappointed not to receive the finished product initially. Finally, after the annual meeting, I reached out to the press, and they mailed us our paper-back copies. It's so pretty! And now that it's done, I can devote my precious writing time to turning my dissertation into a book.

Second is a trio of balsa-wood nightlights that were an impulse buy at the craft store. I picked out the moth, the brain, and the ribcage with flowers. They are colored with paint pens, and I haven't decided yet whether to keep, gift, or donate them.

Third, I finally finished the second copy of the Princess Bride cross-stitch sampler I was working on. I received the first copy for Christmas last year, but it was missing some of the thread, so the Etsy seller sent me a whole new kit, which had enough supplies to finish both. This one is on the side table in the entranceway but will probably eventually be hung in my office. A woman at church made the knitted cactus, which I just love. 

Thrifty & Crafty

I have an occasional Zoom "craft date" with friend J.R., when we chat over video while she weaves or sews and I mend or do other crafty projects, like the "surgery" I performed on two Styrofoam "hell cat" Halloween decorations that needed weighted bottoms to make them less likely to tip over in the wind. (A scowling guard feline looks so much less fearsome on its side.)

This month I tackled the green-glass desk lamp I bought second hand whose metal based was wonky. I couldn't get the central disk to line up with the two outer rings, so I invested in a mini-glue gun, harvested some sturdy cardboard from a box in the attic, and created a green-felt-wrapped layer to even out the bottom. Now it no longer rocks against the wooden desk.

I'm pretty pleased by the way it turned out.

When the lamp was finished, I used some of the corner scraps to pad the paws of the iron mouse doorstop I thrifted for the attic door. We have to prop it open so Rosamunda can get up and down from her litter box, but when the weather was warmer and the windows were open, the door banged every time there was a draft. Now there's a bright idea.

"Sew" excited!

In the first year of the pandemic, I played a lot of Settlers of Catan online. (A LOT.) Since there was a lot of swearing at the other players, or the computer, or our internet connection, in the second year I dropped that and picked up DuoLingo, in order to improve my German. I kept that up for 366 days in a row (give or take a few freebies). That eventually began to feel like a chore, so I'm taking a break. Also last year I decided to return to a childhood hobby of cross stitch, which I recently realized is so satisfying because it's a lot like coloring, but slower. There's also a geometrical angle that satisfies the Tetris-lover in me.

Anyway, one reason I decided to cross stitch was because I could do it quietly during Zoom meetings, and the other is that I found a cause to which I could donate the final products, the annual student auction to benefit the Birmingham Free Clinic. This way I get all of the fun of making them without having to figure out how to display or store them!

Here's the entrance to the clinic and the view of the South Side from the porch. The administrator who accepted the pieces was very excited and thinks the students will bid against each other for them.

The canvas for the "wash your hands" signs held up pretty well, so I just set them in hoops hung with some red ribbon. The anatomical body parts I have stuffed with cotton batting with brown velvet behind. I'm working on the lungs right now, which are even trickier than the eye ball.

I've also finished a golden honey bee, which I framed and gifted to a local friend who keeps bees, and I sent syphilis (aka Treponema pallidum) through the U.S. postal mail to a senior historian of medicine in Massachusetts who spent her career researching the Tuskegee Syphilis Study.

What have you made during the pandemic?

What I Accomplished This Summer

Exhibit A: New recipes

Tonight's dinner consisted of warm blueberry soup--a new Swedish delicacy I recently discovered--served with sour cream and crushed walnuts. AND honey-roasted carrots with feta cheese and thyme, which the first time I did in the oven but this time I prepared on the stovetop, which is much cooler for summer. I don't know if Dear Husband noticed carrots, to be honest, since feta is his favorite. The soup had delightful warmth about it, so I can see why they often prepare it during the winter with blueberries saved in the freezer; and even though it was lightly sweetened with maple syrup, it was no dessert-y.

Those were more successful than the white-sauce vegetable lasagna I tried to recreate from residency, when it was my favorite meal on the Internal Medicine side (back before they had to switch to cold lunches to save money). Unfortunately, while it looks like the real thing, it was pretty bland. If I make it again, I will have to punch up the spice level. As it was, we resorted to nuking the leftovers and flavoring them with red hot pepper flakes or sage and marjoram.

Exhibit B: Cross-stitch and embroidery

Whereas in COVID Spring #1 I took up Settlers of Catan online, in COVID Spring #2 I decided I wanted something to do with my hands while sitting through endless Zoom meetings and a history of medicine conference, so I searched Etsy for cross-stitch kits with three goals in mind. The first goal was to make a pair of "Wash your hands" canvases to donate to a student group at the medical school to auction off for the local free clinic next year. With the extra canvas and floss I have, DH thinks I should make a matching set: "Wash your hands" and "You filthy animals."*

The second goal was to take on an ambitious cross-stich/embroidery hybrid of a golden bee as a housewarming gift for a friend who keeps bees. I had the fun of putting it together on two successive family vacations. Below you can see us at Lake Anna one quiet afternoon with it one-third done.

Then I had a #caturday with Rosamunda while at home.

I actually completed the final version at the housewarming party, since our dish was ready to take out of the oven before I had quite finished the honeycomb pattern in the background. J.H. plans to frame it for her wall of "bee art."

The third goal will be to purchase some anatomical patterns (a heart, a kidney, etc.) to cross-stitch with the next batch.

*In case you are neither a child of the 1990s nor a fan of the epidemiology series This Podcast Will Kill You, it's a joke based on the fake "classic" gangster film in Home Alone.