Covid19 Day 23 Monday April 20

Had a “Coffee with Judy”  at 8am – bit of face time with a small group of church people.

Then took Wilhelm to buy lumber to build more on the raised garden.

Completed the first phase of the tooling article for my blog:

In the evening Gina arrived home from Missouri.

Covid19 Day 22 Sunday April 19

Watched our church service online and was disappointed that it was a recorded service (few days before) and not a live broadcast.  I would rather watch a glitchy live stream than a recorded program where the person says “Good morning….” and you know he is probably telling a lie – he probably recorded this in the afternoon.  In these a-social times it is just not good.

I carried on recording video  for a big new blog post on leather tooling.

Quick visit to Mark to pick up excess groceries that overflowed at Ruby’s Pantry where he volunteered.

Covid19 Day 21 Saturday April 18

It was a good day.

Here is the Journal cover I made yesterday afternoon:

I took Gina very early to her friend’s office from where the three ladies were departing to take the friend’s move to Holden, MO.  They left at 8am and were in Holden at 6pm.  She is coming back on Monday.

I then took Wilhelm to buy more lumber for the vegetable garden he is building.

I made was able to finish a few cable organisers.

And I started with a very elementary leatherwork instruction for my leather instruction blog at 

www.leatherlearn.com

 

I also found and cleaned a pendant that I received from a correspondent in Engand – Patricia Bury.  Her husband Derek made it out of sterling silver.  He sent it to an assay office in London where they applied the for stamps that indicate that it is pure silver, was assayed in London, was made by DTB (Derek Bury’s makers mark), and that it was assayed in 1979 (the stylized “e” shows that).

Covid19 Day 20 Friday April 17

Day started off good!

My son invited me to join him attending a webinar about Cobol programming.

I could not get it to work.

I caught a bad dip and spent a few hours in quite a funk.

Gina enjoyed the good weather in the garden!

Later she asked me if I had a journal cover already made to give to a friend of hers who has her birthday tomorrow.  No, I don’t.

But God crept into my head, changed the chemistry there and gave me a very positive vibe:  I was going to make the journal cover in one afternoon!

By seven I had this done:

I decided to go all-out rustic  –  wood finish, uneven color – and it worked.  I will take a better picture of the completed project tomorrow.

During the day Gina also found this door sign I made for her circa 1990.

Covid19 Day 19 Thursday April 16

I was able to join a morning devotion with a previous pastor, Judy Zabel.  Just about ten of us, but just to meet new people and share with them was very precious.

Still didn’t get the motivation for the treadmill.

Me and Wilhelm drove to my store to check that everything is still OK there and then we did a bit of shopping.  I wanted a bluetooth headset, but BestBuy only did curbside pickups – you have to order online first – so I rather ordered from amazon where I had a wider selection.

This is one of my leather pieces that hangs in my store:

In the evening we joined our small group again for a zoom get-together.

Covid19 Day 17 Tuesday April 14

Called my mom this morning and she sounded much better and very positive.  She is doing well.  

Most of the call was taken up by trying to troubleshoot why she has no Wi-Fi like the day before.  Turns out there is no power on her router.

Then she gave me the name and phone number of André that helped her on Saturday.

I found out I cannot get through to my mom’s cell phone or André’s cell phone – not sure where the problem lies there.  So I called him, thanked him, and asked him to stop by when he goes to the store to just have a look at her router.

Called my mom back after that and spent another 45 minutes just chatting to her.

By this time I had missed the first hour of my online class on leatherwork, but that is available to catch up with later.

I sat down to some leatherwork of my own and was jaw-drop amazed at the weather every time I looked up.  Within twenty minutes we had full on sunshine, clouds, snowy flurries and blizzard like snowstorms.  And this repeated itself quite a few times.

Somewhere there I saw this – the falling snow only accumulated where the shadow of the house kept the ground cooler; elsewhere it melted immediately.

When the sun came out five minutes later it confirmed this visibly:

I also load software to edit videos with so that I can publish instructions again to my leather instructions blog:   www.leatherlearn.com

Covid19 Day 16 Monday April 13

I hopped on the treadmill early and got 6 minutes in when I got a message on my phone from a cousin in South Africa saying that her mom cannot get hold of my mom.  Turns out that was about a week ago.

But it caused me to call my mom, only to hear that she fell Friday evening and spent the whole night on the floor trying to access her phones and trying to get help.  I do think she had some concussion, because it was only Saturday morning when she was able to reach an angel, André Scheeres, who swooped in, helped her get up and called paramedics to take her to the hospital, where she spent most of Saturday being x-rayed and tested.  She also had a gash in her head stitched up.  She was able to be discharged Saturday afternoon late and André took her home again.

I fooled around a bit with leather again, played with a few old photos,

…..but my creativity had fled.

I was so ready to step out of this day!

Covid19 Day 15 Sunday April 12

After such a beautiful sunshine day yesterday, it started to snow this morning and we got 6″+.

I took the day off from the treadmill.

We drove to church early and was greeted by our five pastors and Holy Communion; drive-by fashion outside.  All very safely done!  And home-made doughnuts.

And there I was struck speechless.   I got so emotional that I could not speak.

We then drove home to watch the Easter Sunday service streamed live.

While watching and listening to the service, I drew this on my tablet, using the Sketcher App:

I futzed around with with leather, streamed a Facebook Live video about a leatherwork technique and watched the snow pile up outside.

This is the start of our new veggie garden that Wilhelm is developing: