Out of the Doldrums

"Finished products"

"Getting started"

"Found the soap!"

"The felting wool"

"In the "shed""

"Entering the shed"

"A Christmas ball of soap"

Christmas came and went …

… and I am still in a state of writer’s cramp. Or is it artistic doldrums? Or perhaps I am just plain tired. Whatever it is I am desperate to get my Hong Kong blogs written and some more photographs up to illustrate my and other blog postings.

I have recently written about a few of my experiences over on the comments on Andrew Sutton’s third and latest “Take-away” posting:

http://www.conductive-world.info/2010/12/response-to-chinese-take-away-3.html

I hope to expand on these on my own blog soon.

Christmas celebrations took place at the weekend and so will the New Year firework and essentially money-burning fiesta. This means that work goes on just about as normal during the week.

The Kindergarten closed for a week but the Petö children are as always welcome in the school holidays and some have taken up the offer. I am not working most days and today is a very welcome day off.

I spent the first sunny half of a sunny morning off reading a Christmas book! A rare event unless the book is about work. Recently I have been too busy writing one! The second is already in production. Today I decided to read. The next part of the day I spent doing house-worky things and then a bit of crafty creation.

Some pressies

I get few, but most very special, presents at Christmas and this year was no exception.

My Sister and her family sent me a lovely dress that I have almost worn out since I opened it. A perfect fit. Thank you.

My German relatives always find me an English-language book, which I value very much, the thought in searching it out and the always perfect choice. This year’s tome, in hardback, is the eight-hundred-and-fifty-pages-long Ken Follett novel, Fall of the Giants. I just read two-hundred and twenty-three of them before my arms started aching.

I always get some tea and this year I received an amazing teapot to brew it in. This will be in use at work where we all think we should drink tea rather than coffee but rarely do. Maybe with a beautiful teapot we now will.

Some other special friends always find things to buy me that they know I will be tempted to make later myself. I had some gorgeous warm, felted, elbow-length mitts given to me by a conductor colleague and something else rather special that I have created replicas of this afternoon for my clients.

I was given a felt ball that has a bar of soap inside it.

A present for my practice

It was not until I got home and tried it out that I realised that it was just the job for work. Those slippery bars that are always skating across the bathroom floor would now be a thing of the past.

This morning I went into my shed-come-bathroom and searched first the bathroom cupboards for tiny soap samples and then the “shed” for the felting wool, then I got to work. I now have six brightly coloured non-slip soaps, one already in the hands of Little Princess the child with athetoid cerebral palsy for whom holding the soap is always a battle. Now a battle won!

Back to the fray

I still have not got all my cards and presents made and posted but I will get them finished soon. New Year can also be celebrated!

No more playing with presents until the weekend as I am off to work again tomorrow.

This time it is the adults who have requested my time as their physiotherapists do not work between the holidays. That means from the 23^rd December until the 10^th January there is no physio- or occupational therapy on offer for them.

They can have as much “Petö” as they wish! The littlies too.

Notes

Ken Follett - Fall of the Giants, Macmillan ISBN 978-0-230-71007-8