Monday, April 25, 2016

Confined to quarters ....

The rain is pounding down on the roof above my head which
is a comforting, pleasant sound.    It's evening and I have decided
to update my blog since I am not really in the mood to do much
else.    I've been watching "Booktube" videos on Youtube,  I've
been stitching,   I've been reading .... but I am (I confess) feeling
a tad ... dare I say it?? ... Bored!!!!

Recovery from the gallbladder extraction has been uneventful
and everything seems to be fine.   Nurse Phil continues to 
monitor me closely and gives me hell heck if I do too much
bending or reaching.   Hopefully by next week I'll be able to
return to Curves to work out, though I realize that I'm going
to have to start out slowly and work my way back up to
where I was before my little adventure.

We went for a walk today and by the end I was flagging a
bit.  Now that the nicer weather is on the horizon I'm ready
to get out and walk, walk, walk but once again it's
something I'm going to have to build my endurance up for.


Being confined to the house and with the weather too cool
to sit out in I've been dedicating a lot of my time to my
current cross stitch project and I've gotten a lot done!
Now I am not the world's fastest stitcher by any means
so I'm not sure if this is a lot by anyone else's standards
but I'm fairly pleased with it.

The canoe and the streetcar were my favourite things
to stitch and the trees as well.   To the left of the 
streetcar is the Prince's Gates which lead into the
Canadian National Exhibition grounds.    On the 
far right of the design is the Skydome where our
baseball team the Toronto Blue Jays play.   Between
those two Toronto icons is the designers rendition
of the Royal Ontario Museum ... and that thing 
was a stinker to stitch!!!


Now above is a picture of the original building which is
quite a venerable old pile ... classy and typical of the
architecture of the 1914 era that it was built in.
     

And this is the section that was added in 2007.
It's called "The Crystal" and it was designed by 
Daniel Libeskind.   It is very ... modern and reactions
to it were ... shall we say .... mixed (!!!) when it's
plans were first revealed.     

I'm not a fan of modern architecture.  I much prefer
the original structure which the Crystal kind of wraps
around in one area.    And when it came to stitching the
darn thing it was ... for me ... a royal pain!

I couldn't picture in my mind how the stitched structure
corresponded to the real one.  It just seemed like
sections of random shades of blue and white.  It
still looks weird to me but at least I can sort of
see what the designer was trying to do.  I guess.
But that part is now done and I can move on to the
next layer of this piece.

And in case you're wondering .... yes, it seems that
at least for awhile the Crystal's roof did leak.   Ooops!


My reading for the past few weeks has been the
acclaimed fantasy series by Naomi Novik.
The first book came out and was nominated
for a Hugo award  for best novel in 2007


The novels are a retelling of the Napoleonic
wars but with dragons!!!   So a meld of 
fantasy and history which is skillfully 
blended into a fascinating and riveting
story by the author.   


I don't know why I haven't gotten these
books to read before this because I knew
that they were out there and were well
reviewed and quite popular .... but I didn't.
There are more books in this series which
I have in my collection and will read in the 
future but I wanted to get the first three books 
done all in one marathon read.   I don't know
if I'll pick up book four (then five, six etc) next
or if I'll go for a change of pace.   We'll see.

I don't have much else to write about tonight
so I'll just add a cute picture of the cats and call
it a night!


Cheers!




5 comments:

Maggie said...

Hi Judy, glad Phil is looking after you :-)
Wow, you got loads of stitching done, lovely to see the photos of the building too :-)

I haven't come across the books, although i must say that i'm not really a fan of fantasy, with the exclusion of Harry Potter of course! I'm enjoying Stormbird, Mark has read all Conn Iggulden's other books and has always said how well written they are. One series is the Vikings and another about Genghis Khan.

I hope you are feeling up to getting back to your walking and the gym soon, take care.
xx

Vonna Pfeiffer said...

Gallbladder surgery...I had that as well 6 months after my twins were born and to be honest, I don't remember much about it...LOL! probably because I was sleep deprived. :)
I LOVE your stitch! And now I'm off to see about these books!
I'm currently re-listening to Jean M. Auel's Earth Children series. Love those...read them over and over.
And ending with a cute cat picture is always a good ending!

Judy S. said...

Just now catching up with you and hoping that you're feeling lots, lots better. Love seeing all your projects, especially this one. Take care!

Kaisievic said...

Glad that you are on the mend after your surgery. Great progress on your stitching and thanks for explaining about each motif - very interesting. I have read all of Naomi Novik's dragon novels - they are fantastic. Lovely pics of your kitty cats and look, you have a gorgeous ginger fellow, too! xxx

Brigitte said...

It seems that your convalescence is coming along great and that Phil helps you a lot not to to do too much. This seems to often be the danger that when we feel better after surgery we think that we can pull out trees again, which is usually not the case , lol. But with all the walking you are doing you should be back to your old self in no time.

Your WIP looks great and you made some considerable progress on it. So interesting to read what you tell us about the different section in the picture - and that you show the real pictures with them. Pretty difficult to design the modern structures of the museum. And maybe you will love it more when the next layer is stitched.

Have fun with your books. I really envy you as I have lost my reading mojo for nearly half a year now. I have so many books that I'd love to read but whenever I start one I get bored after a while and just want to go back to my stitching, lol.