How's everyone doing in lockdown? We are in week four of official lockdown here in England and I think generally my household has been coping with the changes pretty well although today I just feel really bleurgh. I can't settle down to anything and, although I have lots I could be doing for Dotty Textiles (so many kits to make up, a new kit in the middle of the designing process, Stitchscape pebbles in their hoop waiting to be embroidered), I just can't bring myself to do any of it with any enthusiasm. This is totally fine I think, these are very odd circumstances and, although my family have so far been very lucky, it is very scary not knowing whether COVID-19 will strike and how bad it could suddenly turn. It's a bit like discovering an old war bomb, accidentally dropping it and then waiting to see if it will start ticking or not.
Usually when I get antsy I can go off somewhere and get my mojo back but with the travel restrictions in place this is slightly tricky. We are very lucky to have a woodland within a 10 minute walk from the house and yesterday evening I dragged my lovely other half (who was unfortunate enough to be at my house when we went into lockdown and has stayed with us throughout) out for a walk. He's working from our sofa as a key worker looking after the IT issues of hundreds of clients also all working from home so he spends a long time sitting or lounging and can't really say no when I ask to go for a walk.
We came to these same woods last week but the Bluebells weren't quite ready then so gave it a week before returning. The smell as you enter the woods is amazing - you don't really think of these flowers as having a smell but once you get a woodland full it's fabulous!
I came Bluebell hunting here last year in April and spent several hours photographing them (as you can see in my post about it from then). We weren't here quite as long this time round because the sun was starting to go down and it gets dark pretty quickly under canopy even though the leaves aren't fully out on the trees yet. The sunshine dappling through was really lovely, picking out random patches of blue for special scrutiny.
We were pretty much alone in the wood which was nice. Although I'm aware of some people finding lockdown really isolating, with five of us in the house we can't really escape each other and there are so many different things going on with everyone doing their own thing - I've taken over quite a lot of the living room to be fair, having had to empty out some of the studio so that I can continue to work and post items.
I'm slightly worried about whether I should continue to post items out for my shop. I have various reasons for doing so that I've explained before, but there are almost as many counter-arguments for closing up shop and I've started getting lots of anxious messages, especially from customers in the USA, where parcels aren't arriving or are delayed way beyond normal postage times and I'm having to pay to send additional items out (costing me both the kit and the packaging and posting). It's a tricky situation all round.
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