dual personalities

Well, another week has flown by and I struggle to recollect what happened. However, I did (almost) accomplish one thing. After my kitchen valance success I wanted to make an oven mitt with the leftover material. I ended up opting for something even easier — a potholder — which I’m making with fabric samples I ordered some time ago from Spoonflower.com. Before I got started I bought a bobbin winder, the one on my sewing machine being broken. It’s a nifty little gadget that certainly beats doing the job by hand.

I also purchased a small cutting mat, regular cotton batting and special heat-resistant batting called Insulbrite. Then I cut the batting to go with the sample pieces and started quilting. I’ve done about half of the right piece in the photo below. The lines are supposed to be evenly spaced and straight, but who cares? It’s my first potholder.

After a lot of swearing I finished sewing the two sides together, trimmed the edges and ended up with this:

Now if I can manage to sew the trim on the outside I’ll have a pretty potholder! Next, I’ll try an oven mitt, though I’m a little daunted by the thought of all the curves involved.

The potholder has been a nice distraction from work and colleagues who are so worried about getting Covid from returning students that they are actually writing wills. I kid you not. I’ve nothing against will-writing in general; it’s the panic behind it that gets me. What they need is a little perspective. I’d like to send all of the doom and gloomers this wonderful passage from C.S. Lewis. I’m not sure of its origin because I got it from a (sensible) friend who posted it on Facebook, but please read the whole thing:

In one way we think a great deal too much of the atomic bomb. ‘How are we to live in an atomic age?’ I am tempted to reply: “Why, as you would have lived in the sixteenth century when the plague visited London almost every year, or as you would have lived in a Viking age when raiders from Scandinavia might land and cut your throat any night; or indeed, as you are already living in an age of cancer, an age of syphilis, an age of paralysis, an age of air raids, an age of railway accidents, an age of motor accidents.”

In other words, do not let us begin by exaggerating the novelty of our situation. Believe me, dear sir or madam, you and all whom you love were already sentenced to death before the atomic bomb was invented: and quite a high percentage of us were going to die in unpleasant ways. We had, indeed, one very great advantage over our ancestors — anesthetics; but we have that still. It is perfectly ridiculous to go about whimpering and drawing long faces because the scientists have added one more chance of painful and premature death to a world which already bristled with such chances and in which death itself was not a chance at all, but a certainty.

This is the first point to be made: and the first action to be taken is to pull ourselves together. If we are all going to be destroyed by an atomic bomb, let that bomb when it comes find us doing sensible and human things — praying, working, teaching, reading, listening to music, bathing the children, chatting to our friends over a pint and a game of darts — not huddled together like frightened sheep and thinking about bombs. They may break our bodies (a microbe can do that) but they need not dominate our minds.

We could all use a big dose of common sense right now, don’t you think? When the world starts getting you down, pick up a needle or a book, bake a cake or clean out a drawer, take a walk or write a letter — every routine behavior is an act of defiance. Choose to live your life as normally as possible (though please do wear a mask and keep your hands away from your face).

Fear not, have patience and enjoy your weekend!

*A.A. Milne