Another Shostakovich embroidery is complete. This one measures about 8″ x 10″ and is completely covered with stitching. It’s the first work I’ve done in full colour, and it’s based off a portrait by the artist Nikolai Sokolov (who also did the sketch I stitched for my second project). I have a friend who commented when I posted this latest one that I should find some way of exhibiting these–but not being a working professional artist or having any of those kinds of contacts for places I might do so, I have no clue as to how I would do that. That’s the one thing I like about the SCA–gives me a place for that kind of thing–but unfortunately, not for any of my wholly modern stuff.

Just before Cloth of Gilt, I did a final proofreading run for my DSCH Journal gig, which means I was back in the position of not having an active project to work on (other than the Pripyat mosaic detail, which I keep running hot and cold on. The fact that I discovered a Chernobyl subreddit that sent me down a few new rabbit holes sort of put me in mind of the radiation fallout map that I kept open as a tab.

It, for some reason, reminds me of a flower. So that’s what I’m stitching next. Bright colours, no blending, just this abstract, fascinating thing. And maybe a Cat of Brutalism after that.

I’m scheduled to go to a TSO performance tonight, and watching the weather carefully. We’re expecting a significant storm, and the rain has already begun, forecast to turn into snow later in the day. However, it’s not all supposed to fall over one day this time, so I am crossing my fingers that I will be OK to get downtown. I took the day off today, and am relaxing with stitching, reading, watching The Book of Boba Fett, and having a nice treat from Firehouse Subs for lunch.

Stratford has released its casting for its 2022 productions, and they include both Colm Feore as Richard III and Amaka Umeh as Hamlet–both had been scheduled to do these roles in 2020. The former is, of course, one of my favourite Stratford actors. I’ve never seen the latter, but am intrigued with a woman being cast as Hamlet.

It has occurred to me, as Ontario starts to “open up” again, that a better approach for the future–and not just for COVID–would be to put the needed funding into better staffing for the health care system, including increasing staffing levels with the understanding that the stress has chased many capable medical professionals out of the system. This would position us better for future outbreaks, but also for an aging population. The system, as others have noted, was already under considerable strain even before the pandemic. If we want to “keep businesses open” and “the economy” going, we can’t have hospitals struggling with capacity.