Out and about

I gave blood today. There was no repetition of the problems I had last time - I actually scored the nurse who had OK'd the October donation, then nixed the one in January. There was even a hint of apology re the red tape.

Then I ran into a problem with rebooking because my next donation is due 3 days before we fly to the US. I wanted to book in a day or so earlier but was told the computer system wouldn't allow it, so I have booked in for Friday 13th - hope it's not an omen. I would have let it slide, but you have to wait 8 weeks to donate after a trip to the US, so that would have meant another 6 months without a donation.

The rest of the day was devoted to pleasure. I had arranged to go with Margaret and Zoe to see an exhibition of textile works in Guildford, then the FeltWest exhibition in Mundaring.

We were greatly impressed by the work displayed by Pam, Diana and Lorelei at the Nature's Trilogy exhibition and rather sad that so little had been sold. I did buy one of Lorelei's cards though. After we left I remembered that I hadn't signed the visitors' book. It appears neither Margaret or Zoe did either, so our apologies, girls. We visited and we were impressed!

I thought we might lunch at Woodbridge House, but the parking area was full of poorly parked cars taking up more than their fair share of space, so we went on to Mundaring and further, to the Lavender Patch on Mundaring Weir Road for lunch. Neither Margaret or I had been there before, but Zoe is apparently a semi-regular. Nice food, especially the bread roll baked in a flower pot with just a hint of lavender added to the dough.

The FeltWest exhibition included some exquisite items. It was probably just as well that everything I really loved had been bought by someone else. I definitely don't need to melt down the credit card before July. I am not sure about copyright, so I am only including one photo. I particularly liked this piece by Jan Stroud. Distressing and deconstruction really grabs me at the moment.

On the way back we dropped into a couple of shops in Guildford. Raw has mostly African imports. There was a lot of wonderful stuff, but what most impressed me was the way the owner had colour co-ordinated the stock so as you moved around the shop you saw everything that was green gathered together, then moved on to blue etc. From there we went to Oriental Origins where the other girls homed in on the handmade papers.

I drove more than 200 kilometres today. I didn't go for a morning walk because my appointment at the Blood Bank was at 8.30 am, but as of this moment I have managed 5736 steps. I haven't done any sewing though.