Social Distancing

We live in a pretty quiet neighborhood here which is a little different from Utah and from our first Pennsylvania house. Many of the houses are owned by older people like us but about half seem to have school age children in them. I can only say "seem" because even before the shelter at home orders were given in Pennsylvania we didn't see much of them. We did see people's dogs but usually not their children, even our adjacent neighbor children who seem to range in age from about two to seven or eight. I don't really know as I haven't met them yet. They moved in right after we did which was right before Thanksgiving and it was cold if not snowy. The yard is always filled with a jumble of bikes, trikes, slides, etc. but they don't move much since the kids don't play outside much. I don't know for sure what they are doing indoors all the time--even with home schooling children need playtime but these children don't go out much.

Most people are very good about the whole social distancing thing but today a man and woman ran right up behind us on a park trail as we were walking, then practically knocked us over pushing by us, and then turned around to say, "Sorry," while huffing and puffing by. I was pretty annoyed as it was very unnecessary as the park and the trail are quite large and they certainly could have avoided any contact. I had read recently that even being in the stream of air coming from someone's breath is a risk if they carry the virus so I made my husband move off the path completely so we weren't behind the couple anymore and I took a shower as did my husband as soon as we got back home. Most weeks our only outdoor excursions except short trips to the very same park  are to the grocery store and I have always been organized about limiting grocery shopping anyway so these days that is down to one time a week. My husband had to go the hospital lab yesterday to get blood drawn as a follow up to his prostate cancer treatment and once again I made him shower when he got home and I have made several home made masks so he wore one to get the blood draw.

Being so isolated doesn't feel that strange to us. We are retired, we are older, we have indoor hobbies and we both read quite a bit. So I am not getting cabin fever at all though the change of seasons does mean I have the urge to grow stuff. But I don't think I am doing any more quilting than I would under other circumstances. Still the new project has some pretty dense stitching on it. I made the background a half inch grid and did some smaller scale feathered accents and some fiddly bits.

 I am about 1/4 of the way around the double outside border. The cherry bough design is one I got in Dijon, France several years ago and had never used but the scale is just right for this quilt. Keep in mind that the grid is half inch so that gives you an idea of the size of the small branch. The density of the quilting makes it take longer, but of course time indoors is what most of us have right now regardless of how we fill it.