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Measure. Cut. Pull. Snip. Separate. Squint. Thread. Stab. Continue until you need to start over again.
It sounds like a clinical process, but there's nothing cold about it.
Now we've all got so much extra time on our hands, many are returning to old hobbies, picking up new ones or launching back into one they've loved for a long time but might have had just a touch of guilt about spending time on.
Friends are Facetiming with near-daily updates of their culinary adventures, making me dream of the aromas that could be wafting from my own kitchen. Cousins, living out in my old stomping ground of far west NSW, incite jealousy with Snapchats of them tearing around red dirt paddocks on motorbikes without a care in the world. I can practically smell the dust and the fumes.
For me, I'm suddenly pretending to know what to do in the garden - and it seems I'm not alone, as the entire country appears to have developed a thumb greener than Bruce Banner on a bad day - and wasting away time on clearing out cupboards. When you live alone and can't take the finished product to your workplace, deciding to master macarons or perfect a sponge is far too dangerous in the fight against corona kilos.
So the true pleasure I'm getting to indulge in day in, day out without a skerrick of a self-imposed guilt trip is ... embroidery.
Cross stitching, to be exact. In 2020, who would've thunk it? And someone relatively youthful? You better believe it. (Just to be clear, there are no English garden views, intricate lace or floral arrangements here. It IS 2020, after all).
In the last few weeks I've finished a 12,000-stitch project that's dogged me for months, whipped up and mailed out several cute family portraits, and a few blue words for my more adventurous mates.
It's quite cathartic. It's also a hobby that people are surprised to find out I indulge in - but I guess we all have a few tricks up our sleeve, don't we?
You mightn't be able to head out the front door and catch up with friends. Can't sneak around the corner to the local. Not a chance of that road trip.
Home it is - and you might as well enjoy it while you can. One day, when (if) everything is back to normal, we'll look back on this period and all the spare time we had and will only be able to wish for a fraction of it back.
Make the most of it, yes, but enjoy it even more - and don't forget to brag about it on social media. If the rest of this passes like a blur, at least we'll have the 'gram to remind us of what we achieved.