Glenorchy and Innishael linked with Strathfillan

The realities that others face on a daily basis comes home to me when I consider the range of injections we face over the next few weeks.  Yellow Fever, and 3 for Rabies, boosters for Typhoid and Hepatitis A. Plus malaria tablets which may cause hallucinations and need to be changed before we travel.  I’ll need to remember to take that first tablet after Sunday morning, not before.  I imagine hallucinating is bad enough without doing it from the pulpit!  Mostly I’m grateful that we don’t face all these dangers in our own country.  Although it’s easy to get complacent – Lymes disease and Legionnaires are two nasties in the news more often of late.  So perhaps most of all I’m grateful for the medical facilities we have here and hope the day will come when people around the world can take for granted what we expect here.

Looking at my 1st post which I hadn’t given a title, I discovered it was coming up with the title “I’ve been thin…”  Now I’ve been fortunate not to ever have given much thoughts to weight and size issues in my life and think such issues get too much attention so the title was definitely misleading.  Actually how I’d started my post was “I’ve been thinking”.  So now I know – give it a title, or beware!  I changed the title to “Why blog?”

But perhaps “I’ve been thin” could lead to a post about being vegetarian, organic gardening and agriculture, local food, the politics of food, Mary’s Meals, Christian Aid …  watch this space.

I’ve got back into knitting over the last few years. This little octopus was my first foray into “making it up as I go along”. 

All made from the ends of wool left after making socks.

I’ve been thinking about blogging for awhile and kept putting it off.  With a trip to Peru & the USA coming up it seems a good time to get into it so that I know what I’m doing (more or less) before I want to be posting on a regular basis.

The study leave which will take us across the Atlantic is focussing on Arts & Crafts in Ministry and Worship.  It will start with a Traidcraft Meet the People tour in Peru.  Then we’ll stay for a few days with friends outside New York before treating ourselves to a couple of days at Niagara Falls to celebrate our silver wedding anniversary.  We don’t usually go on exotic holidays so the fact that the trip coincides is a wonderful coincidence (if you want to call it that).  We’ll fly from Niagara to north Carolina where I’ll take part in Gathering of Artisans, including me leading a knitting workshop.

As well as planning for the study leave I am trying to work out how to reduce our carbon footprint to go some way to making up for all those airmiles.

Looking forward to writing more on all sorts of subjects.  I hope at least a few folk will enjoy reading. Feedback welcomed and encouraged!