Most days it’s really pleasant to be out stitching on our beautiful patio (Mike’s the one with green fingers) but today it’s raining, as it has done fairly regularly this summer.

Some members of the animal world use bright colouring to signal danger to wood-be predators, a biological feature called aposetism. With this in mind, I’m using bright colours as a kind of warning about the dangerous virus that has enveloped our world in the past year. I’m continuing the Pandemic Pattern series with #4, below, for which I have a specific title in mind, but with many hours of working time still ahead, I have time for something even better to come to mind as I stitch on. I’m well supplied with audiobooks through my kindle and sometimes listen to music.

Shining brightly on the table are the cones of neon thread I’m hand stitching with. These are topstitching weight, synthetic (nylon or polyester) and too strong for me to break by hand. I hand cut mostly red leather circles which are mostly appliqued in green, but occasional colour changes in leather and thread represent the variants popping up almost weekly around the world.

When I’d covered perhaps 1/4 of the background, it became obvious I’d need more neon green or the piece would have to be far smaller. I went to the internet and found some cones pictured of similar sounding thread in neon green, neon yellow and orange/red. On the order form I checked one of each colour, and then thinking how fast I was ploughing through the green, added an extra of that just to be sure I had enough. When the package arrived a few weeks later, I was a bit surprised to find each cone carried not 300m but 1500m! 6000m or 6km of neon topstitching thread will last me quite a while!