Bergamot bowls and intervening activities

Friday I achieved quite a few tangential tasks. To wit: I was going upstairs to assemble, that means find, the various tools and materials needed for the Decoration of the Bergamot Bowls. 

On the way up I noticed ny new boots that I'm trying to get used to. They're new, stiff and I haven't worn boots in years and have to get used to something up around my ankles. So I've been practicing a bit each day.

Then I remembered there are stretchers that will help. An online search revealed that the expensive ones are almost as much as the boots even without shipping, and the cheapies don't work. Oh. But there's a stretching spray the posh people use with the expensive stretchers. 

Another search, I was still on the stairs, revealed you can get pretty much the same spray product arriving anywhere till mid January, and costing any old amount plus any old equal amount for shipping. Then I tracked down the same spray, free shipping, arriving in the next couple of days. So that's set up.

Then I continued upstairs, original goal still in mind, and while I was rummaging around for a brush, found a retractable pen with a dry ink thing. Set it aside because I had an idea about it.

Then found various metallic paints, tissue paper for papier mache for the Bowls, white glue and a spray bottle with dilute white glue in it that I'd used to apply handmade paper to lampshades, you've seen them.

Finally made it downstairs, replaced the ink thing with a spare I had which happened to fit well enuf fer gummint work and I have a new pen.

I washed out the spray bottle and kept it for other uses. 

And then, not before time, set up the Bowl Decoration Department.

The procedure is to tear up the tissue paper, which happens to have arrived wrapped round the boots I started with above, to everything a season, and apply using the dilute white glue and a decent brush. 

It's okay because the glue is water soluble, no harm to the brush if you wash it promptly.  And, pausing only to bathe my eyes because I'm sensitive to white glue, I got the first coat of papier mache applied. 

This needs to dry, then another coat, before I get to the painting. I'm thinking gold metallic and black. So far, so fun. I love this process as you see the tissue blending in to make a new surface.

Other important issues, I'm listening to a guy on YouTube getting all happy about words and language in Shakespeare. This was after I'd been hearing Dr Reyes,  Filipina professor of language and meaning schooling a BBC presenter who, if he had only one foot, would have got off on the wrong one. She was calm, excellent and very cool.

I love etymology, always looking up word origins and tracking down trains of thought. When Handsome Son was here, somehow Henry VIII and chicken got into the convo. Don't ask me, I only live here.

Whereupon I said that reminds me, I watched the Bishop's Wife again. HS looked completely baffled at this leap, which seemed obvious to me.

So I explained, Charles Laughton played Henry in a classic movie. He was married (complications there, but anyway) at one time to Elsa Lanchester who plays Mildred in the BW.  See, quite clear.

My mom used language in her own way, not with unfathomable pathways of meaning but her own stamp on words and expressions.  

She would say he was so startled he sat up boltright!  Or, that spider's harmless but he can give you a nasty bite. And oh, there was such a human cry!

As Dr Reyes says, language is flexible, adaptable to culture and people. Especially some people.

Happy day everyone. Remember it pays not to stick to doing one thing at a time. Around here anyway. Fluffinia says dryly, yesh, that's her mantra, until she gets another.

 

Christmas day, good food, good company, candles on the hearth

No pictures, too busy cooking together, then eating together then chatting, then eating again and so it went. The main meat was ham, so there will be leftovers for sandwiches and maybe soup.

Handsome Son came through so well, provided all his share, and we had a lovely array of food, all simple, all good. Ham, mustard, snap peas, corn, roasted mushrooms and potato dice, then Dutch cookies and chocolate Santas in foil all if which I've smoothed out for some reason I haven't figured out. Probably to make something. And there was ginger ale and eggnog.

The other day, talking about making, I was recycling a box and found a lovely small piece of corrugated cardboard, which I promptly set aside thinking that will make a nice little loom. 

And burst out laughing. Who else but a maker would instantly see a bit of cardboard as a tool?

 Back to Christmas and Handsome Son, he was intrigued by the bergamot bowls and handled them, surprised how sturdy they are now they're dried and ready to decorate tomorrow.

They're very tough and sound like pottery when you rap on them.

As you see they'll work better as bowls. The ones on the left fit one over the other but the lid almost covers the base, so that isn't a good fit. And the color has darkened to orange.

I still have two lemons to go, so I can apply what I've learned to them.  One great discovery I made was that when you take them off the molds, there's a rush of lemon scent, wonderful. 

Next I decorate the outside, stay tuned, but leave the inside so as to keep the lemon scent going.

About going,  the cactus put out one rather feeble blossom, almost withered before it opened, on Christmas Eve.

She's doing her best but doesn't feel too well.

After Handsome Son left with his share of the leftovers, after he'd finished playing with a game on my Advent calendar, I fell asleep, combination of food, sugar and activity.

Then the evening was about receiving more greetings and embarking on my Christmas gift to me, an R F Delderfield saga, A Horseman Riding By.

Its about a young man wounded in the Boer War who returns to England where he's inherited a scrap metal company, but has a preference for a country life. That's as far as I've got, but I think this will be great reading over the next couple of days which promise a snowstorm.

And when I needed to rest my eyes, I listened to a seasonal audiobook. 

An oldie, but good. The English narrator has a wonderful voice and delivery and the worst pronunciation of American place names ever! He just plunges at them, very funny.  But who's counting.

Happy day everyone, I hope your day, Christmas or Thursday, went well.

Christmas Day wishes

 

Especially to the people reading here, who bring me such fun all year. Thank you 

And my art assistants demanded equal time 

Happy day everyone, back tomorrow with updates on a maker's life, cardboard,  bergamot boxes and more.

Finally the Christmas decorating reveal, and Textiles and Tea

We don't get carried away around here. This is it. The second set of figures has a backup baby, a spare, because you never know.

I skipped the Tuesday knitting group because laundry, cooking, bits of holiday stuff to do.  Also serious time-sink in Advent calendar games. They're good for the brain. I claim.

I did check in with Textiles and Tea though, for a high energy session with Tina Linville, who works as a sculptor using all kinds of material including fiber. She weaves, crochets, dyes and combines unlikely old and new materials in tabletop size sculptures. 

The energy that bounces off these pieces is great. And while she was talking about playing and letting the materials speak, I started thinking about doing a bit of freeform crochet again.

Great presentation and you can check her website for more. That first piece is very much like one my collab artist and I made and exhibited as Unified Field, back in the nineties.

Happy day everyone, play as if your life depended on it. Because it does.

Sez Ted and Big Ursy

Wrong day misfits, now confusion of the season, bergamot wannabes, The Bishop's Wife

Because of the holiday falling on my delivery day my misfits came Monday. As if I didn't already get confused enough when there's a holiday.

Note the bergamot wannabes in the background starting to take shape, sssh, don't jinx them. Even that busted up one may be fixable, wabi sabi, with the last finishing stage, tissue paper and white glue.

Meanwhile back in the food world, cans for the food pantry, scallions to add in all over for crunch, apples because mid morning requires an apple, cheese to stock up again, red lentils likewise. This is a short week, so a small box, because I still have plenty from last week's delivery. 

Also Handsome Son will be here bearing food on Thursday, so there will be reinforcements. I'm doing the corn, peas and roast potatoes, and he's doing practically everything else, yay.

I appear to have neglected to do any Christmas decorating, because I forgot to ask him to lift down the box from the high shelf. I'm not feeling very pressured about it though.

I will remember to watch my favorite movie of all for the season, the one that gets it. The Bishop's Wife. 

Breaking from ants and plants:

News from the cactus front. Down to two buds after some clumsy gardener knocked one off while watering next to it. Boud: boo hiss. Cactus: never mind, I'll be fine.  All alone. In the dark. 

News from the ant front. After I put down the borax and confectioners sugar mix, there was a rush of tiny ants, then none at all.  Gone. For now anyway. Boud 1, ants 0. Just now.

Happy day everyone, plants can be passy aggy, too. And ants.

Bergamot boxes more or less, part one

I had the lemons waiting,  ready for the bergamot boxes, or lemon boxes. The peels need to be soaked in boiling water for an hour. Since I was having boiled egg and toast for dinner, I thought ah, do it then. Ready pan of boiling water after the egg comes out.

Since I was going to use two lemons I experimented, cutting one pole to pole as Sally recommended, and one across the equator, to see which worked better.

You have to scoop out the insides, now in the freezer for the next time I need lemons 

Then soak, here in the water from the egg 

Then find containers to use as molds, and you also find that even the smallest ones in the house are a bit too big. 

It takes ages to scrape out the pith, then turn the rind inside out. One just exploded into three pieces, hence only three seen here

It then took more ages and patience to get them to lie on the molds and this is probably the tenth iteration, since the rubber bands I started with kept leaping off and flying across the room. Then I resorted to twine hoping that might stay put.

This is the state of the boxes Sunday evening, and they will need to be revisited and pressed down and squeezed frequently during the drying process, which might be a day or more. 

If they dry, there's more to do. I doubt if any two will fit together like a box and lid, so I may have made bergamot bowls. 

Bergamots are a variety of orange, but this idea can work with any citrus fruit, the idea being the lovely scent. 

Anyway there may or may not be a part two, depending on the vagaries of the lemons, the solstice and the configuration of the planets.

Update: another rind broke apart spontaneously. That's both of the pole to pole cut ones. So, despite Sally, I'll stick with equator cutting. Pole to pole works for the globular orange shape but lemons, no, maybe not 

Meanwhile happy day, everyone and remember I do these things so you don't have to.