White Rabbits, Happy St David's Day

 Let's breathe today and enjoy a little.

Edith Holden's Country Diary of an Edwardian Lady.

The daffodil and the leek are Welsh symbols for the day, dating back centuries. I'm a multiBrit by birth, grandparents from all four nations. English Irish Scottish Welsh. In alphabetical order, in case you wondered. So I get to celebrate everything. Just sayin.

For a lovely cheering few minutes, join Ant White on YouTube as he builds a hedgehog house

Here's the concrete bunny for White Rabbits

 

And another old friend, both seen on today's walk

I'm trying, I'm trying.

Cheese is the answer to a lot of questions.

White Rabbits, Figgy demerara snacking cake, or something

Saturday was about enjoying slices of the chicken, really one of the best I've had, tender, and the flavor of the herbs just right, with shells tossed with my mayo, broccoli bits and capers.

Then I made a figgy demerara snacking cake, Melissa Clark, NYT. Except I used plums, natural cane sugar and extra vanilla because I didn't have brandy, or figs or demerera sugar. The sugar is sprinkled on top as well as mixed in the batter. 

I love this recipe, which makes quite a few pieces, the cake part rich with butter especially if you use lovely Irish butter which I did, then the plums just a bit tart and juicy. 

Here's the cast of characters, the plums prepped a couple of days ago, when I felt like it.  I used part white, part chickpea flour. 

Here it's going into a 400°f oven for about 40 minutes. 

It's a sort of sheet cake, which I slice with a pizza cutter, approx one plum quarter per piece.

I completely forgot to take pictures of the baked result, but a couple of pieces with a pot of tea went over so well. 

I've put a box of them in the freezer in case Handsome Son visits this week. He's working the holiday, as usual, but it's time and a half $$ Sunday and Monday, nice boost. His day off is midweek.

Then a neighbor came over to give me more dill, she's got a glut, and I gave her sage and thyme. We talked hearing aids and she's decided since I'm doing well, she'll go to my doctor and try to get my audiologist, nice Dr Han.

Her situation is different,  since cancer treatment caused her hearing loss, but the result is the same. She was impressed at the almost invisibility of the aids. I'm mainly happy they don't fight with my glasses!

Maybe Gary will also get around to it. He did get them made, but never went to pick them up! Men seem to be much more reluctant to use them than women, for some reason.

Anyway up to now they're going smoothly, and there's a significant drop in tinnnitus when I wear them. Right now I'm listening to crickets cricketing away. I thought we hadn't any this year. 

Turns out I wasn't hearing them, peaceful summer evening sound. At first I even thought it was tinnitus, until I realized how it varied. Oh, kerrrickets.

And now lookit, suddenly it's September. With Edith Holden showing it to us. That's a European goldfinch. 

And a favorite poem

Happy day everyone, I hope your crickets are the good kind, not the being ignored variety.

Lammas, white rabbits and Yorkshire Day

 White rabbits! It's Lammas, the quarter day halfway between some celestial thing and another, celebrating the wheat harvest, for making bread -- loafmas.  Full moon, too. It's also Yorkshire Day. Deliciously cool. So this long-transplanted Yorkshirewoman celebrated with a toasted walnut muffin and a pot of strong tea for breakfast.

This is the Yorkshire Tea Terrier from a hilarious ad showing him speeding around the Dales bringing tiny (he's little) drinks of tea to thirsty hikers, the Yorkshire answer to the St. Bernard with his cask of brandy in the Swiss Alps.

and here's  Italian basil rooting in water after only a couple of days, high hopes for this

Yesterday cooled off enough, down to the 80sf, so I used the last of the chicken which had sustained me through the heatwave, in a cream of chicken soup, Thai basil for extra flavoring. 

I had a bowl of this with pita bread toasted with cheddar cheese inserted, while I watched an evening of Suits, which was excellent, planning on evenings doing this. I have the first two seasons in hand. Also more c of c soup.

And I was thinking about the upcoming rug, measured what I need, wondered in passing if I could employ bamboo garden canes to construct a temporary loom, couldn't find them. Then I remembered Gary borrowed them to prop up his young corn being flattened by wind and rain, so they're somewhere in here

 So I'll probably use a large frame from one of my stitched wall hangings, about right for the small rug I have in mind.

Yesterday I had things go right, thought I'd mention that because it does happen. The two seasons of Suits both came into together the library for pick up, and the new ATM card actually worked first time, to my amazement. Not only that, but you can now choose the denomination of cash, not just the inevitable and often useless $20, nobody could make change!

Also the slow readers at the credit card company are veering into comic relief territory. Yesterday, after my bank cleared replacement payment, they responded to my days ago message about how they hadn't yet processed the replacement. 

Except they hadn't grasped anything, and explained that the payment had been refused, account closed. That was the initial one, dolts! I responded tersely pointing this out, refraining from name calling though,  and explaining they'd accepted and processed the replacement, so all was settled. I'm looking forward with some glee to their further take on this. I could go on, it's a bit like teasing telemarketers.

Happy day, everyone, celebrate everything! Why not. And the wheat fields symbolized in Ukraine's flag are timely.

Paris, life offering lemons, White rabbits

White rabbits, for July 1st, also Happy Canada Day

 Edith Holden's tribute to July

And a special day for Lucia and her fans

I may reread her in tribute. 

Then life, well Misfits,  literally gave me, well sold me,  lemons, so beautiful I had to take pictures. 

I zested two of them then pitted and sliced them for the freezer. The other two will keep on the counter where I can enjoy seeing them 

Speaking of famous people and streets, more or less, this suddenly showed up on my timeline

This is the street I lived on when I worked in a Paris family as an au pair. I was there in the late 50s.

See the very top floor, under the roof? My private room was a tiny place up there with a marvelous view, much better than my employers ' affluent apartment several floors lower.  The attic floor was the servants quarters when the boulevard was built, dating back to live-in help. Also suitable for starving artists.

Right across the street lived Francoise Sagan, of "Bonjour Tristesse" fame, very young, newly affluent,  and my employer used to grumble at how badly she treated her wildly expensive cars. I used to wonder if a little bit of envy got in there.

Fast forward to now, and this morning I started weaving skirt panel four, 

so happy to be making again. I tried a bit of knitting yesterday, 

and found my neck wasn't quite ready, but getting there.

 Happy day everyone, when life brings lemons, we can try looking for the workarounds. Sometimes there's a workaround.

June's over, Pride isn't.

 

Whitsunday, weaving, red lentils continued.

 Yesterday I featured may, aka hawthorn, in my post title, followed by a picture. But evidently the meaning didn't carry over since I've had a couple of questions about what the flower is! It's may, folks! Not the month, the shrub.

And here's Edith Holden and Chaucer's take

Yesterday's blogging was full of glitches, but here's the catch-up on what blogger didn't save for reasons involving probably ny phone dropping the signal and blogger not liking some of the pictures.

I made the red lentil croquettes from various recipes on YouTube. They call them patties which I think is like that cooking babytalk crispy, yummy, melty, and I'd rather not.

The YouTube cooks all have food processors which I don't, but done in batches in the ancient blender it works fine. Pictures of the ingredients in the previous post.

I fried a couple, to go with the soup. It's all very artistic, there being cannellini beans in both soup and croquettes, also lentils in the soup. Echoes, as in painting where you introduce the colors all over to create harmony.

Anyway I fried a couple, rolled in panko crumbs 

And whoa are they filling. One would have done it. 

A couple of notes if you try these: they can take any amount of seasonings, being bland despite the ingredients, onions, carrots, parsley.  So don't hold back.

And, as you finish with tools and bowls, rinse them instantly. Red lentils harden to immovable in no time, and you'll hate me if you leave the dishes till later and need a drill to get the debris off.

These are also great for dipping in plain yogurt, which is what I'll do today, along with soup.

I baked the rest of the batch, 25 minutes at 385°f. 

They didn't brown, but did cook without falling apart, and they're in the freezer for future soup accompaniments. Or friendies, as babytalk cooks might say.

About falling apart, this can happen with red lentils. They're all set up in nice little cakes then, once they hit hot oil they collapse. That's why I added in the mashed cannellini beans, as a binder, which worked fine, and a sprinkling of flour. I let the mixture sit in the fridge about half an hour. So try that.

About weaving, I've learned a whole lot with this project, thanks to Joanne, Caro and a lot of YouTube videos. 

Here's where we are, a few more inches to complete panel two.

You'll notice that it's falling into regular stripes. That's because I didn't do any fancy stuff with the weft as I did on the first one, which disturbed the stripe pattern. I liked it and with four more panels, I can do the fancy weft again.

I'm also getting better selvedges for two reasons, one the tip from J and C about threading through holes at both edges, not slots.

The other is that I realized that the advice to slant the weft threads at 45° before beating down applies to wider fabric than this. 

You do that angle so as to accommodate the under/over path of the thread across the warp. If you just traveled straight across, the warp threads would be drawn in and you'd get an ever narrowing fabric.

But here's what I've found works much better for this yarn and this width, a smaller angle

This way I get a firm straight selvedge with a lot less trouble and tugging about. Another one of the things you find out as you go, like learning your own rhythm and how it works.

Speaking of which, remember my discovery of whistling? I've been trying it now and then and find  I can definitely whistle, a lot of tunes. Not a big range, and not always dead in tune, but I can do it. Even chromatics!! 

So I'm adding it to my list of instruments! Piano, violin, flute, recorder, voice and WHISTLING! Taking bookings for June weddings. I can do you a tuneless Mendelssohn's Wedding March. No? Everyone's a critic. 

On to less consequential things, today is Whitsunday, the original reason Brits and other European folk have a Bank Holiday. 

Also known as pentecost, commemorating the descent of the Holy Spirit on the apostles sitting around glumly after the Ascension. 

They were wondering what now? He went off and now who'll give us the user manual? Which the Paraclete, another name, came down with tongues of fire, and did, and they went from there. Or so I'm told. 

Big feast in the English Catholic church, processions around the church, kids in white dresses or shirts and shorts.   Illegal for Catholics to process outside the building even on church grounds  without special hardwon permits. One of the laws passed during the reformation and still in force.

Moving right along, that doesn't apply to the municipal Whit Walks I learned about when I was at uni in Manchester. They're pretty secular, but still in white and with social backing as you see

All caught up now, unusual for Memorial Day  weekend to coincide with Whit. The second follows the Church calendar, seven Sundays after Easter, rather than the secular calendar of the first, which is the last Monday in May. 

Official summer opening of the Jersey shore, pools, park passes, summer concerts, all that. Bracketed in early September by Labor Day, where a lot of things close back down again.

So that's us all caught up, and I had other thoughts about Padraig O'Tuama and time, but I'll save that. Enough for one day.

Happy day everyone, weather permitting!

White rabbits! Yellow daffodils! Green leeks

First day of March, supposedly also of spring by some counts, St David's Day, patron saint of Wales, leeks worn for historical reasons.

Unless they're prepped and in the freezer, in which case we break out the  daffodils

Birds are starting to wake up around my house, but Edith Holden's illustrations do it better

Yesterday's winnowing was the cutlery drawer, now clean, free of crumbs, and of an array of stainless steel tableware I haven't used in eons.  Haven't fed more than two people at once for more than eleven years.

So this collection went on Freecycle

and was requested in minutes, gone this morning,  for someone's young relative moving into first apartment.

And here's the next stage of the figure. Diluted white glue sprayed on, first coat of torn coffee filters, which will take a while to dry, then I can do more shaping. 

I think other artworks might find a place on this figure, as jewelry. We'll see how that goes. I'm also wondering if this might be a good wearer of that robe covered in embroideries.  No rush. This is like a really big embodiment of those soft sculptures I made a while back.

About the rockscape piece, it needs edges fixed but the weather, snow and frost, has stopped outdoor painting for now. It's hanging upstairs in waiting.

In other news, Handsome Son visited yesterday, helped with eating chocolate walnut cake and I asked him if he had any strong longish cardboard tubes, thinking about the armature here. 

He, true son of Boud, said well yes, but I have plans for them! He did promise me any others he might get. He's building something.

Happy day everyone! Pretend it's spring even though some of us, well, me anyway,  scraped ice off our cars this morning.

 

Quilling and brownies

 I haven't talked about paper quilling for ages. I have done it, and taught, it, but long ago, so no samples to show you.

However, here are some masterworks instead

It's not a difficult basic skill -- strips of paper rolled into cylinders and scrolls and glued down. You could probably use a paper shredder to get uniform strips. 

Might be a fun thing for grandchildren to do. I've taught kids as young as six. They need to be able to handle small items, so that's different ages for different kids. But the art of it is endless.

And I did get the brownies made, using a different baking dish, worked better.

The blue and green potholder is one I made on that little loom I showed you recently. The red one is a corner to corner knitted one. The handy testing skewer is really a baked potato nail from the days when you baked them in the oven, long since dedicated to testing cakes.

A supply of brownies went next door, so I expect Gary's pleased. I left a box of them for him when he was out.

And before we leave January which seems to have galloped by, here's a look at a page of Edith Holden's January 1904 entries

I think I still have the very end of that virus, after all this time. I did a bit of free weight work and some stair exercises because I didn't feel like walking. Then just about collapsed into sleep. Woke up sneezing and congested, dangit. 

It seems to abate for a couple of days, normal activity, then bang it's back. Never gets very bad, just not very good either. Good thing I have brownies in the house. End of grousing.

And while I was fussing about sneezing, I discovered a free streaming service has appeared on my tablet. Movies, tv. So maybe that's a good winter matinee idea.

Happy evening everyone, knit on, or grumble on,  whatever you're up for.

I'm still deep in This Golden Fleece, and totally recommend it as a history and a travelogue and a knitting and wool fiber primer. It's huge, about 500 pages, plenty of good research, footnotes, really well done.

Just finished the umpteenth reading of Pym's Crampton Hodnet, one of her funniest books, with great set pieces.  One of my favorites is the scene at the professor's house where there are about five agendas bumping into one another, one per participant plus Miss Morrow's observation.

A lot of wonderful antiphonal dialogue, really a masterpiece of writing, so understated that a lot of early critics didn't even grasp what was going on. Which was funny in itself.

And I've started the Trollope-as-Harvey book. We'll see how it works out. Hard to follow Pym though.