Wordy Wednesday

After Gary kindly helped me this morning dispose of the deceased microwave, and offered to pick up a new one wherever I ordered it from, I got off on my walk before it got too hot. 

The wild daylilies are out near the pond 

And it seems early for the fungi I'm seeing, probably the wet spring and recent days of rain. 

Home again and there's an apprentice mechanic next door, showing a keen interest in what's under the hood.

When they were leaving she ran to the driver's side and had to be redirected to the passenger seat. Quite ambitious.

I'm decluttering the kitchen of things that belong outside, such as clay pots and saucers, and in the recycle, such as old tin cans, unusable metal baking dishes, an oven thermometer which is impossible to read, terrible design, plastic algae ridden containers. To name a few. 

It's looking better, still a lot of stuff, but I use everything that's now on the shelves, the best criterion.

I recently noted a YouTuber I like very much,  a simple-living non dogmatic, good natured Dutch woman, pointing out that there can be an addictive element to winnowing. 

Now that's an interesting thought, and may well be true and worth a moment. When it gets to be an activity for its own sake, rather than a useful improvement, hm, that's a thought.

I like to do it with care, and I have little respect for attaching numerical goals, so many items per day, over so many days. That seems more of an invented fad than a useful way of working.   

It might also be useful for a person who agonizes and can't get organized. Not judging here, just thinking.

And while I'm thinking, here's another think*

bundled car and home policies for a better deal. 

* I lost wifi in the middle of a thought so I made a screenshot to avoid having to rewrite, hence the different appearance of part of this paragraph. Back to the narrative:

And after we finished talking I felt a whole lot better.  I think it wasn't loneliness after all, it was feeling untethered. Being asked for information drew me right back in as an active neighbor. Ah. Claro.

Happy day everyone, what's your take on any or all of these random bits of trivia?

Winnowing's progress and Together food

Yesterday I posted, still at the library,  before lunch, and got home to find the two bags of pillows had gone from the front step. 

A bit anxious in case the cleaners had mistaken them for garbage, though I left a note on the door, I checked my Freecycle account and there was a courteous note saying the Freecycler had picked up. 

Lunch was the rest of the pancake batter, two pancakes, and the rest of the shrimp, heavily seasoned. I really like the contrast between a bland food and a spicy one.

Then chop wood, carry water, prep greens, do laundry,  make a cup of tea, sit down for a moment and wake up two hours later. 

So it was evening before I got to the cookbook, and I really love it. Each recipe is introduced by the maker, with a little bio about her and her country of origin. There's a huge range, Somalia, Yemen, Russia, Morocco, India, and more.

I loved their use of spices -- baharat, which I learned to mix from Ottolenghi, berbere, learned from Marcus Samuelsson, the Ethiopian swedish chef -- and mixes they created themselves.  

And I will probably make practically everything in this book. I've got the spices all set already.

Here's a heavily winnowed down series, I could have copied the whole thing

Unboxing!

And speaking of winnowing, yesterday's is coming with me to the knitting group this afternoon, just in case there are any takers, before Freecycle and the thriftie. This is from one coffee table drawer, the one with handy bits of work 

Tiny purses, granny squares waiting to become purses or books, bookmarks, a jumble of things.

Today's winnowing, from the other coffee table drawer, the one I use for bill paying and letters, is destined for the paper recycle

And here's a salute to Ukraine, a year after Pxxxn invaded to take over in three days (!)

Happy day everyone, we got this. 

Treasure, edible variety

 Recently a sunken historic ship was explored further, years after the obvious valuables had been removed and catalogued. And they found even more valuable cargo. The back story 

From where I stand, keep the gold and jewels, just let me loose on those spices.

Speaking of valuable food-related information, this came today

It's Meghan's cookbook in support of the Grenfell project, after the disastrous Grenfell Tower fire. 

Families displaced by the fire, largely Muslim, led by Munira Mahmud, made homeless by the fire,  with nowhere to cook, arranged for space for a community kitchen  at a nearby Muslim center. 

 Meghan put her name and a lot of effort into working with the women leading the cooking, getting stuck in to cooking along with them, then helping get these recipes collated, published and distributed, proceeds to the Grenfell charity. 

The community kitchen, named the Hubb, Arabic word for love,  could only afford the space twice a week. With the proceeds from the cookbook sales, they could expand to seven days a week.

Here it is in action

This book has,   at last count, raised upwards of half a million pounds, enabling the project to keep its kitchens open seven days a week. 

So my buying the cookbook not only brings me new ideas to explore, but helps with their funding.  And connects me, however humbly, to these heroic women.

A cheering note on a gloomy, lonely, wet February day.

About cool food ideas, I saw this one on Spain on a Fork and forgot to mention it. He slices cheese with a vegetable parer. Easier than grating, less annoying than the cheese slicing side of the box grater. 

So I've started doing it, and wonder why I never thought of this before. I expect a lot of blogistas are thinking she didn't know that? Where's she been living? Well I didn't, but now I do, so I'm happy to have learned a little trick. 

About the Lenten activity around here I was thinking about. I'm not religious, just borrowing the idea of doing something consistently for forty days, with an end in view.

I decided that winnowing will start again. Every day I'll offer either via Freecycle or the thriftie, things I can live without, to try to get simpler. By Easter, I'll be further ahead. St least, that's the plan.

Here's the start

Bed pillows, throw pillows. The green one has a cover I designed and knitted, different design on the back.

We'll see if Freecycle does it, or if I'll have to put this batch in the car, ready for a thriftie trip when there's enough to warrant it.

Happy evening everyone, I'm going for a cup of tea now, the cup that cheers, but not inebriates. Good old Hazlitt, a saying for every eventuality.

Polar vortex, Eastern style, and response

 So here's today around here

Won't last long. Back up to the 30s tomorrow.

Meanwhile,  the chowder is s great response

Really good, if I say it myself. Cod, shrimp and clam. Mostly Misfits, except the small can of clams I picked up on the shopping trip.  Onions, garlic, yellow potato, celery, tomatoes, can of clams plus liquid, fish in for last few minutes. When the shrimp went pink, I declared it done.

This is a pretty easy recipe. When the fish is as good as this, you can't miss. Enough for seven meals for one. Or two for handsome Son!

And my town is opening up a free Covid testing site at a local church next week, run by the hospital down the street.  I think I'll go and get tested just in case.  

The police department sent out emails and tweeted the explanatory vdocument, complete with links which probably weren't ready, because either nothing happens or you get a page of raw code. They do say you can walk in, though, bringing the dox. The link to the patient portal seems to work though, for getting results.

So I'll give them a few days to get it together, then I'll go along. Only five minutes away. 

Meanwhile I canceled my very expensive online order for rapid at home tests. I don't need instant results, not planning parties nor travel, and I do like lab tested results.

I'm feeling fine, but I think it's a good thing to be sure in case quarantine is called for. You just don't know.

Meanwhile the downstairs fabric and stitching Winnowing is done, resulting in a little bag of truly useless tiny fabric scraps, 

quite a few items upstairs with their friends, 

and a drawer of silk and cotton paper pieced shapes. Nothing to donate yet, but I think that will happen upstairs.

Season's changing, Textiles and Tea, Laura Strand

This morning, just for a moment, I caught this. The kitchen is west facing, so the sun doesn't come in till afternoon. But it's the time of year when, just for a few days, the sun's angle catches the bedroom window across the street and bounces the light into my house 

Into the kitchen

And through to the stair hallway

Five minutes later, gone, and soon it was shining into the east facing  living room. 

Yesterday's Winnowing went on till my shoulder explained she'd done enough for now. I had managed to restore order to this drawer, which acts like a kind of runway to current work, temporary home for completed work and dumping ground for materials that need to go upstairs.

Now I can see what's what. You can detect at the top  the wired butterflies, and miniature woven books and stitched pockets. 

And the collection of sewing threads and cutting tools.and crowded needle homes. A lot of materials joined the upstairs drawers and the downstairs paper piecing department. Today I'll sort the paper piecing stuff.

Nothing for donating yet, but there will be soon, from upstairs, sewing notions, things like most of the SIX tape measures I found, or the many tiny scissors, or the snaps and bias tape and reels of thread, which can be shared. That might be a Freecycle deal.

And one of the pleasures of sorting is the reunion with past work. Like this pin, of which I made and sold many in the past. I pinned it onto my sweater and there it might stay. 

It's a wood base, painted in acrylics,with a pinback attached. I did a whole range of tiny art on these, painting, stamping, drilling designs, attaching brass chain hangers. They were quite popular, and I only have a couple left. Once in a while I make jewelry, woven glass beads, handmade paper and clay beads, and they do well. I've also incorporated them into my exhibited art.

The woven bead pieces tend to interest crafters who want to make their own, so that's good, too. I've been invited and paid, yay, to demo several of these skills to groups, great fun.

Anyway all this strolling about down memory lane tends to hold up progress with the Winnowing, but that's okay. Mainly because it also triggers new ideas and ways to combine materials and methods.

When eventually I exhibit again, which has to wait till the venue, the library, is open again, I will include in the setup which will be a kind of diorama, the miniature books I unearthed yesterday, for the figures to hold.

Longer readers will remember my learning to spin paper, which I then wove into book covers, the pages being my handmade paper.And the wired butterflies will fly again in the display. One of those stitched pockets might become an inside pocket on the new corduroy coat.

I also found a miniature heddle, weaving item, I made from a piece of plexiglass, which is a cool tool. It's now back among the weaving items. And several tiny crochet hooks I'd used as tools, when I made the figures which are going to be the main event in the diorama. They're now with their friends upstairs. And needles, needles everywhere, now corralled into needie books. 

So this works like a kind of art review and idea process as well as a clearing the decks operation.  And it's a surprisingly aerobic activity what with heaving drawers in and out and carrying stuff upstairs and down.

I got in a bit late yesterday to Textiles and Tea, and I'll fit that in to tomorrow's post, if'n the crick don't git up. 

I always seem to have plenty to say, not wishing to trigger the tl;dr* response.

*For the benefit of those lucky folk who haven't encountered this, it's "too long; didn't read". Bloggers hope it doesn't apply to them. So I'll stop now.

NJ rules, great package, winnowing start

So here's reason #2,376,824 why it's good to live where I do, with the Leg and Gov I helped elect:

Just yesterday, these things happened

This means that reproductive rights amd marriage equality  are both now safeguarded in State law. 

And that means that NJ residents are protected in the, sadly likely, event that our current misguided Supreme Court overturns Obergefell, on marriage equality,  and Roe, on reproductive rights.

We encourage other states to pass similar laws if they haven't already. 

Unlikely that our current Congress will pass new protective federal legislation, so it may fall to states, piecemeal, to tend to business.

There was also quite a bit of good state legislative news yesterday, on juvenile law. All in all, the NJ state legislature did its job yesterday.

Moving along to other good things. Here's what arrived in the mail yesterday, from a friend. 

My color, dark warm green, lovely cut, great condition, just tres nice. Thank you, J! I will love wearing this and channeling Columbo, I swiped your line!

Then there's  Winnowing Redux. Today's tasks

First I need to make a cup of tea to help me decide on categories. Because there's also upstairs. This is just the living room. 

The goal is to have friends together, and surplus out. Bags and baskets of raw materials. Yarn and roving mixed up. 

And there's convenience. Which can safely be upstairs, and which need to be at hand, saving trudging up and down to assemble them.

Well, first a cup of tea..