Fall trees, ivy and Misfits

Windy chilly walk on Thursday morning, the kind you tell yourself you'll be glad you did, which I was. There was what my weather app calls a moderate wind and I call a howling gale because I'm out in it.

I often like to bring home a souvenir of a walk if I didn't feel like going out, and in the middle of my purloined ivy, now taking root, is a new, paler, bit from a different area, this morning's haul.

I might develop a collection of ivy for hanging all over the house this winter. There's plenty growing in the trees, English, not the poison kind.

Misfits was having website issues today, a lot of difficulty getting in to track my box, and I noticed Rameer working endlessly on his screen when he came to deliver. 

So here's this week's food. Extra cans for the food pantry, carrots for soup along with the pumpkin still out on the step, very small potatoes, fine for my purposes, though, for roasting to go with mushroom omelette, mushrooms sliced in freezer, eggs you see here.

Apples and blueberries, staple fruit, yogurt to go in desserts, on soup, and maybe in a vegetable curry. Fair trade sugar for desserts and Handsome Son's tea.

All good, prices still manageable, organic food. And Misfits is now handling bananas, big news. I ordered for next week. I haven't had bananas in years, because I shop at Misfits and they haven't had any before. I hope they become a staple.

And here's beautiful fruit, and vegetables cooking ahead.  

I find that's helpful for making other dishes, when the vegs are partly cooked. They taste good, because not overdone, but they're easier to use. 

Partly boiled potatoes make great roast potatoes, crisp outside, fluffy inside. And partly boiled carrots make a rapid soup or anything else -- maybe mashed for cake.

Happy day everyone!  I now have the Bananaz theme going on repeat. Until they release the Epstein files.

Has there ever been a modern tv viewing mother feeding her baby a spoonful of mashed banana who didn't sing along Bananazzzz Dumdiddledumdiddledumdiddledumpty...?

My flag doing better now, more hopeful 

 

Fall walk and handmade paper

Saturday was a wonderful day. I woke at 4am ready to go. Organized the kitchen while the kettle boiled to make coffee 

Then I went back to bed with a snarling strong coffee and a piece of sweet potato apple cake. Got set up with the heating pad warming the bed -- temp in the 50s indoors -- - and a Pargeter mystery.  Five star start to the day. Then I slept a bit before getting up to a second breakfast at about eight. Such luxury, the freedom to just please myself.

This morning was bright and cool, great walking weather, so here's a bit of what was out there 

I like those shadows 

Can anyone identify this little friend? Scuttling busily around the grass. Top end is the head. He didn't look hairy, more shiny.

I had planned today on covering a wonderful program on textile collections by the Textile Museum Associates, and asked them if screenshots and commentary would be okay on my blog with full credit.  I thought I'd better check, since some people aren't too keen, though I'm boosting their signal. 

They're getting back to me. Not yet heard, so if and when that happens, I'll do it because it was wonderful. A huge panorama of collections from all over by a collector who wants them to be seen, by everyone.  He's sensitive to the history of textiles as often an unrecognized women's domestic artform, and honors it.

Meanwhile there's plenty to talk about. First food. I converted a helping of the Ethiopian cabbage and potato stew into soup, added tomato paste, garam masala, and curly pasta and it was pretty good.

S asked about handmade paper, which I've made a lot of over the years, using tools I've put together, and all kinds of pulps including plant fibers from my front yard.

By the time I found I couldn't go ahead with the textile program,the light wasn't very good for wall art pictures, so I'll return to them at some point. 

Meanwhile here's some small stuff. But first, here's the tools I use to make it. Pretty glam.

The frames are molds and deckles I adapted from cheap picture frames. I built a mold and deckle back when I was learning but then I had access to a much bigger vat of pulp. With this dishpan vat I use smaller tools, often just a piece of screening. The bits of interlining are the felts I use to flop out the pulp pages on, before pressing out the water. 

I blogged ages ago about the process, and you might like to do a search on November 6 and 8, 2020, in my art blog. Art, the Beautiful Metaphor is the art blog,  still open to read, but please don't leave comments over there, it's inactive. 

https://beautifulmetaphor.blogspot.com

When I left a live link blogger insisted it was invalid. But you can access it by cut and paste, or a search engine.

These shapes and inserts are from a workshop I did with Sue Smith at Peters Valley years ago. She provided the long Western pine needles 

In this framed mixed media piece , the miniature books have pages made of iris paper. The covers are spun and woven paper. They're about one by one and a half inches. 

When you have lovely scraps left, you can make landscapes like this lampshade, never waste a bit 

This is an artist book made from daylily paper with daylily stems laminated into the cover.  A kind of visual title.

I've sold and given and exchanged and bartered many handmade artist books over the years.

So that's us for now. I'll take pictures in daylight of a few large wall pieces if you'd like to see them. Lemme know.

Happy day, everyone, do what you'd like today even for a while. Important to keep our spirits up. For me it's walking around trees and making stuff, different folks different things.

No Kings everywhere!

 I went online to my rally,  and, when they had to disable visuals because of trolling, I took a picture of me in yellow sweater with my hand made No Kings sign. 

This was seen briefly on my online rally but when they cut visuals, I posted it on Spoutible to boost the signal, and got quite a bit of response. In fact it went viral.

I did get the chance to speak, encouraged hope and resistance, and the organizer plans to follow us here, great addition if she does.

So here's me, wearing yellow, the requested color of the day, with sign.

The rally ran for two hours, guests including Colorado AG, and other political figures and speakers from the online group got their say, too. It was really satisfying to take part and speak up.

If you missed it or want to do it again, there's another online event scheduled. Check it out! I had to crop out my personal details, but you can search for it.

Or copy and use this link 

Earlier I'd been out for a walk in a different direction, lovely cool crisp weather 

A late bee catching a flower before it fades.

And here's the flower container, better view

Happy day everyone, I hope you got to take part with the millions of us who made our feelings known. 

Walking and Misfits

Early morning walk, temperature 47°f so the cashmere beret and wrist warmers came into play.

No frogs now, maybe burrowed under mud, but a couple of ducks at the pond keeping an eye on me and making u-turns to get out of range.

Misfits scheduled for early today, so I got the returns out promptly 

Blueberries are in their boxes underwater 

For once showing you the rest of the story -- produce soaking and box broken down ready to recycle.

Usual yogurt and blueberries, yogurt for upcoming pastry and sauces as well as desserts with the berries.

Cornish game hen for future holiday needs, each the right size for a meal for two, and practically unobtainable locally.  Hake for breading after I've used the tofu from last week. Apples for daily snack but I notice they're not keeping the doctor appointments away. Cans for the food pantry.   Cheddar because I'm completely out of it. 

I expect I had some plan for the cabbage which will come back to mind at some point, but I'm open to ideas other than pickling and coleslaw. I'm thinking steaming with caraway seeds. 

Speaking of food, today's lunch was the last of the chicken dice, roasted and added to Spanish stew with some cabbage. I let the liquid evaporate, and ended with a kind of hotpot rather than stew, and the flavor was great, maybe concentrated by cooking down the liquid. Spanish Chicken Hotpot. Maybe a Spanish speaker can translate.

Happy day everyone, hoping you know your onions, if not your cabbage. 

Jane did

Feather in my hat

Monday's fitness was about doing 20 sit to stands, not difficult at all now, ten minutes visualizing, and a walk to the pond, that's about half an hour round trip not counting stopping to visit with ducks. Later a five minute HIIT.

There were half a dozen ducks, turtles lying about and frogs jumping. It's a whole small world there.

Coming home there were clumps of fleabane.  

I wonder if botanists don't like their work. The miserable names they give beautiful plants, I ask you. Fleabane, hogweed, lungwort, henbit! 

Notice the hobnail boot rhythm - - BANG pop, BANG pop, TIN ear,  need I go on. No wonder people learn the Latin, at least it's presentable.

And I found what I think is a redtail hawk feather, now home with its friends in a Shelley cream pitcher, Stocks pattern. 

The downy part is so soft you can't feel it. It may end in my hatband.

Speaking of which, I cut out the two layers of the crown and found silk thread and a fine needle to stitch them together. That's the next stage. 

Brown inside, yellow outside. Or possibly a reversible hat, then it could be brown outside. We'll see.

And I read this brief book 

more of a long essay, about allowing yourself grace as you handle life and illness, balancing rest and activity, indoors and out. 

I'm still recovering from the accident, very nervous about driving, forcing myself to do it so as to keep my nerve. Monday I went to the food pantry with a donation and to the library to return and pick up. I find if I add in something like the food pantry, thinking about other people, I can get to the other errands. It seems to work. That and it was the last day I could pick up the Recovery book.

It occurred to me that I'm really convalescing emotionally and physically from all the events of the year, major events to my body, house, car, savings, so I thought I could get some advice here.

He's the same doctor who wrote the book I loved about being human, a compassionate man.   I think what I'm doing is pretty balanced, so I'll keep doing it.  I don't want to medicate if I can manage not to. We'll see.

 Francis likes people to let themselves recover as they need to, without feeling they have to meet a deadline. And he makes the point that the doctor's work is done long before healing has got underway. 

In other news, Amazon has made a huge settlement because of deceptive enrolling practices in Prime.  Like the way they caught me. Maybe they'll  owe me??

Happy day everyone, chances are you're doing the right thing already so we can stop trying to improve! Me, I can't take much more character building. 

You got that right, sez Mme. Fluffinaire