Cutting out, frittering, Freecycle and flowers

 Yesterday was bean fritters, cannellini beans mashed with an egg, berbere, cilantro, apple cider vinegar, salt, a lot of black pepper, in avocado oil.

Here's the yellow potatoes, microwaved, buttered, waiting

Curry leaf fancy bit. Oh and I made yogurt, using the big jars of hot water, wrapped up in towel and emergency blanket method, and we'll see when the reveal happens today.

And among other business, including his friend's  visiting dog's anal gland issues, don't ask, Gary asked me to freecycle these, which I posted today 

Sunday's a good Freecycling day, people available to pick up, so we'll see.

And from a vague idea about leaf appliques yesterday morning, to a frenzy of picking between showers, tracing, adapting, cutting out and really having a good time, here's the path to my current collection of new stencils and silhouettes, with all kinds of ideas for use.

I also remembered the issues with my xacto knives, the #2 having a completely frozen in place blade, pliers, mansplainers, blogsplainers, kindness, brute force, boiling water, nothing will unlock it, and I have a box of blades to use. 

Then there are my three #1 xacto bladeless  knives , for which it seems nobody sells blades any more. You can buy a knife with a whole two spare blades, I ask you. Cutting paper, I go through at least a blade per session. 

So I cried Uncle and ordered a new #2 knife. I hope they haven't changed the specs and the blades fit, but I'm not holding my breath.

Meanwhile an old pair of embroidery scissors stepped in and work fine. I love xacto, including the history of how they went from surgeon's tools into everyday use, and I'm reluctant to ditch them for sassy upstart new knives. This ole blunderbuss was good enough fer my generation, dangit. And you kids get off my lawn, anyway!

Meanwhile, soothing flowers, mixtures in two color combos of gift and homegrown

Happy day everyone, don't run with tiny embroidery scissors

Sunday, miscellaneous thoughts

 I was thinking idly about cross stitch, as one does, yesterday, and wondering if that was another seeing ability restored to me by the cataract surgery. One of the curses of severe astigmatism is that it confuses the outlines and directions of what you're looking at.

Mostly I adapted , but anything built on diagonals such as cross stitch, is, except for big gauge work, close to impossible. Not that I felt it as a big loss, it not being a favorite stitch. But it was annoying in the same way as my bafflement with kumihimo, many part braiding, same diagonal and directional problem.

The recent studying of braiding brought this to mind, and I realized this isn't half the issue it was a few weeks ago.

And I also realized I can probably dust off my birding binoculars, same reason. 

I tested yesterday and they work a lot better. I don't see one and a half jumping birds now, yay. Just bird by bird. 

This serpentine train of thought came about after I'd been out walking and saw the fluttering of what looked like a couple of warblers. 

A bit early for fall migration, but nothing has been on schedule this year anyway. We have some year round warblers, yellowrumps, but these were much darker, flitting about like butterflies ss they do.

And of course, having given up my binoculars years ago because of the vision issues, I couldn't get a close view 

Home again to one of my favorite pages in Peterson's guide, Confusing Fall Warblers. If even Peterson got confused, fine for me to be, too.

I still don't know what I was seeing, except they were much darker than yellowrumps. Since we live bang in the middle of the Eastern Flyway, could be anyone. Particularly if storms have blown them off course. 

Anyway my binoculars can come to the Preserve with me again now, good. And I may or may not bother with cross stitch, jury's out.

In other unimportant news, I seem to have run out of the No 1 Ladies' Detective Agency books, but there's still the writer giving very funny interviews and well worth tracking down. 

He's all over YouTube at book events.

And, to show I can be as trivial as anyone, remember the titanic struggle I had with the mouthwash bottle cap a while back? Where I concluded that it was a bad batch since the interior prongs were too long ever to slip past the other bit? I opened a new bottle yesterday, just squeezed, turned, it opened. Because the prongs were about half the length of the faulty ones.

I rest my case. And my prongs.

Today's art is my contribution to a lovely project online about walking, collecting s few natural objects, arranging them and posting the photo online. It's part of a calming process, so people can enjoy just a few minutes' respite from stress, the person walking in nature and the people seeing the results.

The project is particularly being directed to people in the UK who are facing an ever worsening daily situation.  Many people I know simply don't know how they'll face this winter's fuel costs. I feel for them, having just seen the cost of my cooling for the heat wave months of July and August. But at this point I can manage my bills, more than they can. 

Meanwhile here's my woodland collection

Extra credit for identifying the leaves!

Happy day everyone, hope we can see things straight and true, not one and a half wobbly versions, in every sense.

Back online and the library takes a bow, snd fall colors

WiFi finally returned, no idea what that was about. Since I'm a guest on a friend's signal, I don't know. Could be anything  from an IP failure, truck hit a cable box, friend's dog bit the router, no knowing. I'm so grateful to have this huge favor, I'm not asking. But you do miss it when it's down.

I drove to the library to catch up on internet needs, and here it is. No indoor pictures these days. 

There's an open space with a fountain playing in nonpandemic times, they'll come again, paths in red pavers, very calm setting. 

This is where hundreds of us gathered to watch the total eclipse a couple of years ago, great to see it in company. I walked around the square today while I was there on a lovely day. Great skies, turkey vultures flying, too high for pictures.

The building is open with precautions. Easy to maintain distance. It was a good change of scene, which I probably need more of.

Then, at home, another walk later, just to look at leaves. Including poison ivy, of which we have almost enough.

I watched a Hajii Baba rug presentation this evening which will need a mass of editing, so many slides. After nearly two hours I left the meeting, starting to get blurry. Wonderful images, though and I'll work on that tomorrow. The presenter was so in love with the subject he couldn't bring it to a stop!