in which our plucky heroine enjoys in-person time with friends...
While Friday was a bit scrambled, as my friend M had vehicular difficulty and didn't end up staying here overnight after all. On Saturday my dear pals B and K arrived for the long weekend. We ended up cooking lamb roast for dinner that evening, and then staying up late talking and doing handwork.
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~ day 16, 17, and 18~
These are the warmest mittens, as they are at least a quarter of an inch thick or more and completely block the wind. I wear these when I am riding my bike in the winter. My dear friend Ariadne made them for me, using the naalbinding technique. Naalbinding pre-dates knitting, and was commonly used in the Viking Age, for obvious reasons.
This small handmade pouch started with a sample block print of
a design I made for a friend, inspired by
Bujold's "World of the Five Gods" series. The design so charmed me that I wanted to make the sample into some object of everyday use, in a way that characters in the books sometimes have done.
The pouch has a square base with a full lining, and double drawstring closure, simpler to sew than to describe how to sew. The felt beads are both decorative and provide handles to open and close the bag. Lastly, I over-stitched the background of the block printed portion with small cross stitches, to add both texture and additional stability.
Much larger than it looks in this drawing, my
maslin pan is one of the best kitchen purchases I've ever made. It seemed like a huge indulgence to get a special pan designed to make cooking fruit preserves easier. It turns out that it is a great pan for all sorts of cooking: soups, stews, and suchlike, as well as preserve making. When putting up fruit in various ways, I sometimes start cooking it in the maslin pan, then when it is closer to the desired result, I transfer the almost-jam to a smaller pot, and use the maslin pan for water bath processing the jars for stable shelf storage.
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Yesterday spent time transferring page one of Kestrel's "resipei" artwork to linen for embroidery. Page two is already finished, and I am looking forward to the relaxing time stitching more of her words and pictures. I love kid art, (particularly from this kiddo) and the finished stitchery will have pride of place in my kitchen.
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A plan to convert my venerable Muji A7 binder into a hardcopy recipe book sadly has been delayed as my initial order of filler paper and dividers went astray. I ordered it from an eBay seller, and for some reason (that remains unclear to me despite hours on the phone to both eBay and UPS customer service) the package was not delivered to Acorn Cottage, but to some unknown Wells Fargo bank "front desk" and signed for by someone named "Dani"?!? If all goes well, I'll get a refund, and try and track down something similar. It will be very handy to have a small kitchen notebook with all my favorite most often used recipes in a legible and convenient form. "Soup, Savory, Sweet, and Shelf-stable"
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Today we had minor but very pleasant adventures in the form of shopping excursions, much facilitated by the automobile. Started out by heading over to Mr Plywood for a piece of 1 x 10 lumber to make shelves in the bedroom to hold my wool handknit cardigans and pullovers, an improvement long desired. From there, we decided to walk the few blocks to the international market for various grocery and confectionary items unavailable in my neighborhood or their town, like a new bottle of orangeflower water to replace the one that broke last week.
Since that shop did not have kasha (roasted buckwhat groats), which I'd been seeking for quite some time, I wanted to try one of the Russian grocery stores in outer SE. Now I've a 3 kilo bag of kasha in the pantry, and K found some interesting cheese, and zefir (a marshmallow made with apples). After heading back home, we ordered takeaway sushi, which made our dinner extra special (along with the cucumber salad and green salads that B made to go with). Our visits aren't just like the Before Times, but embraced a similar "flavor" both literally and figuratively...
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January SMART goals (x=extra)
| # | THINGS MADE | THINGS FIXED | THINGS GONE |
| 1 | final alphabeast drawing | painted mini tree | recycle bin |
| 2 | calendar master pages | new bin for
cedar shakes | orangeflower water |
| 3 | 5+ jars fig mostarda | drawstring cords | large broken bin |
| 4 | - | - | 2 bags paper |
| 5 | - | - | - |
| 6 | x | x
| x |
| 7 | x | x | x |
| 8 | x | x | x |
| 9 | x | x | x |
today's gratitudes -
- the braided nylon cord I ordered arrived safely, and worked perfectly to repair my rat and crow drawstring bag.
- sushi dinner takeout, such a special treat
- Karen makes homemade toffee, and the contrast between the very thin layer of unsweetened chocolate and the very sweet sugar and pecan topping is wonderful.
- with companionship, yesterday I was able to tidy about a 2.5cuft chunk of the living room, with much of it going directly to recycle, and today sorted through about two grocery sacks full of random papers, of which more than half also went to the recycling bin.
- Mr Plywood. I just love everything about that place, particularly how the men who work there are always courteous and helpful. And how they always have what I need for projects. Plus today when I was checking out after buying the lumber for my shelves, and I told them how I loved their store, they gave me a sticker that said "I love Mr Plywood", with an image of his very rectangular retro line drawing self
Time of Isolation - Day 2029
