Monday miscellany

in which our plucky heroine is full of plans ...

One fun weekend activity was figuring out Perlenwunderwesen's small beaded dragon pattern... It isn't on their YouTube, or in their Etsy shop. I saw their quick video tutorial on the book of Face, and also found their diagram of the beading structure. It is a great deal more complicated than the tiny frogs, but makes a quite lovely little 3D creature. In 8/0 beads it makes a dragon about 1¼" tall and just over 2" long. As soon as the first one was done, the remainder of the frog beads were turned into a second dragon, friend to the first, and they are now both on the way north to live with Kestrel. I'm quite tempted to try making one from 11/0 beads (a more common, if smaller, size that I've in a plentiful assortment of colors...)

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Ordered a mailbox delivered from Home Despot, that looked quite nice in the online photos, and had overwhemlingly good reviews. It arrived on Sunday and with great hopes of easily replacing the old rusty crusty mailbox, I opened the box. Alas it was not to be. The new mailbox was suffering a fatal lack of Quality Control from the factory. The lids were barely attached at all, one hinge pin entirely missing, and the other partially detached, missing any kind of lock washer to hold it in place and the inner and outer lids were rattling long enough in transit to scratch up the edges of the mailbox.  They don't carry that one in any of the local stores, so no chance of exchanging it, or seeing if a different one is in better shape. Instead, there was a long bus trip to Jantzen Beach to return it directly. Sigh. Searching online for a mailbox built rather more structurally sound as well as aesthetically inoffensive is going about as well as my search for a new kitchen faucet. Picky plucky heroine is picky...

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~ a working sketch ~

Just a very rough sketch of my current thoughts for the black "twill corduroy" pinafore; wanted to catch the idea before it vanished. After washing and a trip to the launderette for their extra hot dryers the fabric washed up nicely with almost no shrinkage. Since this like all corduroy has a nap, it cannot be cut as usual... Information from a sewing book read as a girl still clear in my mind, a with-nap layout means all the pieces need to be laid out with their "heads" all in the same direction.  

So... cut strips from selvedge to selvedge that are the height of the skirt gores, then cut away between each one to create flare, which will look more graceful than a dirndl style gathered skirt. Since there is rather a lot of this fabric (our plucky heroine having placed the order forgetting it was 56" wide not 45"), it will be possible to cut all the bodice and pocket pieces from the remaining fabric and have enough plenty leftover to cut edge binding from. There may even be enough to put aside more bias strips for other future projects.

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A care package full of special kindness from my Mud Bay pals was on my porch today. There are 4 big skeins of taupe Fishermans Wool, so I can start on swatching fancy cables for a future Aran-style sweater. There is a small bag full of walking onion bulbs, so I can find a new spot or two to restart allium self-sufficiency. And there is a glorious miniature print of the tiniest watercolor artwork of a hawk perched on a sewing machine (intended as a gift for tinyfolk Kenya Ogidni) that will eventually grace the wall in a Tansu Terrace sewing and crafting space. The artist Jaimee Lee Gentile will be at Art In The Pearl in September, a chance to see her work in person...

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adapted from "Du Iz Tak"  by Carson Ellis

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this is silly, but it is also me: The Sugarcoated Sisters - Aphantasia

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One unexpected benefit to not being good about pulling out the weeds, is that when they go to seed, goldfinches are delighted with the buffet! There were many of them right outside the bedroom window this morning, more than I have seen so close before... 

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July SMART goals (x=extra)

#	THINGS MADE	THINGS FIXED	THINGS GONE
1	15 tiny masu boxes	earrings recombined	greenwaste bin
2	black scarf hem	replace C O alarm	recycle bin
3	Brambly Hedge slip	-	greenwaste bin
4	5 more bead frogs	-	overgrown lovage
5	"Cats Invade" books	-	greenwaste bin
6	all the bead frogs	x	recycle bin
7	two beaded dragons	x	x
8	x	x	x
9	x	x	x

today's gratitudes -
- goldfinches outside the bedroom window this morning
- tiny beaded dragons are delightful
- yarn, and walking onion starts, and a glorious miniature artwork gift were in my care package from Mud Bay

Time of Isolation - Day 2204

Thursday tidbits

in which our plucky heroine is baffled...

this morning I found a brand new and stillshrink wrappedreference book on my shelves, with no idea of how it arrived!?! "Codices Illustres", a Taschen art book about illuminated manuscripts. It wasn't with my other scribal reference books, and there have been no house guests that might have "planted" it as a surprise. Mysterious indeed!

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~ homegrown tree fruit mid-July ~

These are the fruits currently ripe here at Acorn Cottage... European black elder, and some variety of black fig (sold to me as Negronne) I picked a fair amount of the elderberries yesterday morning, before it got too hot, and spent time carefully plucking them from the stems. Ended up with 10 oz which are now in the freezer. Plan on picking as much as I can manage and then cooking them as immune support syrup. There are new safety guidelines for elderberry preserving, here from OSU, and from Penn State Because they can vary in acidity, it is necessary to use tested recipes, and because raw elderberries can contain cyanide compounds (that are deactivated by cooking) they must be cooked before consuming... 

The figs are easier. They can be eaten directly from the tree, or in combination with goat cheese or other savory things, or cooked into various treats. I plan on using some of my harvest to make a wee little fig and blueberry crisp, combining and smallifying some of these two recipes: Sticky Fig Blueberry Crisp and Fig Crisps with Buttery Nut Streusel. I like the idea of adding the small amount of remaining homegrown blueberries and some lemon from the former, and the latter idea of swapping out chopped nuts for the rolled oats in the topping. I suspect that the proportions of Apple Crisp for One will work well

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Last night's thunderstorm was very loud, full of thunder, some lightning, and almost no rain... I miss the damp thunder-n-lightning storms of my childhood on the other coast, when there was no fire season.

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good news on the garden front: the mock orange start, that seemed to have died, so was cut back but left (forgotten) in the pot seems to not be dead after all, as there is new small green growth showing. When it is no longer the heat of summer and the ground rock hard, I will find it a good spot to plant it in the ground... 

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July SMART goals (x=extra)

#	THINGS MADE	THINGS FIXED	THINGS GONE
1	15 tiny masu boxes	earrings recombined	greenwaste bin
2	black scarf hem	replace C O alarm	recycle bin
3	Brambly Hedge slip	-	greenwaste bin
4	5 more bead frogs	-	overgrown lovage
5	"Cats Invade" books	-	greenwaste bin
6	all the bead frogs	x	recycle bin
7	x	x	x
8	x	x	x
9	x	x	x

today's gratitudes-
- mysterious surprise reference art book
- mock orange is not dead
- somewhat cooler than yesterday

Time of Isolation - Day 2200

blast from the past

in which our plucky heroine answers Teresa's question...

Quite a few years ago, back in 2016, I made a creative interpretation of a cross-body bag, inspired by an archaeological find, some of the wooden handles found in Hedeby harbor. A number of artifacts have been found that are thought to be bag handles, and creating possible bags to use in that configuration became popular among parts of the reenactment community.

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this is the current iteration of my "Viking style" bag... It is made from handwoven striped wool, with a linen lining, and decorated with an embroidered wool patch and an interwoven brass wire "Birka-style" horse inset with mica. The bag handles are carved beechwood and the cross body shoulder strap is bark-tanned leather.

A top-down view looking into the bag when open... it shows how the wooden handles, which slide together along the braided leather portion of the shoulder strap when the bag is worn, can be separated to get access to the contents of the bag

Just a closer view of the metal and mica "Birka-style" horse. The archeological pieces are much smaller and made of gold wire; I used brass, for economy sake, and created a design similar to the Birka deer from grave 832. The pieces of mica set behind the openings in the design act like sequins, and sparkle in a delightful way when seen by firelight.

Ten years ago when I first made this cross-body bag, I miscalculated the strap length, and it was just a few inches too long for ideal use . The best length has the bottom of the bag at fingertip height. This year I decided to shorten the strap, which was a quite a challenge. Undoing the braiding, and/or the fancy stopper knots was not an option; and the flat portion of the strap had been securely glued, punched, and stitched like saddlery.

With great care, and mindful of "measure twice, cut once", the strap was cut in twain, the stitching undone, and the layers of leather carefully separated. The skills honed in my younger days when I swapped leather repair for riding lessons remain in my mind and my hands. The multiple strap ends had their stitching holes aligned with the outer layers overlapping, and the inner strap layers further cut down to reduce the strap thickness to three rather than four layers. It was tricksy to get right. I skived away some of the outer straps to further ease the transitions, then glued it back together and stitched it with waxed linen

The final strap repair, not invisible, but tidy and strong, and will last as long as it is needed, certainly will see me out...

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July SMART goals (x=extra)

#	THINGS MADE	THINGS FIXED	THINGS GONE
1	15 tiny masu boxes	earrings recombined	greenwaste bin
2	black scarf hem	replace C O alarm	recycle bin
3	Brambly Hedge slip	-	greenwaste bin
4	5 more bead frogs	-	overgrown lovage
5	"Cats Invade" books	-	-
6	all the bead frogs	x	x
7	x	x	x
8	x	x	x
9	x	x	x

today's gratitudes-
- a head full of knowledges and hands full of skills all gathered over many decades. 
- Past Me planted fruit trees
- all the frogs are done

Time of Isolation - Day 2199