T is for Toroid

Just want to remind folks that Saturday will be a toroidal craft-tea-party here at Acorn Cottage. I'll have the 5 gallon bucket of beads and wire etc available for crafting possibilities. Other handicrafts are always welcome, as are potluck tea snacks; I'll be making a bundt-pound cake, in keeping with the toroidal theme. Oh, yeah, after lunch and before dinner...

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Last Friday, my young friend Heather drove down here from Olympia, with her 4 month old daughter, and her parents Sharon and Doug. It was great to see all of them, (last seen at Heather's wedding), and we had a nice long visit. Baby Elencia is a darling, alert and interested in her surroundings, and remarkably non-fussy. This was good, as we went to the Zoo for the afternoon. I'd not yet been to the Portland Zoo, despite living here for over two years. It was so uncrowded that we were able to go see the new baby elephant We didn't have enough time to see the whole Zoo, my favorite part was the visit to "Lorikeet Landing". Sharon bought cups of nectar for all of us, and the loud, but gorgeously colored, lorikeets inside the enclosure zoom down and land all over your arms and head, eager for the tasty treats. Odd, but fun.

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The weekend was relatively productive. Lots of bike riding for local errands on Saturday morning, then a bus trip to the Rebuilding Center for wood bits for a new project. Actually I rambled about most of Saturday collecting parts for projects. Sunday Mila came over and spent several hours helping me once again clear off the worktable. We did get many of the storage boxes labeled, and stuff sorted into said homes, and the worktable is now actually cleared again. Hooray! Then spent the rest of the evening visiting with Aelflaed, and friends. I am consumed with knit-envy...

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One project I was gathering components for is a new home for my pet worms. They have gone from living in a box under the sink, to outside the back door (where they all died in a heat wave the first year I lived here, necessitating worm-replacement), to living in a big rubbermaid tote atop my clothes-dryer (which is a bit awkward to access, specially with handfuls of funky produce). When I saw this worm home on the Instructables website, I knew this would be a better answer. I'll be assembling this in the next few days, pictures to share when completed, of course...

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The other project I've happily begun is the designs for my 2009 calendar. I'm changing the format to vertical, and will be doing alphabetical drawings for each month.