keeping busy

in which our plucky heroine spends most of the day either cooking or crafting, as I had planned to do ...

There is a full batch of gyoza in the freezer (some destined for tomorrow's dinner). There's an assortment of turkey bones and chicken leg bones currently simmering on the back burner, that will get strained and transfered to the crock pot with some additional veggies to cook overnight. (mmmm... soup for breakfast). I remembered to mix up some pineapple faux cheesecake (makes a good midday snack, gelatine and cottage cheese being rather proteinaceous). I measured out the dried persimmons pieces, and put them to soak overnight in some port, as I intend to bake a tiny fruitcake tomorrow (can't bake it any sooner, and it will smell wonderful while baking). There may be some lemon crinkle cookies made tomorrow, and I may even try my hand at smitten kitchen small batch eggnog...

I've laid out some sewing project pieces for tomorrow. I stitched up two of the remnants that Ursel gave me into the beginning of a patchwork and printed kitchen towel (no bit of barkcloth is too small) that will also get some block printed decoration eventually. I drew up and transfered a design for a "Merry Mathoms" stamp, that only needs carved and cut out to be useable. And I am spending a chunk of the evening finishing up the other regalia setting that will be sent off in the post on Tuesday...

Yep, it has been a busy day, as I planned it to be, so as to not sink into missing everyone, those far away, and those gone beyond my reach...

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~ Advent Swap day 24 ~

another box of delightful random treats... more googly eyes, assorted buttons, a bouncy sparkly crystal ball, parsley seeds and a sweet tiny original painting!

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This brought tears to my eyes, for eversomany reasons...
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TIL (as a result of my following the artist Jackie Morris on Instagram) that Megan Lindholm, the writer, is also Robin Hobb, the writer. I also learned that ML is the author of a novel I read years ago, "Cloven Hooves", which story has remained embedded in my memory ever since. (I do own a very old paperback copy of her novel "Wizard of the Pigeons" which is also vividly worth reading...)

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WTF... there I am taking a shower, nothing cooking on the stove, nothing cooking in the oven, and the smoke alarm goes off. Not the chirp that means "I need a new battery" but full on alarm. All the way at the other end of the house, and not the smoke alarm just outside the bathroom door, so it can't be from water vapor in the air.

After leaping out of the shower, grabbing my robe, I scamper to the laundry zone, open the door to the yard and start flapping fresh very cold air inside to try and shut the darn thing up (which it eventually does). I return to my abbreviated shower to warm up again, if nothing else, and in the meantime the peculiar thing has returned to radio silence... which I assume it would not be doing if there was, say, some kind of hidden combustion setting it off. I am nonplussed.

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December SMART goals (x=extra)

#	THINGS MADE	THINGS FIXED	THINGS GONE
1	7 jars quince	kitchen plumbing	old plumbing
2	dried pears	heat pump installed	old furnace
3	dried persimmons	return vent vanes	high pitched whine
4	linen gauze privacy curtains	bedroom register	yard waste bin
5	tiny peach charm	bike flat tire	recycle bin
6	1-wire Laurel setting	restring necklace	x
7	x	x	x
8	x	x	x
9	x	x	x

today's gratitudes -
1. food in the fridge, and the pantry and the freezer
2. flannel sheets in wintertime
3. along with the tiny trinkets in the advent swap, I sometimes get little fragments of stories to go along with them... like today, the Very Small painting is of a feral apple that grows at my friend Acantha's home. I asked her what the variety was (so I could add that info to the back of the artwork once I frame it), and it was described as a "spitter" apple, as in unamed, grew from an apple core variety. Yesterday, I found out that the rock was from Lake Michigan...

Time of Isolation - Day 1270