problems vs predicaments

in which our plucky heroine found food for thought...

This essay is worth the time to read it.

'''...problems have SOLUTIONS and predicaments have outcomes - they are insoluble. So a situation that you can't get out of without miraculous levels of investment is a predicament. (...)That doesn't mean you can't do anything to help - the message of the problem vs. predicament narrative is that you need to understand what you are facing, so you can understand what you are trying to do."

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an installation - sparkling light art in the treetops... hard to see in the daylight, but surely even lovelier at night.

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Cricket stopped by this morning for a short porch visit. I'd not seen her in probably three years; I miss the days in the Before Times when we had adventures and crafting times together, but it was really good to actually see her. Then later this afternoon, Ursel came by. It was sunny enough by then that I had to dig out the porch curtains! And Gersvinda stopped in to pick up Ursel, and we got to see the new weaving/carving project she had just finished. Her brocaded tablet weaving is just exquisite

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~ very small ~

The heraldic lozenge enamel is complete, and ready for me to start the complicated work of building the setting. The entire enamel is about 1" in length, and the tiny cloisonne wire "eye glasses" motif is less than ¼"... Hopefully will be picked up Sunday after 12th Night.

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Finally had an idea for a DIY pot lid storage solution, which has been something much desired for years now. While some of the pot lids, the ones with looped handles, can simply be stored together with their pots or pans that hang on the forged iron pot rack, some of my gear has knobs instead of loops. The big storage challenge is that the kitchen here at Acorn Cottage is small, has little available wall space, and steel cabinets.  I've been haunting the internet looking for solutions on and off also for years, but the commercially available "products" are ugly, and the ones I've tried have significant drawbacks.

So... I saw a website where someone had made a shoe rack by offsetting a sturdy dowel just far enough from the wall to hold the toe end of shoes, and in a eureka moment, it occurred to me that would also work for pot lids. The solution for "no wall space" would be to attach the contraption to the door between the kitchen and the workroom. Now all I need to do is locate whatever framing is inside the edges of the hollow core door, do some cardboard mock-ups to get the measurements right, and decide how best to mount a dowel or dowels in place.

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January SMART goals (x=extra)

#	THINGS MADE	THINGS FIXED	THINGS GONE
1	blood orange marmalade	bike headlamp	yard waste bin
2	heraldic lozenge enamel	passport photo	recycle bin
3	-	-	-
4	-	-	-
5	-	-	-
6	x	x	x
7	x	x	x
8	x	x	x
9	x	x	x

today's gratitudes -
1. three separate friends came for porch visits today!!
2. My designerly brain came up with an idea for how to DIY a better system for pot lid storage, a conundrum that has been irking me for years now
3. there were enough Kaffe Fassett scraps that I could cut out many brightly colored 1" squares, to piece a tiny rainbow to decorate a bag to hold the crayons I got for little Liam...

Time of Isolation - Day 1637