Monday music, memory, and miscellany

in which our plucky heroine continues to pay attention to hope, beauty, and memory...

walking around outside at night, one glimpses fragments the beauty in other lives, through the lit windows of their homes... Someone on the next block lit an entire room with strands and strands of the tiniest fairy lights looped across the ceiling, like rows and rows of firefly bunting!

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~ rabbit rabbit rabbit ~

Heading towards autumn, and it is time to turn to a fresh calendar page...it is Labor Day here, not the shopping opportunity it has become, but a holiday off from everyday work, created by the labor movement, (and gradually officially adopted) towards the end of the nineteenth century, as a day to honor the contributions of the working folk, all who labor to get the work of the world accomplished, and to remember (now more than ever) that together we are strong.

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Though we have our own terrible difficulties to find a way to change, or to coexist with and to move forward from, hard times, disease and disaster are more the norm of human existence than many perhaps realise. Every tiny increment of help and hope have been hard won, whether by activism or by activity, and it doesn't do to forget that, lest those gains be lost...

I am grateful that I first encountered U Utah Phillips (decades ago when I was an impressionable 17 year old student) telling his stories in the back room at Smokey Joes Cafe, and had the great delight of hearing him perform several times over the years. Story and song are a place where history is kept alive, and education doesn't only happen in a classroom...

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Decided to cut apart the rayon batik dress just above where the waistline would be. Found out what the problem is, but not sure what to do about it, so further cogitation is needed. Apparently I somehow stretched or skewed the long side back seams when pressing the fabric before sewing it, and one side back seam is almost a cm longer than the other! My thought is that if I make a new bodice (that isn't skewed) I can sew the dress skirt on and the slightly uneven back skirt shouldn't be an issue, whereas it is obvious to me that being off by a cm was why the bodice shoulders and neckline felt so "odd"... I think I'll do some interesting piecing of various rayon scraps to create interest and avoid having to buy more fabric. Design challenges are more interesting than shopping, in my world anyway... 

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All the current windfall apples have been cut up, peeled and are simmering on the stovetop along with a freezer bag full of last years partially cooked quinces. Later tonight this sauce will be put up in halfpint jars with a bit of rosewater, and stored in the pantry. As I'd no other current handwork project, hanging out with pals for Crafternoon and then (after a bit of a dinner break) through some time with the Virtual Craft & Chat group. Now there will be more quince/apple/rosewater sauce for pantry storage. 

Yesterday Gersvinda came by in the evening to return my fruit picker, and with the back of her truck filled with buckets and bins of pears. She left me with over 30# of pears in a huge blue bin, and there will be hours and hours ahead cutting them up preparing them for the food dehydrator. Not to mention the tomatoes now patiently waiting in the freezer. Those will be portioned out into right sized amounts for batches of Awesome Sauce, which will at least keep them tidier than their current loose all over the place state...

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September SMART goals (x=extra)

#	THINGS MADE	THINGS FIXED	THINGS GONE
1	-	-	-
2	-	-	-
3	-	-	-
4	-	-	-
5	-	-	-
6	x	x	x
7	x	x	x
8	x	x	x
9	x	x	x

today's gratitudes -
- Yesterday was a bit cooler, enough so that I didn't think about the AC until evening and I was working on applesauce
- online company whilst I cut up and peeled all the current windfall apples made a very tedious task easier
- 30+ pounds of pears
- I may be old, but I got to hear and see some amazing perfomers in the Before Times...

Time of Isolation - Day 1898