screen capture

For those who asked, here is the picture that lives on my virtual desktop, (minus all the shortcuts and files)

I think it looks like one of the Pauline Baynes illustrations of Tolkien, but it is actually my friend Heidi, just before her wedding. She rode up to the ceremony on that very sweet Fjord mare.

said I going to a party party

Well, I'm back from my Saturday jaunt north, to deliver the balance of the sewing I've been doing for Jen, and the corner flashing, which was unavailable in Olympia, that I picked up for their current house maintenance project...intended only to daytrip up to visit the Menagery, though Bill's (low-key) birthday festivities were for the whole weekend.

Ended up deciding to stay ovenight and drive home in the AM, as there was promised art project time after dinner. Well all who know me know that I am rather hopelessly fond of just such things...

The delivered sewing fit well, and I came away with more sewing to do for Cathy. We took a trip to the Coop, which had young! organic ginger in the produce case. I've been looking unsuccessfully for such hearabouts in PDX. Now I can move forward on the canning japanese-style pickled sushi ginger project; I have purple shiso growing in one of the planter boxes, and that herb is what is "supposed to" give the sushi ginger that lovely pink color, so this week I'll be trying out a new recipie. If it works well, I'll post the results.

We then returned home to cook various dinner and dessertly things; BIll had asked that he not have to cook his birthday dinner... Jen made a delicious spicy potato and bacon soup, which we had with some of the heirloom tomatoes from the hoop house in the backyard. There were more different kinds and colors of salt on the table than i have ever seen anywhere. Cathy made an apple crisp, I tried applesauce pudding, and Jen made an apple cake with plum and ginger bits studded throughout. Add a bit of vanilla ice cream, and a tasty dinner was had by all.

The art project turned out to be oil painting. Bill is a quite accomplished painter, and has had paintings in various gallery shows.His website has images of some of his paintings I've somehow never in all my years even tried oil painting, and now have not only a much greater appreciation of what it takes to do well, but have discovered yet another way-too-much-fun medium. It is just as addictive as knitting, or beadmaking; we all ended up painting till after 1 in the morning! Here is the little picture that I came home with...

Unfortunately I could not justify spending all day Sunday up north also, though the plan there was to fire up the big brick outdoor oven over at Blue Heron Bakery and bake pizza in the evening; the plaintive call of Acorn Cottage and my two hens drew me back home.

And just for fun, here is a picture of the Japanese anemone blooming near my front door:

not gone, not forgotten, just gradually ramping back to what passes for normal for me...

Ten days on Prednisone is no picnic. Hopefully the dizzyness and falling down and disrupted sleep will continue to diminish, (the hens found my slow collapse into the last remaining twig fence very interesting: as in can we get past her to get to the place where the chicken food comes from...). My right hand is looking like itself again. I am cleared again to for tool useage, which will help with the current state of Acorn Cottage.

Yesterday I managed to attach one set of casters to the bottom of a (found the right size) wood pallet, which will hopefully hold the dryer. I need to construct a pallet for the washing machine in the next few days. Then they both can come back in the house from their vacation in the carport. As the weather has shifted back to dampness, I need the carport for Nimblefoot, the slightly-leaky station wagon.

I'm still thinking about hosting a social/crafty evening on Monday nights, and rather than waiting for the house to be re-constructed, I just say lets do it anyhow. So Monday from say 7 to around 10..

I'm off to Ikea this afternoon to look at possible shelving for the workroom...

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Having spent the last several hours wandering about Ikea, and thinking about what options will give me the most bang for my miniscule buck, I decided that constructing a temporary replacement for my beloved pantry cupboard would move the most stuff back into the (future) utility room area. (This is in addition to the already planned (and mostly funded) storage wall of crafty goodness. An assortment of GORM pieces were decided on and purchased, to tuck into the area of the former pantry, but still be easily moved once the possibility of actually removing the concrete to replace the screwey pipe damage is an option. Since said pipe isn't currently leaking, I have the time to figure out how best to deal with the wierdness. Now all I need is a 11mm socket and rachet, since I seem to have selected the only Ikea product that doesn't assemble with an allen wrench! The GORM shelving will be useful even after the pantry area is eventually actually reconstructed with real sheetrock, and real shelving, as it can be useful in the garden shed, or under the carport, but since my estimated timeline for reconstruction is in the area of several years at least, I decided that temporary pantry shelves would really make my life better, since that was one of my favorite little things about Acorn Cottage... so shelf assembly over the next few days....