monday musings

June weather in September, a cool grey morning to offset the mid eighties this afternoon (and the mid nineties forecast for later this week) so going out for a bike ride before breakfast seemed a treat. It turns out that it only takes about fifteen minutes to ride over to the Columbia Pool, so my idle thought about trying water exercise might be possible... I shall have to go and try out a sample class sometime soon, and if it seems doable, apply for a scholarship and make it part of my ongoing health efforts. Truly, the way to change your life is to do things differently. So far, my bootstrapping has been focused on choosing something positive to do in the interval between my upon awakening medicine and my one hour later breakfast medicine. Instead of leaping online and getting distracted, my choices are to either go work on a project, or go do some physical activity. I need variety, so having one specific thing doesn't work for me, but if there is a menu of positive choices, girl is less likely to dig heels in and say no. (sometimes it seems like I spend an awful lot of time finding ways to work with my inner toddler)

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Am feeling the urge to try pickling all sorts of things, the limiting factor being the fact that my fridge is bitsy, and needs to hold other things in addition to jars of lacto-fermented goodness. But wouldn't pickled carrots be a treat, and what about the idea of cauliflower florets brining in a jar with a small red beet, to yield potentially magenta proto-pickles...

 
image from "No Place Like Kitchen"

Whilst out on my bikeride this morning, had a new idea about the future chicken options. Boy howdy do I miss having hens, not only the eggses, but the structure to my day, and the additional life in the homeplace... anyway, the idea was that rather than be all sadface about currently limited resources, I could create a portable modular chunnel, that it needn't actually surround the entire yard, but could be attached to the fencing and move around the edges in rotation. That would mean I could probably use what I have, instead of purchasing a lot of new (spendy) materials. Plus, it means a "design challenge", and is a new example of thinking outside my assumptions

mindshift or becoming cloudy with small bubbles...

in which our plucky heroine, hands firmly on bootstraps, attempts to lift feet... whoops, that isn't how that one works, usually... coming back to Portland after my tenday trip was more difficult than suspected; 'tis not that my own company is not pleasant, but rather that too much of the one thing leads to wishing for variety, in the same way that interesting condiments make bland food more pleasing. Still need to find a balance between alone time and with people time... When I don't write, for the desire not to share my struggles, then I also lose the good reminder of my everyday life in all its joys and curiousity. Must needs remember that, lest my journal fall prey to Hallmark Syndrome.

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Japanese anemone lives in a pot on my front porch across from the front door. I am not sure it is the best place for this plant to be happy, but this week it opened a gorgeous flower to greet me, and there are a few more buds yet to open. (last year there were no flowers at all) There was, rather astonishingly, a hummingbird in the back yard, hanging around the comfrey blossoms; had no idea that comfrey was something they found attractive.

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"The universe loves me and wants me to be happy..." such is a touchstone of dear M, who has taken this as a sort of chosen point of view, perhaps akin to the 23 Enigma. Though wishing for a chance to ask him how to get some of that to rub off on me, this week also brought a rather more than just serendipitous bits of good fortune, so girl is now wondering if part of the way to make it happen is to pay attention, to choose where to focus at any given time. Of course, that sounds a lot easier than it is to do, but girl has been practicing this for years, and fully expects to continue practicing it for as long as there is breath in my body...

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I won an online giveaway from Shams over at Communing with Fabric; my name came out first of the over a hundred folks who entered! I won a set of black and white stripey zippers! Not sure if I will make a moto jacket, or some sort of really radical pinafore... shall have to wait and see what the zippers are like in the non-virtual world. If the zippers are super sturdy then a jacket would be a good option, if they are somewhat softer/more flexible then a zip down the front pinafore might be fun. When they arrive, will have to see what if any of my current fabrics will be friends with these...

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Last week the Great Experiment in Fermentation began! Last month, after over a half-century of disliking pickles, my tastebuds somehow unaccountably changed. Possibly due to the ongoing acupuncture, and probably due to the amazing lacto-fermented goodness of my friends homemade pickles. Sooooo... when I found that New Seasons happened to have some organic pickling cucumbers in the produce aisle, it was an irresistible option. They came home with me, and after consulting with Cathy up in OlyWa for suitable instructions, some brine was made, garlics peeled, and along with some dill and peppercorns, a jar of protopickles took up residence atop the fridge (my fridge is wee, being only about countertop height) I was a bit concerned about how poorly the glass tumbler I stuffed in the jar was functioning as a weight, the cucumbers were managing to float to the surface, which is Not Advisable; they should be entirely submerged in the brine, to keep the good bacteria happy and prevent bad moldy bacteria.

The next day, after proud picklish pictures on FB, my friend Kada had a lot of useful comments, a link to her website, and also mailed me a present of two airlocks and corks, with a lid cut to hold one set. In addition, a trip to Goodwill yielded a lidded glass cookie jar, and a suitable pyrex plate to use as a weight, so another batch of pickles was started... This means yours truly is doing SCIENCE!! (actually the compare and contrast thing, doing one batch in the airlock halfgallon mason jar and one in the open top cookiejar.)

Sunday snippets

in which our plucky heroine shakes out her holiday haversack and between the work-at-home weekend manages to get a few additional bits and bobs dealt with and found again...

Have been able to deal with an assortment of small but necessary tasks that have been put off, like replacing the burnt out light bulbs in two of the overhead fixtures, and acquired a springfit curtain rod to hold the still necessary mylar bubblepak in the one east window. Once the weather cools, the mylar can be set aside for the winter and replaced with two layers of transparent bubblepak, which can have a rod pocket made from clear packing tape. The benefit of starting to move boxes and bags of STUFF around, and look through some of them is that there are many many good and useful things I've misplaced that may be found (hello there little data cards, howdy grey apron-smock, hi there sweet little cloak clasp...); the drawback is that the spiders that are endemic to living in the Pacific Northwest, that peacefully mind their own business out of sight, are not at all a treat for this somewhat arachnophobic gal when they suddenly scuttle about near my own loosely-clad-due-to-still-summertime-heat self, who just tore the walls off their house behind a box.

Due to actual work, there has not been as much sewing for me this week, but with luck the remaining gores on the EF top will be completed soon. Girl must say that interminable tiny handstitching in black on black is somewhat grueling, and will be glad when this particular project is done and wearable. Have been spending the stitchery time cogitating about the other needful wardrobe pieces. Either the grey popover dress or the grey corduroy pinafore might get a pomegranate reverse applique neckline. Other than that, I've been really thinking about an autumnal jacket, if there is enough of the brown twill for that and an overall pinafore (if there isn't I certainly have enough bits of melton cloth scraps that a jacket might be pieced from...) Considering a cross between a jean-jacket style and a moto-jacket style, since I have the former as a TNT pattern, and it would not be that difficult to draft an extension to the center front edges to give the angled zippered closure of a "moto". Of course, that would also require actually purchasing a set of zippers, whereas I already have the suitable tack buttons. No progress has been made on the bra-sewing front (ha ha!) other than the actually fitting one that I purchased from the Pencil Test before the wedding shindig. Generating my own pattern without having an actual garment that fit well was making me a bit crazy; I managed to get the volume more or less correct, but the contours were, to say the least, rather odd, and no gal wants oddly shaped tatas... So hopefully another session with the pins and the foamcore will yield a more useful pattern.

There is a sort of apple tree in my backyard, that is mostly watersprouts, with apparently one remaining branch from the grafts that were original to the tree. This year there were apples on that branch, and I dutifully removed most of the wee little things as I'd been told to do, to make room for the actual apples to grow... then I promptly forgot about it again. Went out in the yard today to hang up laundry and saw that there were real redstripey apples there. I shoved my way through the undergrowth to pick two. They smelled apple-y, and appeared to be ripe, as well as obviously been found by insects... I washed them and carefully cut away the good parts. They are tasty, for a tree I have done nothing at all to other than cut most of it down for being diseased. I suspect that if I had been clever enough to tie little mesh bags over the apples, that the bugs wouldn't have infested them. I also suspect that it might be possible to prune way back the unproductive growth and maybe graft in a few edible apple varieties at some point... (must remember to ask Mr Dawson about that sometime) So tonight my evening snack is courtesy of the backyard

Japanese indigo fragment that hangs on the outside of the little room of necessity here at Acorn Cottage