Reading and other useful pursuits

This book is really worth taking a look. It's an examination of the lives and viewpoints of women as seen through the food they are interested in, or cook, or generally respect and pay attention to.  Very often their lives are bereft of this sort of important aspect, since male biographers tend to just tear out and throw away anything remotely interesting like this, but I digress.

The best three chapters are on Dorothy Wordsworth, about whom I learned a whole lot more than I knew before, Eleanor Roosevelt, whose relationship with food was a bit fraught and reflected the mismatch of her marriage, and best of all Barbara Pym, whose use of food as symbol and social denominator, as well as a source of humor and sly digs, is unmatched.  

Shapiro also gets Pym in a way that male reviewers consistently fail to, seeing all the joy and merriment under the quiet words, and the powerful swipes at male ego, always a good thing!

And, on other topics, as they say in the news, since my dear cherry tree is shortly to be no more, after friends with chainsaws visit soon, I will have no shade at all on the patio, and my little cherry sapling, planted as a successor, is about the diameter of a pencil, not much help yet.

So I thought, what can I build?  cheap, easy to construct, not involving heavy machinery, can be collapsed and put away out of season?  and particularly, do I already have the materials around?

And it came to pass that my thoughts settled as they often do, on pvc piping and canvas. 

I've built several frames and doodads from the piping, for weaving and spinning and knitting, and they can all be dismantled. As you see, they're all in this crate, along with the leftover piece of canvas.  I also have two ten foot lengths of pipe, which used to be curtain rods, until I replaced my windows and thought I should have something a bit more sophisticated in their honor, and got actual grownup curtain rods installed.  I knew I'd find a use for them sooner or later.

So I have the makings of a nice little shade thing I can build to shade me on the deck while I read, at least that's the plan.  You can attach the canvas easily with special pvc clips, which I have, and I probably have the corner joints and the t joints I need.  I know from two seasons of using the awning I made from this canvas that it is a good heatblock.

Plenty of time for this project, since a third nor'easter is expected to arrive this week. I looked at a number of youtube videos, mostly involving Big Saws, and Men with Tools, and women who talked so quietly you couldn't hear them and then forgot to actually show how to do the assembly.  And ones with background music that completely drowned out the speaker.  So I thought to myself, self, you are on your own here.  Just make a drawing or two on the back of an envelope, if you can find an envelope, and go from there.

So that's in the near future for Boud.  This shelter will match the awning I put up out front when the weather gets warmer.  So I'll have the set.  Watch this space.