Saturday, Tunisian bag, deck done

Greeting Saturday with the painting of that name by Brynhild Parker

Yesterday's Misfits arrived, modest box, trying to economize

But still eating well.  That odds and ends bag is raw almonds, a staple around here.

And yesterday, Mike the contractor came to finish replacing the walkway so I have an operative deck again, in case the weather ever gets warm enough to go out.

To the right of the gate is a new open place where the walkway used to be, fine for a couple of containers, probably herbs, next to the sage you see there. Mike left with a branch of curry leaves and a section of sage. He's a great cook, so he's got plans for both.

When he does a job involving large screws and nails, he makes a box to hold them as he works, and leaves it for the customer. Here's mine

Today is about making butternut and carrot soup, the weather still being soup friendly.

And, before we move on from Tunisian crochet, here's a Tunisian crochet bag I made ages ago, lined with a scrap of black silk, closed with Dorset buttons. 

The strap is regular double crochet. The yarn was the rest of the multiple short lengths you saw before in the gloves.  Time to get it out again, for Spring.

Hoping Spring will return to Ukraine, too.

Happy day everyone!

More Tunisian, art theory, and notes from an immigrant

I'm glad the Tunisian crochet was interesting, and I thought you'd like to see a few samples I made when I was learning. The simple stitch you saw yesterday makes a warm sturdy fabric, great for winter gloves, but there are other fancier ones, too.

There's knit and purl, and things like

Top, smock stitch, next honeycomb, next simple, and, at the bottom, feather and fan regular crochet. Feather and fan is really better knitted, I decided.

Anyway if you already knit or crochet, you might want to try it. Very small items can be worked on a regular crochet hook, so you don't need to buy a Tunisian hook, which is much bigger to allow for the buildup of stitches on the hook.

There was talk about immigrants on Mary's blog and I remembered I was one. When Handsome Partner was 29 and I was 24, we sailed out of Liverpool in late December 1963, with one trunk of books and two suitcases, bound for New York, having sold everything we could,  to put together the cost of the one way sailing tickets. We knew nobody and had no family at our destination.

From there we made our way to Wisconsin where HP was to do postdoctoral work, by invitation. One of my NJ Indian friends used to say we were the only people she knew who'd been invited!

That was post Sputnik and the US was in search of people like him, atom scientists, and people like me, modern language people, to add to the numbers.

When people point out that "but you spoke the language", well, yes, I thought that at first. But after the hundredth shout of "I can't understand a word you say, talk English!" Wisconsin folk being loud and blunt to our Brit ears, we realized that mime was going to be useful. 

And the daily struggle to learn new cultural unwritten expectations, everything different, was really tiring, despite all our energy and goodwill. 

One day, after a difficult time all day at my temp job, I was working from day two of arriving, I got home, went to switch on the light, and it wouldn't. I'd forgotten the US switch was opposite to the Brit one. I burst into tears, probably the only time it was just one thing too many, couldn't even switch the light on right!

It did get better. We made friends, enjoyed a lot of our discoveries, and never regretted the move.

I've been able to do work I'd never have had the chance of in the UK, we left for good reasons. Although we had not counted on pushback from the community who were very much against immigrants, even when we were bringing value, we learned to navigate it and seize the day.  

And I continue to navigate the othering which still persists. Just a couple of weeks ago a new member of the knitting group asked me "Where are you from, you talk with an accent! I mean where are you from really?"  Blessedly she didn't imitate me or ask questions about the UK as if I had arrived last week.  That still happens too, a regular reminder that to some people I really don't belong. But to me, I do. It's fine. And we all talk with an accent.

Menbers of both sides of my family have been living in the US since the 1850s, and that confuses the heck out of the otherers. 

I never thought anything of the emigration from the UK where we had few opportunities, because it was common among people who got good degrees and couldn't get jobs. 

Then I was asked about it by American friends who couldn't imagine doing it, alone, so young. We thought we were pretty grown up, though looking back I guess we were too young to be scared!

And your art notes for the day, if you wondered about portrait, vertical presentation and landscape, horizontal presentation, Moose Allain explains it all

Why I'm not planning on sitting on the patio just yet

And a lovely encouragement about the example set by Ukraine

Later today knitting group and Misfits. That's all, folks!

Happy day, everyone!

Spring Handwear for the Mature Fashionista

The weather looks bright and sunny and the wind is sweeping down from the Arctic.

So here's the handwarmer gear I had to use to get the mail, do the recycle, all that, needing free fingers.

 it's Tunisian crochet I was doing a while ago. These are simply designed, work fine. It's Tunisian Simple Stitch. I mean, that's the name of it. I realized I should explain that when a knitter I showed them to, when I said it was simple stitch, retorted that's easy for you to say!

It's a cross between knitting and crochet, invented sometime in the nineteenth century and given an exotic name. As far as I know, Tunisia doesn't enter into it, but I'm open to correction if anyone knows better.

Meanwhile back on the deck, Mike the contractor/artist friend came and assessed what's needed. For him, pretty simple. He'll do it in the next few days.

He lives across the street and has been occupied keeping his two little dogs safe while his fence was gone, they being used to play freely on the patio, and now not at all happy about collars and leashes. 

His new gate is now in place, high enough that the dogs can easily figure out how to get under it. So he's designing something to avoid that. He's about as happy as I am about the tackiness and clumsy design of the new fences. He's a craftsman and he's in pain over it. They're flimsy, ss he showed me, easily bowing the side wall by rocking it.  He said it would not tolerate the weight of planters hung from it, don't try it.

However we might get together later to design some freestanding wood supports to grow plants on.  We'll see.

And here's the Pair in Progress aka PIP

Looks as if Biden wants to apply the seized oligarch assets to help finance the war in Ukraine. That would be very satisfying. I hope Congress agrees. Except for the inevitable ones who won't, that is.

Fenced in, fish, powerhouse soup and mystery wildflowers

Today contractor friend Mike comes to see what's what with the fence. The uprights were put in exactly where the old posts had been, but they're bigger and take up more surface. He'll have to cut the walkway a bit to fit it in again. And cut and move the supports under the deck to secure the walkway, because the gate's a good 18" over from the old gate.  He designed the deck so I expect he'll know how to proceed.

Not that I'm anxious to sit out yet, temps in the fifties and a brisk wind. 

Yesterday I made stock and a powerhouse green soup with macaroni. Broccoli, spinach and scallions. You've seen this before, so no pix. Very welcome on cold spring days.  

And I broke out the salmon, and proved again that good ingredients need very little help from the cook. 

Just salt, pepper, fresh thyme, baked, that's it. With a green salad, very cheering spring lunch. With enough left for today, too.

The jaw pain is easing up a bit, after I've been trying not to clench. Bet dollars to donuts it will be resolved before I see the doctor.  

She gets this patient, unintended pun,  look when I tell her about awful symptoms that have all gone away now! I'm betting she's seeing a lot of anxiety symptoms of all kinds these days. 

Before I leave Twitter to sort itself out, after my morning rounds of storytellers, historians, artists and other cheering people, let me tell you a recent dialogue with an older lady on another website.

She brags about having no smartphone, though she's on the computer daily checking in to interactive websites. On  the subject of Twitter she claimed "I can't tweet, I don't have a smartphone".  

Someone else tried to explain tweeting was exactly like what she was currently doing, only with fewer characters. But she insisted. 

We finally realized she had it confused with texting. Evidently thought the whole site was about texting. Oh. Can't imagine how that could work.  But I wonder how often people form positions based on a faulty grasp of the facts. I expect I do too.

Speaking of which, is this a bed of henbit?

It has different colored leaves from the henbit growing at my door.  But I'm open to suggestions.

Putin has now cut off Russian natural gas supplies to a couple of neighboring countries, further uniting Europe and strengthening support for Ukraine.  I wouldn't say he's much of a tactician. More like a human blunt instrument.

Happy day everyone, at least as happy as you can manage. Some of us are struggling, I know.

Of Twitter and tension and textiles

So the proposed buy-out of Twitter by Musk has caused a flutter in the Twittercote. It's not all done, far from it. 

There's a shareholder vote to come, then due diligence must be followed and the legal entities satisfied before any change of ownership can happen. 

It won't happen yesterday, despite the panic in the Twitter sphere. He already balked at the due diligence required to be on the board, and this will be much more thorough, given that he has to satisfy them of his sources for payment. 

My own account is tiny, but I've developed a nice timeline with people in fields such as botany, medieval history, textiles, writing, art, miniatures, farming, politics and pets. It's an excellent news source from journos before their work gets onto their official outlets.

My avatar is a piece of my gold work, as good as a portrait, really.  I'm hoping that if it changes dramatically, goes feebased, I don't get shut out. It's a good place for me, and mitigates the loneliness of being old and alone. I can sign up for newsletters, but they don't have the back and forth that makes the site friendly.

So there we are. We'll see. 

The tension in the title is in my jaw, pain for a few days, I'm guessing from anxious clenching. I've tried various remedies from cursing to massage to pain pills, nothing works for long. I see my doctor next week anyway so we'll see what she suggests. It's not good for happy moods, definitely.

Meanwhile socks continue

I'm getting down in the yarn supply, so narrow stripes may happen,  to use it up with some design still going. 

And the fence saga is not quite done. The section of deck I had to remove will not fit back into the new space. Also the deck now has to allow for a whole different gate placement. 

This will involve getting Contractor  Mike to recut and redesign the edge of the deck, to put back the vital walkway. 

I already moved some planting that was now right across the gate. The good news is that the gate opens outward, so there's no concern about clearing the deck, which it wouldn't, being set lower than the old gate.

Never a dull moment. Again. 

Happy day everyone!  Later today Textiles and Tea, with a weaver of yardage, I'll see how that grips me and, if it does, let you know tomorrow.

ANZAC Day

For blogistas in NZ and Oz, here's the annual tribute to the brave young men, teenagers really, who crossed the planet to fight in the Dardanelles, a disastrous WW1 campaign, costing many precious lives. Where you are, it's already Tuesday, but here it's still ANZAC Day.

And here's the info for people not familiar with the Dardanelles  World War 1 military engagement. Devised and ordered by the First Lord of the Admiralty, a well connected and incompetent person who insisted that the Turks could be defeated by this move, and WW1 thereby won. 

He  was removed and demoted after the total failure, the Ottoman empire emerging victorious, after inflicting terrible losses on the allies.  Winston Churchill.

Meanwhile, prayers for Ukraine

Gratitude for a competent US President.

And the Sock Ministry continues, praying by doing.

Happy Monday, everyone.

Indonesian textiles Thomas Murray collection

Yesterday was a presentation, made world-wide, by collector Thomas Murray, two separate zoom casts, one for each half of the planet, more or less, on Indonesian textiles. 

These far predate the batiks we usually think of from that part of the world, many from the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries.

The designs feature boats a lot, given their island culture, and their looms are largely back strap, very portable. In one picture you also see a researcher demonstrating the supported spindle, which I liked a lot. 

Some of the fibers predate the availability of cotton, using bast and bark and silk. Mostly these are ceremonial items, hence the preservation. And there's beadwork for bead fans.  He paid tribute to the women artists, since this is largely the work of women.

He spent a lot of time on carbon dating, which I sort of skipped by, being more interested in the art and culture than scientific proofs of age.

Anyway, just browse, enjoy. The word adat in the title refers to the rules of life as reflected in textiles and other artworks.

I selected only a few of the hundreds of images flying by and tried to crop out the captioning where I could.  But you get the gist. 

A lot of the researchers are from the Netherlands, since they were the colonial invaders of Indonesia,  largely in search of spices, valuable commodities. 

I live in hopes that a lot of these wealthy white men's collections will be restored to the culture they were plundered from. 

It's fine to honor the history by this kind of presentation, and better still to give the textiles and bead artworks back.

Meanwhile, I'm tending to my little corner, stitching, knitting, trying to organize the patio a bit, but most of the outdoor work takes more strength than I have available.

Never forget Ukraine

Photo by AC