Saturday, April 1, 2023

White rabbits and swifts

 Happy April

As Chaucer more or less put it;

When that Aprille with his shoures sweet

The droghte of March hath perc'd to the root

As seen here today


Too warm to sleep, so up early, and embarking on breakfast of pita bread filled with havarti cheese and spinach.

I'm rereading Laurie Colwin



And since she's a bit more meat-heavy than I, scrolling by,  but she reminded me about making yogurt, which I used to do all the time. 

Nowadays when I think about it I usually don't have a starter in the house. But right now I have some great Misfits yogurt for starter, and she reminded me of the proportions of starter to milk. 

I also found a mason jar to use, so today I'm all set to make a batch and see how it goes. It will be a bit cheaper than buying but will, even better, save bringing in yet  another plastic container each week.

Yesterday's knitting group was a small one, and our leader brought this in for me to use


 It's a swift, a piece of knitting equipment which helps you turn skeins of yarn into balls of yarn, like this


It beats using a chair back, if you don't have a handy relative to hold the yarn while you wind it. And, as you see, I was down near the end of the current ball.

We were discussing brain fog, mine, and how viruses can cause it, also Lyme disease and other infections. 

Ed note: I edited here to make it clear that Lyme is not a virus. Living almost at ground zero for it, I could hardly fail to know that, but blogista Cathy pointed out my wording wasn't clear. I was just generalizing about ailments that can cause brain fog. Thank you Cathy, and back to the narrative..

 One of the group said well, it took me a year to really recover from the aftereffects of Lyme disease.  And some people, she added darkly, never recover from brain fog. A bit discouraging! She's not known for her tact..

Last evening I made vegetable stock


Which included the peel from a recent batch of ginger, very interesting smells in the house. Later today I'll use it for barley and sausage soup. Stormy weather forecast, so a big pot of soup will be handy.

Happy day everyone, I expect you all played nicely together to solve the word puzzle: 

ORCHESTRA!

Enjoy your day, my usual daily text to Handsome Son.




32 comments:

  1. I know the next two lines of the Tales — to say but probably not to write. I can probably even say them in a semblance of Olde English — at least the way that my prof said them.

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    1. I love the opening to the Canterbury Tales. And a lot of them are funny. Sly guy.

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  2. The worst brain fog I had was during menopause. The situation did improve eventually but not 100%. Now I just think of it as aging.

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    1. Perhaps I'm lucky this hasn't started till a pretty advanced age.

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  3. I JUST recently discovered the chair back method of turning a skein into a ball. I thought it was terrific!
    Happy April 1!

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  4. I'm sure you will recover. after all you are constantly stimulating your mind through creativity.

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    1. Thank you, I really appreciate that encouragement. I'm hoping so.

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  5. I agree. You keep your mind and body active. You will recover. The soup sounds really good.

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    1. Thank you. That comment yesterday by a fellow knitter upset me quite a bit. Wrong timing, mainly.

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    2. She wasn't thinking before she was speaking.

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  6. F agrees with Debra - menopausal brain fog was the absolute pits. Almost impossible to continue doing a professional job and had to resort to HRT to survive at work. It does seem to have cleared more or less over about 10 years, but it is hard to say how much acuity went with it and never came back.

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    1. It seems, from my observation that both F and Debra are very much recovered. If you can't multitask any more, as I can't, I think that might be a function of age.

      I found my ability to do that, which had been pretty much a requirement in my professional life, running multiple projects simultaneously, declined in my 70s, fortunately after it wasn't a central need any more.

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  7. I've been reading for awhile, thanks to a link at Ms Moon's, and think you are the maistress of reuse, recycle and simple living. Yay for making yogurt/less plastic. I've been doing it for some time. I have a gas stove and the pilot light heat makes it a cinch. Heat milk to bubbles on the sides. Let cool a bit. Stir in starter. (I use powdered starter and a straight sided quart jar.) Put in the oven overnight with pilot light only and it's done in the morning. But, having read your blog, you probably already know all this. I admire your artistry and fortitude! x0 N2

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    1. Welcome to my blog and thanks for your comment. Sounds as if we're kindred spirits!

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  8. I haven’t really bought a skein of yarn for years. They all come ready to use these days. Although I do remember having to hold the yarn while my grandma wound it.
    Your arms would be aching by the end of it. And I often wondered if there was a better way Soup sounds wonderful

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    1. It's pretty common here for yarn to come in skeins. The swift is fun to use.

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  9. White rabbits! Speaking of which, we saw white rabbit (snowshoe bunny) tracks while snowshoeing up in the mountains today.

    We use Nancy's Yogurt as our starter, too. I usually make about four homemade batches, then start again with a fresh tub of Nancy's. That's because my wonderful doc says Lactobacillus rhamnosus (which Nancy's contains) is one of the few bacteria that can make it into the gut AND has been proven through solid science to be beneficial. I'm not sure that my cultures are exactly right to keep the L. rhamnosus alive and kicking, so about every fifth quart I buy a new Nancy's.

    Your soup stock looks delicious, and I was expecting to hear the first chimney swift sighting of the spring! Have never heard of a yarn swift, and can't quite picture how it works.

    Chris from Boise

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  10. The arms of the swift spin, so as you wind, they're pulled around. Simple, pleasing mechanism. Can't supply any chimney swifts, in fact I've never seen them in this neighborhood. In more rural areas, yes, but our buildings aren't swift friendly. Though we have many swallows and martins, possibly their nesting needs are different.

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  11. I'm interested in your homemade yogurt. Wishing you a sweet day,

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    1. Thank you, hoping for the best. For both!

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  12. I admire all your energy for making and re-use. You come up with so many innovations! (Making your own yogurt, for example, which to me sounds pretty exotic...)

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  13. I enjoy reading of your day, Boud. I can picture you as make your way through the day. You give me inspiration and determination to be active, creative and mindful!

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    1. What a great comment to read this morning! Thank you and I'm glad my solitary and simple life is useful.

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  14. Interesting to see the swift and now I'm curious (never having seen one in action)...does it spin? I'm facing having to turn six skeins of yarn into balls and I usually use a side table turned upside down so I can use the legs to hold the yarn. But I have to stand above it in order for it to work. Had I known the yarn came in skeins I wouldn't have ordered it but too late smart on that one.

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    1. Yes, the arms of the swift just rest on that centerpiece, and as you wind your yarn, it turns. So you stay still, winding, and the yarn pulls the swift around like a carousel. Much easier. This one is Amish made, all wood, and comes apart completely into a bundle of sticks for storage. She also hooked hora ball winder for me, so I turned the little crank and it distributed the yarn into these posh balls rather than the somewhat artisanal ones I wind by hand. Maybe resident chef will put a swift on your birthday list?

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    2. Hooked up a, is what I was trying to say!

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    3. Alas we no longer exchange gifts beyond a little something that's homemade so birthday list is out. Maybe I'll luck out and find one on Facebook Marketplace.

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    4. Perhaps you could institute a family GoFundMe...

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  15. Oh, Laurie Colwin. She was so wonderful and her Home Cooking/More Home Cooking still hold so well. I miss her and wonder what she would write now. That yarn is scrumptious.

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    1. I loved her writing and was dismayed to find she'd died before I read her, so there would be no more. She's so engaging, I wish she'd had more time. She was very young.

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