People need plants and water

Monday was about weaving while I thought about stitching, finishing the Sacks book and walking.

I recommend all three! If you can. 

Catching up online while weaving. Bruce and Melissa on the screen.

Lovely bright weather for walking 

As I got to this point I started hearing the plomp sounds of frogs leaping into the water, and saw a couple as they flew from the bank, see the widening circles in the pond.

I got closer 

There were dragonflies in action, we have a lot of them, several species, and water boatmen on the water surface. I think some of them may have been taken by frogs, when they suddenly submerged.  

Here's a wild strawberry or something adjacent, and there are many around here. There's also spraying, so I don't check them out.

Home again I sat outside reading and watching birds, and noticing the honesty has started its seedpods 

Once they're silver, I'll let the seeds fall then add the branches of  silver disks to my collection in the downstairs bathroom.

The purple flowers are the sage. They're similar in shape to antirrhinum. 

And 

the yellow potatoes are starting up.

The Sacks book of essays, some written near the end of his life, is full of wisdom, really worth reading. 

He understood the value of plants and being involved with them, and would seek out botanical gardens when he traveled. He comments that his psychiatric hospital work kept him in New York city, and only the gardens made it tolerable. How I agree.

And I'm now rereading an old favorite, full of comic scenes 

I know it so well I'm laughing in anticipation of the antics of Nicky.

Happy day, everyone, flowers all round!

Sick Visiting, Sock 'n Glove Ministry, stitching

The patio Sunday morning after days of rain and cold.

Whatever is in the hanging pot planted itself, probably an exciting weed, but I'll wait before I pull it in case it's left over from last year's flowers.

K and I visited Gary, and found he's doing better, few more days to be sure before they let him leave. He was no longer on oxygen, and he's being cared for very well. So that feels better to everyone. 

I'm happy I made myself go, pushing through fear of hospitals, anxiety about visiting, reminding myself visiting the sick is one of the corporal works of mercy I'm supposed to live by. And it was fine. 

While we were there, he needed a blood draw, so I left briefly, can't deal. When the technician left he said, okay, safe to go in now!

And the email newsletter from the convent of whose knitting ministry I'm a member at large came out today. The gloves and socks are what you saw here first.

And here's a friend with another friend. The nun  organized our goldwork embroidery workshop, and dog Jennie has starred in We Rate Dogs. I'm famous!

Speaking of embroidery and its power, here's a great initiative for the month.

Anyone who stitches can attest to its healing and calming properties. The reporter didn't enlarge on the stitching, maybe lack of terminology. But just seeing work on a hoop makes a stitcher want to get hooping and stitching.

Happy day, everyone! Push through, it's often okay.

Busy day for better and worse

 I'd decided to make sausages rolls, my mom's way, small, rolled and sealed with pinching, no egg wash. Not the doorsteps with a handle on of the Budget Baker. But he gave me the idea, so there's that. 

Also the apricots were soaked and all plump for the cake.

So I embarked on a marathon of baking. I made my yogurt based pastry, always just crisp enough but not all flakes everywhere. I used this for pasties a while back and liked it a lot.

It's years since I made sausage rolls, decades even. Handsome Son will probably have a stroll down memory lane when he tries them.

The sausage is the very spicy plant-based stuff, no need to do anything to it other than shape it and roll it up. Served here with great tender Florida pole beans (!) and pickled red onions.  A dozen rolls, from one roll of the sausage stuff.  Really good too.

Meanwhile I was making the batter for the apricot snacking cake. It uses two sticks of butter but it made 32 pieces of cake, so, when amortized, fine. It's also not very sweet, which I like.

Notice the clean curtains from upstairs while you're strolling round the kitchen.

 

Apricots halved, ready to stud the cake batter. 

This was originally Melissa Clark's Figgy Demerera Snacking Cake. I've used various fruit including plums in the past, but ripe figs aren't a thing here, and I didn't have Demerera so I sprinkled regular white, and I didn't have brandy so I did without.

But it's really good and supplies enough for a battalion or a couple of neighboring kids plus Handsome Son, Gary and me.

In the middle of this I got an alert to tell me the special online lecture on Ndop cloth was not at 1pm, as I'd thought, but at noon.

So I ended up pushing tablet buttons to get screenshots while rolling pastry and sausage and wielding bench scrapers, and generally trying to do several incompatible things at once. 

In the middle of lunch, sausage rolls hot on my plate, while the cake was in the oven, and I'd finally sat down to watch the presentation as planned, a neighbor stopped in.

Gary's in the hospital, sudden pulmonary thing, yesterday morning. They're keeping him three days, he's seemingly doing okay, but everyone is worried.  Neighbor and I may visit tomorrow if he's up for it. Definitely uneasy. 

So I missed a bit of the Ndop program but I think I got the gist for you, and blogged about it in a special post.

Also in the local news 

The scallions are growing!

And I found in reading the current Sacks, that Humphry Davy, the chemist, inventor of the miner's lamp, was also a poet. In his time, early nineteenth century, academic disciplines weren't so separated.

Here's what stunned me 

He had great respect for the elegance and inventiveness of Davy's use of language. And he too was a chemist as well as a poet.

Also a later improved version of the miner's lamp was invented by an ancestor of Oliver Sacks. The stuff you learn from books.

Anyway I did get to sit and stitch, after all this activity today.

I've been dreaming about this book, all kinds of new ideas for stitching the next page,  as well as anxiety about how to construct it! Brain never rests, despite the daily chair yoga.

About which I'm happy to say my hip is much happier, which seems to confirm my thought that's it's the cartilage, not the joint, complaining. Stretching is working. Neck, too, is doing better. All's good. 

Happy day everyone, don't do all the things at once like me. A person gets tired.

Great presentation on ndop cloth of Africa, special post

 The Hajii Baba club brought Dr. Janet Purdy on  Saturday to speak online on the indigo resist-dyed cotton cloth of Cameroon,West Africa, known as ndop. It's a ceremonial cloth with royal privilege. There are many ancient kingdoms in Africa, the ruler of each  known as the Fon. He determines who can wear this cloth and when and in what form.

They're woven in very narrow strips by men, then stitched together,  with patterns drawn on by men and stitched in with raffia by women. They are  then indigo dyed, the raffia acting as the resist. 

These cloths can be enormous.  They serve as ceremonial backdrops as well as clothing. There are traditional designs, including shapes used as protective images, going back centuries.

The slides have enough information to follow largely without my commentary. Here goes.

some of the modern equipment used to determine how best to curate rare cloth, how much exposure to light is safe.

This is a Fon who placed his Kingdom under the protection of German power, dressed in German uniform with his assistant literally attached to the ceremonial ndop cloth .

There are several books on this topic, which an interested reader can track down, but this is an overview of these cultural and historical treasured artefacts. Dr Purdy brought brief and accessible information to this textile enthusiast who isn't a scholar, very much appreciated.