Chop Wood Carry Water Find String

Today I did laundry before I ran out of clothes and before temperatures get into the high 90sf, when I won't want to put on the dryer.

Then I made a gallon of laundry liquid because now I was completely out of it. 

Then I got on with my Band! As you see, this is from the cover of the band book and has been the goal. When I started seems like ages but it's only a couple of weeks ago, I wondered if I could get to that degree of competency. It's a cover band, you might say.

It's working out pretty well. This is a traditional Sami band. Here's where the loom is good. 

I can easily work just one motif then leave it, more easily than unhitching the backstrap. This motif is 22 picks (lines) long so it's good to rest regularly. It stays right where it is till I get back to it.

And now despite my saying I don't have to find uses, a couple of bands have found uses, as you see.

Here's a terrific tutorial from Ash, where she demonstrates hand stitching very well. What I like most is that she knows the difference between blanket stitch and buttonhole stitch. My people! 

Most self taught, even school taught, learners don't, and they haven't learned the different functions of the two stitches. I've even been told it doesn't matter.

To an experienced hand sewer, it's like saying to a carpenter that a claw hammer and a ballpeen are the same thing. Anyway, I'm happy in the presence of an expert who knows what's what.

About the string. Gary was just over. In search of green string. Which I provided. 

Anyone fearing he'd be gone need not. The move yesterday was just the breakables. In two weeks the bigger stuff goes. Meanwhile carloads of boxes are moving. Also carloads of houseplants, hence the string.  If he's moved by late June I think that's a good estimate.

Meanwhile stand by with string.

Happy day everyone, bands, socks, string, it's all good, sez Ted and Big Ursy and Pony and Ursula 

Signs of spring and a surfeit of eggs

You can see it's nearly March, how did that happen, because the State extension people are out with their list of Banned Botanicals.

Quite a few of these around here, which I see when I'm out walking to the pond.  Some are escapees from cheap mass landscaping, some were planted before people knew better, some just barged in.  

There's a date by which you have to eradicate them if they're on your property and by which nurseries have to stop selling them if they ever did. 

I doubt if this is the whole list, just the most likely. 

So Know Your Enemy is a sign of spring to our extension crew. 

And while I was knitting and eating breakfast,  cheese muffin, and idly checking what's new on YouTube, I found Ash LG, making a surcoat.

Ash is a larper, always into creating historical costumes, but regularly remembering the keen followers with less skill than Ash. 

So here's my summer sewing future 

In previous summers I've handsewn skirts and a couple of sleeveless lined surcoats will go with them a treat, with a cap sleeved top. I have skirts and tops, now to check fabrics around the place for surcoat purposes. This is where my portieres find themselves conscripted into use. One is batik cotton, one Indian sari silk, and there are sheets.. 

You see the complete notes needed to do this including translating cm to ins, she's a Brit. I remember as a teenager making a thing like this. I also made several in the 70s to go with matching short skirts. We called them tunic sets and thought we were all that.

Meanwhile I'm dealing with having over-ordered eggs, by making a spinach quiche using five of them.  With onion, garlic powder, shredded cheese. Started on top of the stove then baked in the oven, in trusty castiron pan. Amazing how spinach cooks down.

And here's lunch. I didn't cook the spinach ahead of time, just tore it up and added to the caramelized onions. Then thirty minutes baking and it's done enough for my taste.

Happy day everyone, spring might soon get here, after maybe a couple more snowstorms, we never know in March.