Bloomsday, celebrating with morning shadows of houseplants

Celebrating Bloomsday! I did complete the reading of Ulysses, so now I'm just coasting.

Meanwhile last night I set up the warp threads for the kimono sash. I think this will work. I'll mount them on the narrow band loom, on a 12 epi (ends per inch) heddle.  

The weft colors are as you see

I may add a couple more outside warp threads like the brown, so as to have a nice selvage.  

The warps are 48" long and that should allow for loss, plus I'll keep the fringes.  I have to decide how the sash will fasten when I see how long it ends up being. TBA.

I usually feel a bit glum when I wake, but a wander on the patio and a glance at a project in waiting helps a lot.  

Gary was over this morning while I was still in my bathrobe, and since I hadn't yet inserted my hearing aids, it was a slightly disjointed conversation.

I'm pretty sure he was asking about butter left out and turned to oil, if it's still safely edible. My response yes. Then what about a fixed cat who's still spraying. My answer get a recheck to be sure the fix was complete. Last evening he wanted my physio's number which he'd mislaid. NADM.

Next up: needlearts group. 

This was a great afternoon, with kimonos given to happy people, and a new member who was learning sashiko, yay!

Stick weaving a strap for a muff, all the yarns spun by the knitter/weaver

Sequined top, great bling 

Chat ranged over voice training, Madame butterfly, theater costume, saris, sashiko, knitting for disabled arm students, travel to India, jetlag, and more.  The fiberarts today included knitting, weaving and stitching. 

Back home I had no internet access so I missed Textiles and Tea. Then the signal returned long enough to write this post.

Happy day, everyone, you can only do what's possible, annoying though that may be.

Fridge ahoy, misfits, Bloomsday and Dalloway Day.

Yesterday involved multiple texts and messages and emails and phone calls to a couple of local non big box stores I've bought appliances from and done okay. 

I eventually found a  fridge model which seemingly will fit the space, the doorways, my budget and handsome son's color preference -- white-- and my other concerns -- no icemaker, because of friends' ice maker flooding disasters, and it's a second floor condo with a downstairs neighbor. So it's paid for, ow, and on for delivery Wednesday.  

After all this stressful stuff, I was so spent I went and lay outside in the shade listening to birds. Quite possibly dozing off too.

Handsome Son is happy with the prospective new fridge, emptied out his old freezer, found most of the contents were of interest mainly to archaeologists, and brought the rest over to put in my chest freezer. 

He'll empty the fridge as he goes, in time for the new one. He certainly needed to declutter, though this is an expensive way to go about it. 

Despite the stress, this was encouraging to me to know my ability to deal with setbacks is still there and functioning fine, including multiple techie tasks. This is a bigger deal than younger people might realize, says she in a snooty tone. 

Yesterday the Misfits Box arrived, and I was fervently glad to feel well enough to face handling food, and washing and prepping.  Even thinking about, though not yet doing, cooking. The extra pack of carrots is a freebie they threw in.

Misfits has started a recycling program, involving egg carton bubble wrap, freezer gel packs and the foil cooler bags. The gel packs can even be sanitized and reused. So I'm going to start that.  I leave them out the night before delivery, where they'll put the new box,  they'll pick up.

They're conscientious about using recyclable packing anyway and after I've unpacked and prepped, I break down the boxes, bundle them flat with the other packing and recycle here. Just as glad to have them help though.

And today is Bloomsday, but my almost-read copy of Ulysses, which kept my place year to year, was lost when my old Kindle died and my classic collection wouldn't transfer to the new one. 

Also, since Woolf's Mrs Dalloway, wonderful stream of consciousness book was also set in mid June, I think this is Dalloway Day, too. 

If you're still not through both books, do try them. There are echoes and similarities between them, very different, both cornerstones of English lit. Yes, one is Irish, but I mean written in British English.

Both take place over the course of a single day with  all the intersecting lives and encounters from the viewpoint of the main character, Bloom in Ulysses, Mrs Dalloway in the eponymous novel.

Mrs Dalloway in particular, continues to be significant with its contrast between the elegant Mrs Dalloway off to buy flowers for her party and the suicidal war veteran with PTSD. In this case WW1, but poignantly timely still. It's really worth experiencing.

After a couple of interested comments about our gardens, I think, this being a great time of year, I'll wander around the street today getting pictures for you. 

We have landscapers, and we plant in spite of their cut and slash approach. We do have official shrubs and trees, too, which they "prune", oh dear. More tomorrow.

Happy day, everyone! Thanks so much for all the care and concern this week. I've had better weeks, but nobody has better blogistas.

Magna Carta, Bloomsday

 Yesterday was the nth anniversary of the signing of the Magna Carta, at Runnymede, by King John, the only English king of that name, pretty much at sword point, the barons having finally had it with his tyranny, and wanting to wield a bit of it themselves, I suspect. 

But the calendar has been fiddled with since 1215, so who knows really. Thirteen days went missing at the adoption of the Gregorian calendar in the sixteenth century, named for the Pope who did it to straighten out the Julian calendar drift because of leap years. Or something.  

I've always wondered about the poor guys who had vacation planned then, and suddenly found they were instantly scheduled to go right on working instead.. joke, joke.

Anyway it was a declaration of human rights and power sharing. However, England specifically appears to be in the process of abandoning it, and I thought I wouldn't get too excited yesterday.

Today however is another matter.

It's June 16, Bloomsday. The day Leopold Bloom, the hero of  "Ulysses", spent wandering the streets of Dublin, encountering friends, stories,  himself, Molly, and literary history.

It was Sylvia Beach, owner of the Shakespeare and Co. bookstore in Paris who first published "Ulysses"  when the establishment wouldn't.

On his fortieth birthday, February 2,1922. I wonder if he had many and complicated thoughts on the date. Born on the Feast of the Purification, hmmm.

Here's my tiny annual tribute, where I read more of it, as you see getting near the end

 and the massive blast of trumpets that is Molly Bloom's tour de force

Thank you to Sylvia Beach, and Kindle, which keeps my place from year to year. And Norah Barnacle who probably kept Joyce going. It's usually the surrounding women who ensure that great things happen and great literature is written then made available.

Here's to centering them! Acknowledging their own art in their own right. 

Meanwhile I have to get on to Ulysses again. Maybe I'll get to the end this year, before I run out of years 

Ulysses, Bloomsday and baby woodpeckers

This being Bloomsday, I read  Ulysses far as I could, now north of 90%, before declaring it done for the year.

And a flutter past my head happened-- the baby woodpecker was back. Solo this time, and with new skillz. Once again he started to slide down the pole, but this time used his new tail feathers as a brake, climbed right back up again.

And see how he's figured out how to use his tail to grip, while he finds his own suet. He was within a few feet of me, possibly too young to be alert around a human, or maybe he'd seen older birds unworried and feeding near me. He's clearly feeding himself independently, no need for parent to help. 

Birds develop at warp speed. I've seen it often, but never get used to the marvel of it.

And my carpenter bees were busily pollinating the lavender. Telling me it's not all about drilling my fence.

Parva Carta and Bloomsday

Today being the 800th anniversary of the signing of the Magna Carta, Great Charter, where King John was pretty much forced at swordpoint to allow as how he was not all that, the Dollivers took note.  And they made unkind comparisons to Boud and how she's not all that, either, and demanded their own Magna Carta, bill of rights.

Which became in the course of heated discussion, the Parva Carta, since as Boud pointed out, the Ds are small, though she tactfully omitted any reference to their egos, so their charter ought to be The Small One, too.  And, with any luck, their demands, too.

Nothing daunted, they whipped out their first demand, and said there will be more:  here they want this Japanese style room to move into, except big enough for all the Ds and the Tinies and Elton.  

Notwithstanding my protest that this is a priceless art treasure, from the Thorne Collection in the Chicago Art Institute, which I recommend highly if you're in Chicago any time, anyway, they insisted that they Need It.  They bet any money the Charter included nice housing for all.  And jewelry for them, too, even if they aren't barons.  Also expeditions, very few of them lately.

And sticking to the housing situation, once delivery is made, they will need, immediately,  new outfits to wear in it for many  photo ops.  I compromised with one photo op of all of them plus the picture of the room of their dreams, and vague plans about putting the other requests into action. 

Which is largely what happened to parts of the Magna Carta, come to think of it, considering how much of it became law in many countries eventually, and how many of the laws are daily disregarded by people who know better.

Oh well.  And tomorrow's Bloomsday, too. For some blogistas, it's already here.  If you can tolerate hearing about this yet again, go here

And just think what Joyce would have made of this conjunction today into tomorrow, Bloom meandering about and musing on it and bringing in all kinds of literary references and indecipherable puns..he'd have to start now to get all his thinking done in time.

Elton was a bit baffled by the history and literature flying around this morning, so he played us out with In Dublin's Fair City, which was a pretty good stab at Ulysses, when you think of it.

But he couldn't think of a Runnymede song, so he played Drink, Drink, Drink from the Student Prince, near enough, he thought.  A joycean pun on  runny mead, he explained.  This dog is getting too smart for his sweater.