Quiet Wednesday

 Wet cold windy weather, just right for reading and making soup.

I made a large pot, enough for about eight meals, of pumpkin (off the front step), sweet potato, yellow potato and leeks. Seasoning was berbere, turmeric, seasalt, smoked paprika, cumin. Added whole milk and called it cream of all-the-above.

With broiled whole-wheat spread with butter and garlic paste, it worked out well. Plenty more in the freezer.

I've been surprised to find I like the Ruth Galloway series of mysteries. I'd expected books about an archaeologist to be set in Egypt for some reason, to me the most profoundly boring of settings. Sand, heat, camels, hard writing, no. I don't like any of the Christies set there.

Then I find she's in Norfolk, and there are interesting characters at work, sometimes so many I have trouble with who's who, but I like it a lot. 

It's very cinematically written and I wonder if there are TV series about the books. It would lend itself to long shots of sea and sky, car chases, hair raising kidnappings, nice dogs, cute kids, druids, the pitch dark scenes beloved of TV producers, the lot. No doubt I'm the last person to discover I like this writer.

I have a small personal milestone to mention. Usually November is a difficult month for me, containing two late sisters' birthdays, the 7th and the 17th, and my parents' wedding anniversary, the 18th. This year I decided I'd mourned long enough for people who didn't value me as I valued them. And it went very smoothly. I got past all the days. Dues paid. Probably about time, too.

Happy day, everyone. It's okay to decide how much is enough. Sez Ted and Big Ursy 

And I'll purr to that sez Fluffaluffagus

Freecycling, boundaries and pumpkin soup

Yesterday was a good free cycling day. While I was looking in the coat closet for yarn, I realized I could free cycle a bunch of the bags and purses hanging in there,  and this group is leaving today.

Several of them I handmade and they can move on, served their purpose with me, handspun and woven, Tunisian crochet, beaded knitting. Others are nice, like the Indian embroidered tote,of which I have others. So all the bags are in a bag (!) on the step awaiting their happy taker.

The big painted art bag was picked up yesterday, as it turned out by a longtime art acquaintance who has been trying to get a closer connection for years. A bit shovy, which I've handled politely but not with fervor. I didn't know the identity of this taker, just the free cycle screen name, until she rang the doorbell, most unusual, instead of just picking up. 

Turns out she also received a stack of art books, back when I winnowed the collection, and is pleased with them.

She was wearing a fedora, very stylish, she can wear hats, and wanted to come in and visit. Um. I explained I wasn't free, and she was quite graceful about it. 

I'm very picky about who comes in , no sudden irruptions, except Gary, who's basically family,  and not  uninvited ones. We did chat on the step.  She messaged me later to say she loves the bag. So I felt I did a bit of kind boundary management on the spur of the moment. Clever me. It didn't hurt that I was giving her something nice at the time!

And yogurt has happened again, also the sugar pumpkin from the front step is now soup, as planned

And, tidings of great joy, I didn't have to go in person to the dreaded snarling Motor Vehicle office to renew my driver's license.

At my age, and I noticed they'd changed the expiration to my birthday, oh-oh, I wondered if they'd want a retest or new photo or something. Their website was very cagey about who could and couldn't renew by mail, though they did say there's no age requirement for a retest. So I waited, and they sent me the form to mail in. So now I think if your license is clean, they don't make you do anything special.

 I renewed by mail, and they just recopied the old photo, now looking worse even than before. I'd hate to be recognized from it. But yay, four more years of legality. At which point I'll be amazed if I'm still driving anyway.

Happy day, everyone, enjoy whatever good thing happens, and there will be at least one. You might have to look closely.

Nerd delight, stealth art and the intersection of art and cooking

 I thought if we have any number nerds among us, you'd like this

And, before you say nobody puts the date year first, in fact people who work with big databases do. It's just a fun thing, like Pi(e) Day and May the Fourth be with you.

Earlier today I seized the day to catch the fall Japanese maple in sunshine. 

It clouded over soon after, but I made a composition here, indoors.

I like the contrast in shape and direction of the ginger foliage and the oak grain. Color too. Not that color matters here. Shapes and relationships are what this composition is about, not what it depicts. 

All my photos are carefully composed and cropped to say something beyond what they're showing.  Just a word to the sharp of eye!

Then, since some of the tips I've been getting about the little derm surgery next week, talk about soft food, to minimize chewing, the stitches being on my  face and better not disturbed, I thought soup.

The sugar pumpkin you last saw outside with the wooden cat, is now soup, along with cashews, lentils and celery, using up the vegetables before tomorrow's Misfits box arrives.

In the course of boiling it to make easy cutting and seeding, the long stem broke off and it's so pleasing a grainy shape, that I thought I'd do a bit of handmade paper molding.

I have quite a bit of cotton linters pure white paper, and I sprayed a thin sheet arranged over two bits of stem with clear water. 

It will be a few days before it dries completely, at which point I can lift it off and see how it worked. Material for future composition maybe. This is how I molded those earlier gold pieces you saw on one of the now completed figure series.

And since we're in the neighborhood of outdoor art and natural materials, here's the finished exhibited work from the rock filled cherry tree caper 

It's a triptych, said the gallery manager grandly. All framed on one backing.

Center is an ink drawing mounted on an image transfer, left and right are image transfers of my film photos of the rocky tree, left just of the tree, right the tree in context. 

And while I'm at it, here's a work to which I added bits later, designed to hang outdoors unprotected on the fence, for birds and squirrels to play with. 

Carolina wrens had a grand time climbing in it and swiping bits in spring for nest material. Squirrels climbed and yanked and chewed and had a good time. It's knitted, using several techniques, the light part parcel string, the dark part garden twine. 

It lasted about three years before weather and wildlife reduced it to rags, at which point I hung it in the woods.

And here's an indoor piece, exhibited years ago in some show or other. 

Twining, knotting with lark's head knots, a favorite, knitted using both string and copper wire, handmade beads. It's built on my late beloved cockatiel Emily Hope's swinging perch, that shape you see, a kind of shrine to her. 

So that's where we are, after I got up feeling glum, nothing to do, nothing to write about, before a nice chat with a neighbor and her dog, a brief encounter with a ladybug in the kitchen, now resident in the houseplants, and a good walk, set me up much better.

From the humble toaster oven, come words to live by

Made pumpkin soup this morning, farm pumpkin, steamed till tender, then scooped out.  Seeds went out for deliriously happy squirrels, then the pumpkin meat went into the pot.  Olive oil, whole garlic cloves, sumac, turmeric, curry powder, kosher salt, then the pumpkin, with carrot pesto water, chicken liquid from earlier roasting, defatted, chunks of frozen tofu.  Dash of lemon juice.  Chicken bones, pieces of parmigian rind.

Anyway, while this was all gently simmering, ready to be blended, I noticed the toaster oven bringing me a message.  

Words to live by.  Wonder if this is the current MO in the Washington investigations?