Mystery plant, moringa and oakgalll ink

This morning's wander in the early morning cool revealed another sudden mystery plant, probably another escapee from next door. 

I'm guessing some variety of squash, but if you, or your app, know better, please say. Beautiful leaves, perfect for leaf printing..

And my moringa, grown from a seed from Arizona, is doing well. I started another as a houseplant but the winter light levels were too low and it eventually gave up. 

In the much higher light levels of Arizona, they grow as trees up to 90 feet I'm told. So this is an infant.

And the thyme is flowering now, woody but persisting.

Back indoors, full disclosure, I made a few inches of Iris string

I had unwrapped the fibers, kept damp in a napkin in a plastic bag, in case they were mildewed from waiting, but they're fine, so I tried a bit and will now desist for a few more days or resting the shoulder.

Anyway there's yet another adventure to add to my plans: oak gall ink. 

I've made walnut ink, as you know, and given it to students. But I supposed oak galls were attached to trees. Not so, as I found from Sally Pointer, who has gathered them from among acorns on the ground.

Having found that out, i checked further online, in the British Library and Getty museum YouTube channels, highly recommend both.

Turns out it's not a big deal to make oak gall ink, just takes a bit of time. It's indelible, permanent, waterproof, and if you don't make it right, corrosive! It can eat through the paper or vellum. 

Which means the ink makers who provided for the Canterbury Tales and Magma Carta and Declaration of Independence knew their stuff. As well as all the other mss.

I've often wondered what happens if you make a mistake on a manuscript. You can use the knife you used to make and sharpen your quill pen to scrape it out! Phew.

And yes, in the past I've made rather rough and ready quill pens from locally found feathers, and used them to write and draw a bit.  Need you ask?

Anyway here's my fall plans, as soon as acorns fall, to make ink and maybe a quill pen or two. This hot year might have been good for galls, which result from wasp attacks. You can see the hole in the gall where the wasp departed, no danger of bringing home an irritated wasp.

Always good to have something to look forward to, as well as cooler days. You can order galls online if you don't have local oak trees.

Today I'm baking the chocolate cherry cake.

Later I'll deliver the card and enclosure so Handsome Son gets a nice surprise when he arrives home late tonight from work  

He lives a couple of minutes'drive away, I can do this. This way it will be there in time. My tiny baby is going to be 55! Unbelievable.

Happy day everyone, make plans for adventures in everything, play and work and rest and we got this.

Misfits, cherries and a successful struggle

 The Misfits box arrived very promptly yesterday, with the cherries.

Also white potatoes, ready for a change from yelliw, good as they are.

And since the cherries are so good there's a chance there may not be enough left for the proposed cake, I thought I'd better pit enough, to make a pinch of them.

I don't have a cherry pitter, not being a fan of single use tools. Or single use anything, if there's an option. So here's what I tried.

The qtip gripped the pit, but couldn't eject it. The skewer could eject it but only after stabbing all over, skidding off it. snd showering tho  cook with juice.  The spoon could scoop the pit out but not free it first. The little parer is probably going to do it. I didn't have a plastic straw in the house, or I'd have tried that. 

I don't usually pit cherries. If I'm eating I pit and spit as I go. If they're for jam, I cook them whole and fish the pits out after the boiling has released them.

Kitchen engineering at work. HS better like this cake is all I can say.

And yesterday was largely devoted to struggling online,  including completing the medical passport information required for next Thursday's Second Eye Work. 

It took a long time, since it rejected my user ID despite numerous tries, finally asking them to send it. Many security questions and screens later they did. The same one I'd been entering all along. 

Same shenanigans with the password, ended up creating another just as I'd had to last time. Finally after numerous more security questions and screens, did that and got in. About 45 minutes to accomplish this. 

Then the updating was another lengthy process. Finally after most of the morning was over, it's done, complete, and acknowledged by them.

Then I eas asked to confirm next week's eye doctor appointment. The link didn't work, clicked or entered manually, on any device. I ended up calling and confirming with a nice human being.

Okay, two down. Then the surgical center called and I paid their fee. I tried last week and they wouldn't take my money. First experience I ever had whete a medical establishment turned down my $$.

Three down. Then the rx people texted to say I needed to refill, with another link that didn't work. 

I tweeted their corporate to say wtf only politer, and when they asked me to start all over with info ( their dm function not available to me, how to do this??) I curtly referred then to their own customer support.

I also asked them, again, if there's a phone number to order. Finally somebody dmd it to me. In the middle of this, corporate called, full of apologies and did the reordering for me. 

They asked me which meds and I refrained from shouting I can't get in to find that out! So she looked up the account, found almost everything needed to reup, did it. 

By then it was late afternoon and though I'm glad I ended up Boud 4 tech nil, it wasn't my preferred way to spend a hot summer's day.

Though I did end it with baked cod and white potato roasted fries, so there's that.

This morning is a better day. Evidently there was a beautiful rain during the night and the garden's happy. The butterfly bushes, plural, are booming, and Gary's thrilled about it.

And here's a thing

This is not spiderwebs, but the veiling createf by the dollar spot fungus, of which I have plenty in the pachysandra. It doesn't seem to be doing any harm, just making these artworks in the rain, diamonds in nets.

So all's well, and here's some art to celebrate with

We get smaller versions of the last art, only in chalk, on local sidewalks around Diwali.

Happy day everyone, press on, enjoy the good bits.

You know it's hot when

 When it's like this in the evening

And you need to bake something, being all out of bread-adjacent food. So you wait til it's below 90 to make walnut hot biscuits

And till evening to do urgent laundry, so as not to stress the grid. Very civic-minded.

My first week of not making has involved a lot of reading and an unexpected need to try endlessly to get into my rx online website. 

The link they sent me to reorder didn't work, so I went direct to the website, couldn't get in on any link at all. On phone, tablet or laptop. Dm"d them on Twitter, and they've been trying to get it fixed since Monday. 

IT can't trace the problem, and eas ready to blame me, usual procedure in my experience. So i did an end run and got Handsome Son to try on his system, different server, computer etc. 

He got an error message too, saying password and user didn't match their records. Further in than I could get. I've been using the same ones all along no problem.. Which message I forwarded to customer service, who said oh. And promised to continue checking.

If all else fails I'll get the rxs, there are several, locally, but that will cost $,  copays apply. The online service is covered by my premium, no copay..

So that has been an exciting(!) addition to the week. It took my mind off making. The shoulder is down to being a bit stiff, so much better. But I think I'll take Sandra's advice and rest it even after it seems okay. 

I suspect it's like when you get the flu snd start to feel better, rush to catch up then realize you're not actually well, just better than before. So I'll proceed with caution.

Anyway, Sinems and Manchin appear ready to vote as Democrats finally and get the big corporate tax/ environment bill passed. I wonder how Joe managed that. He's a wily old pol,  ever underestimate him.

And it seems DOJ is also working, charges finally brought against Breanna's murderers. I never doubted he was up for it,  but Garland has had to endure a barrage of criticism from people who don't believe anything's   happening unless they've been informed personally. Including some distinguished jurists. Looking at you, Tribe! 

Time for them to walk back their claims DOJ wasn't t going to nail Trump. I think it's coming.

Today is Misfits box day, complete, all being well, with cherries. I have been able to do nothing for Handsome Son 's birthday this year, on Monday. 

What with the heat and the doctor visits and the vision issues,and his work schedule taking all his evenings, it's been fraught.. 

So, as God is my witness I will at least make him a chocolate cherry cake anyway.  That's the plan. And make a birthday card. When your mother's an artist it's more fun to get a commercial one, really, but needs must. And there will be a nice check..

Happy day everyone, fight on, play on, live on, we've got this!

Happy stuff yesterday, then.

Yesterday I suddenly realized it was time to move the antique dolls to a new good home. 

They date front probably the 1930s. One's a baby doll, with an imprint on the back of her neck indicating  that vintage. Fully dressed in original clothes complete with cotton stockings. Her first little owner gave her the necklace and the knitter jacket and hat.

The sassy lady in the green dtess is a 1930s fad, the bed doll. Often women and teenage girls liked them as home decor rather than toys.

I'd noticed this morning, on the floor,  a little hand! And a bandaid on the porcelain doll's wrist. A quiet repair by a cleaner, maybe? I wondered if it had been glued years ago and finally fell off again. They'd be nice enough to try a temp repair.

Anyway the fact I hadn't even noticed told me it was time.

So i put up a Freecycle post, which yielded, as you might expect, a bunch of requests. I'd specified that I needed day and time of planned pickup in the first response. This is to head off people who want a penpal email correspondence. 

So that eliminated people asking are they still available. Or saying I can come any time. Or saying reproachfully how can you just give them away.

But one lady said they were precious and she would love to take care of them,  gave three specific times and days, very organized and serious. I thought she'd be the right person. She turned out to be just that.

 She e-mailed me after pickup, from right outside, it turned out to ask if I still had a shoe, in the picture but not on the doll. I found a upstairs on the rocker. She must have kicked it off when I picked her up.

So I went to tape it, in an envelope to the door in case the taker needed to come back. Abd there she was, hovering in hopes! Too polite to just ring the  doorbell! So we had a nice chat and she said maybe this doll's Cinderella! She was so happy, perfect match. 

I told her the history -- cane to me from a friend clearing her mother's house after her death in her 90s, found them packed away. The daughter never saw then before. Imagine, her mother never even showed her.

 She was sad about it and asked would I take them. So I did, years ago. The porcelain doll needs repair -- eyes out, but in the box was a little bag with the eye parts and mechanism, now passed on, with the hand, to the new happy home with Darlene. Joy abounds.

This new vacancy created some ructions amongst the downstairs knitted crew of Dollivers, tiny Queen of England in blue, of course,  and the red-haired firebrand young politician, my mother's hero, Ellen Wilkinson, and the Dolliver Kennels dogs.  Also budgetigars.

I made all these long ago and the Dollivers had their own following on Field and Fen on their photoshoot adventures. They've been quieter recently, tired out from touring.

Anyway the new tenant of the upstairs rocket is the bear I knitted those boots for, one day with a bit of scrap yarn and a need to make.

The Dollivers were delighted their noisy downstairs neighbor had moved out and they're now planning to evict the other bears, which came from a friend. We'll see. Boot Bear is glad to get away from the noisy Dolliver Kennels dogs, so all's well.

And I had a happy email from the boss of the Handweavers Guild of America, about the inclusiveness of  Textiles and Tea.

I don't think she'd mind if you read it

I told you they were good people.

And the misery gripping my shoulder is starting to loosen its grip, yay. No need for pain help for a couple of days now, so I'm more cheerful there too. 

That and a visit from little granddaughter next door in search of her tennis ball lost in the pachysandra, which we found.

Then last night's brilliant track event, at the Birmingham Commonwealth Games  see it on YouTube, 

Eilish McColgan, her Mom in the stands, winner of this event in her own track days, tears it up for Scotland.

All good. We need all this.

Happy day everyone, tear it up!

Textiles and Tea, handwritten book

Thank you all for the support yesterday and encouragement. I let the comment about transportation stand in case it's useful to any readers though none applies to me.  

County programs here stay within county lines, nothing for people not disabled, and  with my doctors in three counties, two of them not my own, crickets, no crossing county lines! 

I'm  convetsant with all this from the years of caregiving. It takes months for even a disabled senior to be issued with the id # that enables bookings, then it's a vehicle that takes hours because of other passenger stops, and wheelchair loading to get there. No guarantee of being at appointments on time. A bit awkward. We ended up never using it. 

The heat's back this week, up to 100f again, so I was out early, watering, and saying nice things to my butterfly bushes, plural. Really happy with them.

Yesterday's reading was

and here's a very appropriate and timely thought 

Recommended by Mary Anne, and downloaded on my Kindle where it appeared in reduced, sideways, form! Not quite adapted I think. And since my ancient Kindle Long ago lost the capacity to change font size, this is how I read it!

Through my page sized enlarger. That worked, though the blotchy handwriting defeated me here and there. 

I got the gist  and it's a wise little book about friendships and cake!  Probably best to read in book form if you can get to the library. And yes, do read it.

Yesterday's Textiles and Tea was just lovely

.

She's from Guatemala, weaving the very fine sheer work traditional from her village. She can recognize which villages and towns pieces are from, since they each have traditional patterns and motifs. 

They still build their own loons from wood they cut locally.  Nothing written, the designs worked by mental planning then counting. She noted that younger Guatemalan people are not wanting the slow and poorly paid work of backstrap weaving, and is anxious to teach in the US in order to preserve the art.

She eventually married an American Peace Corps worker who came to her village and now lives in Tarpon Springs, Florida, where dhe teaches . If you're anywhere near there, what an opportunity. Though she says she has to get her wood from Home Depot now!

The viewers urged her to be in touch with WARP (Weave a Real Peace) because she needs a market for her work. She's also probably a great teacher, cheerful and personable.  So it was a valuable session, everyone got something out of it. 

Happy everyone, adapting is the thing. Darwin would agree.

Did you read about the Ukrainian civilians taking our Russian invader vehicles with diy home 3D printed dromes?  Cool. 

And speaking of fighting back, yesterday Kansas swept away the attemot to remove reproductive care protection from the State constitution. Go, Kansas!  GOP, you upset the wrong people there. 

And they wete shamed into passing the PACT Act, healthcare for veterans whose health was fanagef by exposure to burn pits. They didn't count on those fist bumps going viral after they suddenly voted against in out of spite. . Nor the national shaming backlash.  Slow learners.

Fallow week, Textiles and Tea, contrasts

 So yesterday after a night when I had to get up in search of an icy-hot pain patch for my  shoulder, to get sone sleep , because of a little bit of cording, I did the previous day I made nothing. 

It looks as if even a tiny bit of making is causing a physical uproar, so I've resolved, first time in my long life as far as I know, to make nothing this week. Since it's feeling a bit better after one day off, this might be wise.

To say this is causing an emotional and mental uproar is putting it mildly. If you're an obsessive maker, you'll get it.  And yesterday was filled with walking, blessedly cool day, reading and YouTubeing. 

Now I need to plan how to make good use of the week of Not Making. It occurs to me this is a good time to revisit some of my art books, especially the textile histories and just btowse, without leaping to execute the ideas I'll no doubt get.  I may need moral support in this endeavor, dear friends, please rally round!

On the subject of textiles and history, do you remember my campaigning to get the Handweavers  Guild of America, who present the wonderful Textiles and Tea series', to be more inclusive?

 I noticed the privileged lily-whiteness week after week, probably going for people they already knew. Anyway they were very open, and I sent them a bunch of contact's to go from. Now look;

I don't want to take credit, because for all I know, they've been working on this for ages. But I did write a hugely excited email thanking them, as soon as I saw this month's lineup. You nay be sure I'll keep up the pressure, i mean encouragement, so that this doesn't become a token month.

Meanwhile out in the garden, accidental gardening is doing well. Cherry tomatoes appearing

The butterfly bush turns out to be several separate plants. Compared to Gary's giaht one next door it does look like it. 

Probably an offspring, since the birds were feeding all winter on the topmost blossoms, too high to deadhead, which went to seed.  And it's growing exactly where the old cherry tree was, also planted by birds. 

I think I should probably turn it all over to nature and birds, since they're doing at least as well as I am.

Here's the spiderwort, revived after cool rain

Blue sparks of color in unpromising earth.

And I love the contrast of textures here

Black eyed susans against the concrete path.

In other news, Twitter tells me I'm seven!

I must say it brings a lot of interest into my life, and yours too, since some of the images you enjoy, always credited,  in this blog come from my carefully curated Twitter feed, all good stuff. 

Happy day everyone, new paths for old this week. How would you handle it?

August already? White rabbits then

 Elephants and jewelry  this month from C's calendar 

Lammas, too, loafmas which has to do with harvesting wheat and baking bread. A bit hot for baking today.

Here's a bit of iris cordage

Iris handles differently from daylily, tougher, but just as good for string. It looks very much like daylily string, so it's joining the collection.

And here's s bit of indoor gardening

Some of the Italian basil I grew from seed, now rooting in water, very handy for cooking.

And yesterday saw the entire 2022 potato harvest, steamed, pat of Vermont butter, sprig of parsley,with the last of the lox and some baby spinach. 

Poifect.

And here are sliced baby bellas, slow cooked in butter and oil, ready ahead for today's roast chicken thighs and a side of the pasta I had yesterday.

Current reading was a wise little Mma Ramotswe story

And, the triumph of the Lionesses yesterday, in the beautiful gane, celebrated by my favorite, usually NSFW,  Forest Friends

Yay team!! Winning goal in overtime even. Glorious stuff, two great teams 

Women, with art,  will save us all.

Happy day everyone, let's all be Lionesses, keep going to the last minute.