Earthquake, Easter cactus and knitting group

 Friday morning started out quietly, toast and tea for breakfast, admiring the Easter cactus, blooming like billy-o

Peaceful shower, whistling operatic selections, then brushing my teeth when a huge roaring sound started up and the whole place started shaking, things rattling. 

After a few seconds I wondered if it was an earthquake, which we have once in a long while, and went out to find all the neighbors out looking around and concluding it wasn't a semi hitting buildings.

So I checked police reports

This was after this weather

Next week the eclipse. Are we in the end times? If so I'd better get on with my pinloom weaving while the going's good. After I straighten all the pictures now a bit lopsided on the walls.

The Friday knitting group went on unabated, with a twist, mother and son crocheters came.

Mother starting a crocheted hat for her cat, a ragdoll, the kind who don't fight back.

And the son, group regular, self taught crocheter, with his first completed scarf. He's planning on starting a yarn group where he lives. At his climbing gym! He'll still attend this group though.

Convo ranged over the earthquake, of course, where everyone was and what they were doing at the time, shoes and sizes, thrifting, eclipse plans, methane in houses, retirement communities,  rain, flat tires, moving house, trains and cats. 

Happy day everyone, try to avoid rain, earthquakes and eclipses. Just knit! Cook nice dishes. Breathe! Maybe that's my advice to me.

Misfits market, back on wheels, and looming up, adventures

***********Breaking:

Yes we did have an earthquake this morning, more news tomorrow,  meanwhile all's well chez Boud. Continue your normal activity.**********

Yesterday was a day of waiting followed by catchup. Gary and I took my car in when he was free of his many obligations. Now, in addition to all his renovations, his furnace thermostat has gone.

He's in endless calling with insurance people, replacement people and the supplier, all of whom say the other person is responsible, and nobody knows what might void the warranty.

I've learned that when he says he'll be ready in a little while, his little while can be hours, he's busy, just to get on with my life. 

Here it was finish a weaving, catch up online, receive and wash the Misfits  produce, commiserating with Jeff about his week of getting wet delivering Misfits, and eat lunch. 

Then we took in the car and Gary dropped me home,  went off on many errands while I unpacked my newly arrived pinloom, complete with original needle, diagrams and pattern book! 

I have plans about the produce, including another Spain on a Fork recipe for the chickpeas. And there will be tuna melts, plenty of cheese in the house from the Easter cheese and crackers. And leftover ham for omelettes. The sweet potatoes will be baked for several easy lunches. And today I'm making a new batch of yogurt.

And here's my newly-arrived vintage WeaveIt, with instructions and diagram, plus 12 weaving pattern directions. This may be where I learn to read (simple) weaving patterns. I can follow knitting and crochet patterns, so this adds to the repertoire of mysterious markings translated into tangible form. It's like an initiation.

So, no pattern other than plain weaving, I started an experiment in 24 gauge copper wire, which I quickly found is too big. So when I continue today, I'll switch to a finer gauge.

Then late afternoon, my car was ready, we picked it up. Then I flew out to catch up on the errands I'd originally planned before the Tire Goddess spoke.  I returned the hearing amp, hoping the fine print won't  affect my refund, after a bit of a time getting a label printed.

Then I picked up the  current library books ready for me to practice my self checkout skills, hoping this doesn't put a circ desk worker out of a job. I disapprove of self checkout for this reason, while grudgingly learning to use the system.

Here's the current haul, 

the Austen is a general interest item, I'm always interested in social history as seen in fashion. The other you'll recognize as the work of Margaret Stump, the pinloom lady we all liked on Textiles and Tea.  You know how recipe books usually have a lot of items you aren't so interested in, then maybe one idea that's worth the whole thing? 

This craft book does just that, aside from general useful instructions.  She shows an approach to shaping woven yarn squares that's exactly what I need for my wire sculpture, so I need to make a few squares in order to test it out. I'm also thinking of incorporating yarns with the wire, too. These ideas are forming themselves, and I seem to be just trotting behind, ready to try them out

Then I needed this, to get calm and start breathing again.

And always thinking of Ukraine  and the discharge petition which may now be the way to get help to them.

Great Easter visit, haggard hawks puzzle

Yesterday's Easter celebration went very well, all the food worked out, the roast potatoes went over well enough to prove you can't make too many, and we ended up drinking tea and eating cookies, jellybeans and little chocolate eggs. Before, all looked calm and bright, unless I'm mixing the seasons.

Rain too heavy to go out and pick a couple of daffodils for the table, so the Easter cactus played their part. The rain seems to have stopped, though a lot of local roads are closed still. The tire arrived at the door last night, so when the roads are open, I can get it installed.

Meanwhile, I've got out my collection of copper and steel wire, ready for whenever the pinloom arrives. I have some ideas.

The weaver in wire also has a YouTube channel, following on our notes the other day 

 Are you up for a Haggard Hawks puzzle?

Happy day, everyone, our sun just came out, hope yours did in some sense, too.

Trying morning, then Textiles and Tea improved things

 

The day didn't start auspiciously. Cleaners expected today, to clean and take any artist-made books they liked from the pile I left out, before I offer them elsewhere. 

So I set off for the library, to be out from under foot, pouring rain. And on the way there in traffic, loud alerts, flashing screens, thumpety-thump, limped into the library parking lot, nearest safe stopping place, and found I had a flat tire.

This changed my plans a bit. Gary came to the library, and the rescue, with jack, tools, knowhow, still pouring rain, pointed out my wheel had a theft proof lock on it. Asked me for the key. Key? No idea, didn't even know wheels came with keys. 

So he rummaged in my glove box and found a little purse thing with a little tool thing in it, which evidently was the key. There, unknown to me,  for the four years I've been driving it.

He changed the tire heroically, still pouring rain, and we drove home, my car still emitting all kinds of loud alerts and flashing screens. He then tried driving it, surmised that the computer was upset over the new wheel, maybe just a reset needed. 

We the took two cars to a favorite local garage of his, left mine with the old tire, and a request to check the brake system since that was one of the alerts flashing on the screen, and came home. 

Later we got a call, verdict: brakes okay,  tire no use, shredded, come collect my car, get a new tire, garage man would install it. So the part of the afternoon I thought I'd be at the knitting group, was spent here with Gary drinking tea, figuring out the right tire, and ordering it online. This will come to about $200 by the time it's done. Sigh. 

The good news came later with

on Textiles and Tea, a weaver and sculptor in wire, mainly 28-gauge, in  various metals. That's the gauge I used in copper and brass, back when I knitted components for mixed media artworks. 

Look at some of her marvelous pieces

this was a statement about the dying coral reefs, from several years ago, left the healthy reef, right the bleached skeleton.

She also incorporates dyed felt and roving

And she's written a book

She's a true teacher. She had mentioned experimenting with wire weaving on pinlooms, which got my attention right away, and I put up a thank you for the instant epiphany: that's what I need to do next. 

Whereupon she got back and said she had some useful thoughts, and I should be in touch. Which I will be, wheeeee!! The day took a sudden upward leap!

I'd just been talking with Gary about how I needed to shed art and other stuff from around me because it stopped forward movement, and an hour later this new combination of past work in wire suddenly came together with upcoming work with a pinloom.  

I think it's the space from moving on from the art work friend G took, and the couple of artist books I think the cleaners accepted. It leaves breathing room for future work. I'm very thrilled that I've found a new/old direction.

Here's where the work lives, now.

and a much better selfie, taken by G. I'm five foot two, barely, and I tower over her! I feel tall around her.

So there's today, and a full one it was. Posting tonight because tomorrow is about Easter, finally, and I'll be occupied eating candy and other nutritious Easter fare.

Happy day everyone, I hope your highs are high and your lows only moderate.

April showers

 I expect the daffodils are liking this. The people not so much.

A couple of people have been wondering recently about online places for or by older women, where the news is not always front and center.

I like YouTube channels Sixty and Me, The Last Homely House, and Silver and Solo. They're calm, interesting and happy women, all very different, one in Switzerland, one in northern England, one in BC.

I do like media literacy, also funny younger women, so for that  there's Meredith Constant on YouTube and Tiktok, and I follow podcasts, such as Rachel Maddow, The Daily Fail, also hilarious self help, not the news, in How to be Fine.

There's also a lovely new YouTube channel by craftsman Anthony White, Ants Country Life, so peaceful watching a woodworker and craftsman rebuilding dry stone walls, and things like building sheds in his country location in Northumberland, UK. 

He also works on Kate's place, building a cabin in Last Homely Garden, another lovely channel, offshoot of the Last Homely House. There she works on all kinds of fiber crafts and quiet domestic occupations.

And there's always Atomic Shrimp, endlessly enterprising, making, gardening, experimenting, foraging, beach walking, cooking.

So there's some nice alternatives to gloom and doom and fear mongering. You're welcome!

White rabbits, pancakes, and soup

Yesterday, way back in March, white rabbits,  I  found a great recipe, which I adapted, of course, for chickpea flour pancakes and spicy vegetables. I learned that you need to have thought of this earlier, because you need an hour to get the batter to hydrate fully. 

Here it's broccoli stems, peeled, diced, with onions, garlic and Serrano peppers, hot sauce, lovely spicy mix with a contrast of the pancakes. 

See how the hydrated mixture bubbles nicely in the pan. Yessss.

you're suppose to enclose the veggies in the folded pancake, but I liked them separated like this. Dessert was yogurt and cane sugar, great follow on for spicy lunch.

Then, since no Easterly things are happening till Wednesday, I was free to make soup, first making the stock, and baking a butternut squash, ready to scoop and dice and add. Also carrots.

And plenty of chili powder, some salt, quite a bit of milk.

Here's spicy cream of carrot and butternut squash soup. It's one of the better soups I ever made, really good. And there are six more helpings to go. Slice of toast broken into it like easy croutons, so good.

I also wove while I listened to more Ken Follett, that book is going on and on. It's like a part time job. It's good, and I don't think I'll take in another very soon.

I'm liking how this is coming along. I have an actual real pinloom on order, thinking well, why not. Not an expensive plastic modern type, a vintage metal one. So it won't trigger more manufacturing, and will eventually be biodegradable. And other such rationalizing.  That's a strength ;)