The Recorder Society gets it on!

Yesterday was the annual day long workshop of our Recorder Society, where great conductors come and run sessions for amateur players like me, well, better than me, all day long, great fun, great meeting up with old friends you only see at this event, experts on hand to sell music and instruments and advise on their care and feeding.  No playing in these pix, since I was too busy playing to make pix during workshops, so you just get a glimpse of the down time! 


On a completely different subject, go here to see what I was up to today at the Museum of the City of Trenton.  In heaven once again.  Nice weekend all in all.

Spring Equinox is knocking!

The daffodils are struggling to get through the ice and bitter winds and sleet to greet what is, officially anyway, Spring.  Happy Spring all.

Meanwhile back on the patio, I'm just sayin.....it's now Squirrels 4, Boud ONE ONE I tell you!  they have tried mightily with teeth and all four paws to wrench open the suet holder, with zero success. And as of today, a nuthatch and a couple of chickadees have been happily chowing down.

And it might be that a couple of mourning doves, who have been scouting out the plant hanger I put out in the hope of attracting a nest, might just move in.  I've seen them testing it out, sitting in it, flying in and out, and yesterday the male was out tugging out bits of grass, looks like a housing start it on its way.  I hope so.  They're wonderful neighbors, very calm. Even their babies are calm and will let you climb up and look without panicking.  We'll see.

This Means War! aka it's all about suet

The local squirrels and I have had a sparring relationship for years now, they determined to ravage all my attempts to feed local birds and encourage them to nest on the patio, and I trying all means known to deter them. The suet feeder is the current source of disagreement. I put out a block of suet and seed in the hanging thing, which snaps firmly shut.

At first they just ate from it like everyone else, then one day they figured out to to snap it open and let the suet fall down, and eat it there. Then they realized that this meant sharing with the birds, so they hauled the suet off to some hiding place, leaving the birds wandering around rustling in the leaves and looking for their suet treat, and wondering what had happened to the service at this restaurant. So I tied the hanger shut. And they learned to bite through any string or rope and open it etc.

 Then I wound paperclips around the locks and they learned to unwind them etc. then I wrapped a string artwork which was over with its hanging life, and soaked it in peppermint oil, hated by squirrels. They stayed away one whole day. Then they came back and bit and tore the string work off and made off with the suet.

Up to now it's Squirrels 4 Boud 0. So now I've put snap rings around the locks and we'll see if the squirrels hire a parrot or someone to snap them open....for now it's one day and the birds are still able to get their suet. We shall see.

Happy Pi Day, and hippo birdies Einstein, too

To get why this is Pi Day, you need to be in a culture which expresses the month before the day, so that March 14 reads as 3.14 etc. etc. etc. out to many many digits. The Dollivers are annoyed that I made soup instead of Pi today, but I explained I'm still using up the freezer veggies before the new season arrives. This soup is a wonderful mixture of cabbage, tomatoes, split peas, lentils, garlic onions and all kinds of interesting spices. It may be shared with friends, too.

Meanwhile, the Ds decided to write up a nice wish for Einstein whose birthday it is, or would have been, and to celebrate their mathematical knowledge of Pi. The i of friends got into the pi, but what's a lost eye among friends....

ou sont les livres d'antan....plaintive misquotation from Villon

Which really refers to the snows, not the books, of yesteryear.  In this case, a little expedition to the Cranbury Bookworm, for decades a destination of choice on wintry afternoon weekends, or warm weather before walking around the village, or any old excuse really, came to a skidding halt.

Turns out that after all these years, the building is to be sold, the owner wanting to retire, and the business has had to move down the street to tiny quarters, no resemblance to the huge and interesting building it used to house.  Still in moving progress, in both senses.

This was the scene, the Dollivers point out, of their very first photo shoot, and of many happy hours spent among old books, long ago when the building had an open staircase to the furnace, you could huddle in the warmth and read their magazines, in ancient comfy armchairs.  And there were two floors and a porch, all jammed with interesting items, artwork up the stairwell walls, and a general sense that anything might turn up.  And the modern day issues of the recession, small business woes, the introduction of the accursed ereader, and buying and selling via internet, all of today's reality, for better or worse, and this is for me, anyway, a sad result.  Oh well.  I did promise to go back to the new location

This is now, and the following were then:  

March of time, not sure if it's progress.  But then I wasn't ready to wave the old Bookworm, with its great parking, goodbye. But it occurs to me that the photshoot was of the only two Dollivers in existence at that time, three years ago..so maybe there's progress, if multiplying Dollivers can count as progress.

Music, amateur style

I've been busy in real life lately, what with one thing and a thousand others, but there's been time to play recorder with more than one group.  I have one that's more sociable than musical, old friends from decades back, and one that's seriously musical and friendly but not old friends. And then there's the big group, the official chapter of the Recorder Society, conducted by pretty much famous conductors, great learning.  And a daylong workshop coming up soon, a test of stamina among other things but a great reunion of friends in music, too.

Here are most of my family of recorders -- in size order from small to large, soprano, alto, tenor and bass. I also have a sopranino (that plays up in the stratosphere, like the bird sounds in Magic Flute) and a better soprano, wooden and handmade, lovely.  So this is all you need to have a full life in amateur music of the early medieval all the way to baroque eras.

My favorite is the Elizabethan  era, full of mournful songs of love gone wrong.  Very much like country western today, except then it's the man complaining that his woman done him wrong, leaving him to die of a broken heart.  After partying on for a few years, though.

Two certainties in life: Dollivers and taxes

That time again, and my federal and state taxes are done, all filled in, in ink, and waiting only for me to organize the money to send to them again.  I don't so much mind owing at the end of the tax season, since it means I didn't give a free loan of my money to the feds for them to graciously return it to me without interest. I've had the use of it, and now it's going to be theirs.

The Ds of course, not sure of my abilities in this area, insisted on checking all the instructions and wielding their mighty pen.  They  thought you wrote in and asked for money and nice people in Washington would say oh? how much? okay, your check's in the mail. I explained that it's actually the other way around.

I don't mind doing this stuff, have done my own taxes, and Handsome Partner's, too, in recent years, for many years, with all sorts of complications, including the NJ Inheritance Taxes,  the Homestead Rebate, the Senior Freeze, which leave the feds standing for complication, since they count income differently, have different exemptions, and well, it's a challenge.  Never one to run away from a challenge, me. I'm not too thrilled at the young neighbors kindly offering to do them for me, good as their hearts are, because this is an annual thing to just do, in order to feel you're part of the place, so to speak.

One of these fine days, when my brain cells start to age out, I'll get Handsome Son roped in, but for now, I'm fine managing my taxes and other inevitabilities.

Disregard strange emails!

My account was hacked, and I thank all the many people who let me know. Evidently, judging from the number of calls and emails I got this morning, my entire address book received a scam email involving Cyprus and wandering about wringing my hands over it or something! I am quite safe, in the usual place, just annoyed that all these nice people were bothered by a scam and some were quite concerned in case there might be something to it. Nope. But now that I've done the usual remedies,I have to rebuild my entire email contact listings, huge, which were all wiped, along with saved emails in the first half of the alphabet. Soooooo, be aware that unless you email me, I might not be able to be in touch. The Dollivers point out smugly that yarn don't crash, so I'm ignoring them.

The Dollivers organize a Valentine greeting

We Dollivers, and one visiting Annie, wish you all a happy Valentine's Day today in the southern hemisphere and tomorrow in the northern one. Boud has been under the weather for a few days, and we thought we'd better set this up ourselves. Well, we did our best to find red, and flowers and cards, and then we all fell down, and we started again, and then we thought, nah, we'll just stay down here and see if that works.

Boud wanted to know what heather was doing in there, and we explained,well, it's about friends and family and red, so she qualifies on all counts. As do all you blogistas out there!

Footnote from Boud:

I was down with a nasty virus, well, I don't know what would be a nice virus, which included scenes from the Exorcist, plus collapsing and doing a Hillary, hitting my head and every other bit that caught on something in the bathroom, but things are going better now, and will continue that way. Ribs still complaining, but I'm not any more. One of those illness where it comes on lightning fast,you think you're going to die, then you wish you could, then finally you're amazed you didn't. I couldn't believe I was baking then shoveling out my car from a foot of snow, humming happily, then stitching and then -- It Struck!

Happy V Day, it's about friends, and for antiV friends, it's about green nail polish!!

Hope Springs Eternal

Bitterly cold weather, dry and cutting winds, snow now and then, gah. Grey skies do me in. But there in the kitchen, reminding me that the days are lengthening even if I haven't noticed all that much, and the light is getting stronger, the begonias are singing and dancing and showing their best pink dresses. Yay.

Freeform Stitching by Free Women!

For the latest shenanigans, aka caper, of the embroiderers, go here

Stitch in Public Day! Stitchers Rule!

The first Saturday in February is the official national Embroiderers' Guild of America's Stitch in Public Day, when stitchers of all kinds explode on their communities with stitching, displays of finished work, and general encouragement to the public to come and watch and maybe decide to try their hands, and learn, or relearn, the art of embroidery. Today the Princeton Chapter of EGA went forth to preach and teach, and here we are, having a fine old time stitching and laughing and generally illustrating why we like doing this, and why you should all join us! Hospitality came from the Mary Jacobs Public Library of Rocky Hill, NJ, and their patrons who stopped by, admired, exclaimed, and maybe will join us at some time at our regular meetings. And here's us!

Well, there were more, and there was more work on display as the afternoon went on, but I got engrossed in talking and stitching and my photography kind of fell off a bit.

The Bells! The Bells!

Very cold weather followed by two warm days then high winds made an interesting walk by the pond this morning.  There were stretches of open water, driven by the wind under thin sheets of ice.  I noticed an odd clanging noise as I walked down`the path, like church bells in the distance,  and realized it was the music of water under the ice, bumping and flowing.  The sound changed as the wind did, and the sun changed the ice by the minute, so I think this was a shortlived performance of nature.  I was lucky to catch it.

One Snowdrop, Spring Everywhere

Here she is, the first snowdrop, blazing away all alone until her friends fight their way through the pachysandra to get some light and air.  Difficult week, old friend died two days ago, so this was a welcome sight this morning.

The Dollivers Celebrate a Glorious Twofer

Inauguration Day of an African American president, for his second term, showing it was no fluke the first time around, and Martin Luther King day both at the same time.  Martin must be singing happily in Heaven over this one!  well, a lot of us are.

Including the Dollivers, who have been patiently set up on their bleachers awaiting the parade for a while now.  Attempts to explain that the parade will not actually be coming up our street all failed, and the Annies joined them in their insistence that they are too part of the parade.  Ooooookay....and Elton has been thumping the ivories for ages, with all the best Sousa renditions, including the Washington Post March, and on to My Country Tis of Thee, and America the Beautiful, not to mention Oh, You Beautiful Dollivers.

They all insisted on wearing their fancy New Year's kit, with the addition of special hats, in honor of Aretha Franklin's iconic one, last time around.

Happy Day, Everyone!  from all of us to all of you.

Positively my final floor reno in this life

So today the house was under siege with the adventure of the Bedroom Floor Reno.  Positively the last reno I plan to do on this earth.  All my floors except the studio, over which I will draw a veil, just as well, too, have now been totally torn up and replaced and now look much better. This is a lifetime supply.

The cats were desperately trying the whole day to find hiding places from the Noises and the Big Men and the Machines as they transformed the old ghastly builder's installed "carpet" with a very good laminate.  As soon as they left, the Big Men, not the cats, a neighbor called to ask if he could come over and admire this evening and help me put stuff back.  Handsome Son is coming over anyway, so there'll be plenty of hands at work.  The cleaners come tomorrow so I need the place to be in neatish shape.  But they'll be pretty glad to see how much vacuuming they no longer have to do, I guess.  Stairs only now.

So here's the before, well, not the old carpeting, but the process

and the after.

Yay!

The Mad Hatter Strikes

So, after I had a nice pot of tea with the new Chinese, maybe, pot yesterday, I noticed that the tea tastes different from different pots, same tea, same procedures,flavor varies. Then I realized that I have yet another pot.  This is a lovely little clay one, which I'd had on the shelf for so many years just as a nice little artwork that I completely forgot it was a teapot.

So I tried it today, and found it makes a very good cup of tea.  And pours differently from the others.  This one rewards boldness, sending out a lovely arc right into your cup if you do it right.  Or all over the table if you approach it timidly on the grounds that it's full of boiling water.  Ask me how I know this.

The bamboo handle one pours very nicely, no challenges there, but the tea tastes sort of softer, less edgy and bright (note the technical terms, which I just made up).  And the other, blue and white Chinese one, authentic, from the Asian grocery, the start of all the trouble, both pours well and makes a good cup.

But I now realize I seem to have inadvertently stumbled into collecting teapots.  Me, the anti collector, the getter rid of things so adept that I do it for three different neighbors as well as Handsome Son.  Me, evidently in the throes  I believe that one pot is functional, two pots give you options and three pots form the nucleus of a collection which will take over every corner if I don't watch it.

You can tell that I'm losing this one, since I'm already worried about whether teapots are like elephants. I mean when people collect little elephants, figurines, that is,I don't know any collectors of the actual animals, at least not in this development, though my neighbors are no doubt very familiar with them back in Injah, where was I, oh yes, you're supposed to point all their little trunks to the nearest window so that they protect you, or keep the good luck in the house or something. 

Like hanging horseshoes up with the opening at the top, so the luck doesn't fall out.  Odd mixture of fantasy and literal mindedness in these beliefs, but anyway, I do need to know how these pots need to be organized for best household outcome, if any blogistas happen to know.

And I've just remembered that somewhere I believe I have a pewter teapot, part of a wedding gift, whose bamboo covered handle wore away with use, and rendered it difficult to use without third degree burns, but it's beautiful, and I bet I can lay hands on it if I try.  Oh dear.  Four pots is definitely a handbasket.

But I need to know about the spouts.

Score! indoors and out...

Grey, drab sort of weather, not very cold, no sunshine, oh well.  So I thought a trip to the thrift store was a good idea, taking in several sweaters I can part with, and seeing if there was anything nice there.

And there was.  A lovely little bamboo handle teapot, perfect condition, a cashmere Saks sweater, a quilted tote bag, also perfect condition, and a summer crocheted purse, not sure what the fabric is, but it's very like a bigger one I use for stitching projects, and that one is woven paper. 

And the young man at the counter lovingly wrapped the teapot in a Spanish language local paper.  An international experience, all in all, the bags from China and from somewhere in South America, the teapot with a Chinese, I think, imprint on the base, and the sweater from wherever cashmere grows.  After I've finished in here, I'm going to brew a pot of tea in my new pot.

Then once home, it was still so early, that I figured this was a good day for lugging and digging and generally manhandling stuff outside.  There are three cherry bushes out front -- you saw the giant harvest of about 15 cherries one year in here -- which sticks up annoyingly and doesn't fit the decor.  So now they are happily living on the patio where they will give me a bit of shade, since I won't prune them back all the time as I had to out front, and maybe some fruit, too, if I get there before the birds.

cherry bushes in situ before surgery

cherry bush during, while colleagues are being dug up
>

cherry bushes in new home on the patio Speaking of the birds, they have decided all this digging is the nicest thing I've done for them in ages, disturbing all kinds of insects and bugs and exposing seeds and other edible things. Anyway, they're out there in flocks digging and fussing away and having a lovely time.


> So now to make a pot of tea, with a nice warmed piece of hot biscuit, recipe from the Silver Palate, except no vanilla, all olive oil, much lighter, very good stuff.  And I'll browse through Nigel Slater's Diary cookbook, which is hysterically funny.  He tosses off comments such as "only two of us to feed today, just right for a pheasant"!!  Reminds me of Barbara Pym's comment about some male cooks seeing dining alone as a good opportunity to cook a small plover!!  Since Nigel seems to eat a lot of specialty food obtainable in the UK, including meat, which I don't do, this book may be strictly an anthropological adventure reading for me.  But he does have a couple of good things I might go for.  It's all good.

Witch Hazel maybe

This is what I found, not sure if it's witch hazel or not,but whatever it is, it's blooming in midwinter, and that's good enough for this blogger. I set the branches into a lovely cut crystal bud vase I rescued from the dumpster years ago, on top of some handmade old crochet cloths I acquired via freecycle, arranged on a stool I found in the dumpster. Beauty from discards!

Moving furniture and mountains

January is a low time of year for energy of all kinds, including the realization that I didn't even blog in here since last year, gah.

Forcing myself out to do things I'd scheduled, which, as often happens, turned out to be fun anyway despite my best intentions.  Sunday was an Embroiderers' Guild meeting, with a presentation from Karen Fynan on the trials and tribulations of qualifying for the Master Craftsman title of the national guild.  Many  stages and proofs of work and design requirements, and she brought the pieces from each stage she has completed to date, in the general area of surface embroidery.  To say the process is rigorous is putting it way too mildly. I think the documentation alone would do me in.  But her spirit is undimmed and her work is amazing.

I took pix for our newsletter, and had her permission to share on, so here are a few, showing the work members are involved in, too, since everyone brings stitching to every occasion, no matter what else is happening!  you will recognize the pillow I'm still plugging away at, and the same design but in a very different color combo, and a lot of other things, too. Notice that in one picture she's holding up the work that was a cover feature of the national magazine, Needlearts.  What I like about these pix is that they show the feeling of the meeting, very friendly and happy.  An antidote to Janblues.

Meanwhile back at home, I'm waiting for the floor covering to be in the store and a date for installation.  This gives me time to attempt to empty the two bedrooms to let the installers work.  Not easy.  So here's the hallway filled with the bookcases from one bedroom, and there are plans to stuff a lot of other items into the bathrooms at the last minute before they arrive, whenever that will be. Duncan always assumes that any pictures are about him, so he bragged about moving all that stuff himself.  It will be nice once it's done.  I keep telling myself that while I'm hauling stuff around and searching for things that already got moved and now I need them.

I think I'll go out and search for witch hazel today, take my mind off all this.