Great week of October weather and other good things

Here's how it's been this week 

Beautiful, and here's the beech tree, source of part of my fall fireplace arrangement.

And here's another 

Daylily foliage at the end of the season, natural sculpture 

And here's the fireplace arrangement, oak, beech and daylily stems.

This time of year the sculpture of flowers shows up 

Here's the Sweet William seed pods. I think flowers appeal to painters, the pods to sculptors.

And here's a draw I entered, four rare breed sheep,  roving items. 

I'm all  out of roving and this would be a wonderful reentry into spinning. I'll definitely let you know how it goes. I can buy some if, by some wrong chance, I don't win.

Thursday I met my new doctor; above is her waiting room with multipurpose tree.

I liked her a lot, very smart, very cheerful and we hit it off pretty well. She'll also set me up with a different endo in the same group, not the insulting one I refused to go back to. 

At that time she was the only endo in the group, but now there are more to choose from, also practicing in my town, in the same group, same Medicare acceptance.

While I was out, Misfits arrived

No apples nor potatoes, but I shall survive 

The green beans are processed and steamed as a side with the quiche which is still going strong.

The shrimp will not be defrosted in the fridge, unless in a container, after the debacle last time, not wishing to go through all the cleaning again.

I have plenty of yogurt to go with the blueberries in the freezer. I'm thinking of making chickpea crackers, also stew with diced tomatoes I already have. The dandelion greens will be frozen then maybe go into in the next soup.  The current one is still going.

Two red pears, not Starkrimson, but okay. Lovely unsalted butter, always unsalted for my choice, and parsley, it's been a while. And beautiful eggs, always good.

I have plenty of cheese, block, shredded and crumbled, so there will be that egg, tomato cheese bake on toast meal soon. It's been a while for that, too.  Better quality coffee beans, to try them out.

Today was about one neighbor visiting, with apple cake and future offer of three transplanted echinacea to be planted by Gary who doesn't know yet.

Then while she was still here, another, invited this time, neighbor arrived bearing flowers, for tea and banana bread.

In among all these I took a walk and made a video from which I took the still at the top of this post. 

We also had an odd sighting, in a week of total sun and low humidity, a rainbow.

Happy day everyone, I hope for all the good things for you, too.

Tuesday Mad Rush Day

No knitting group because Handsome Son drove me to the ENT to get my hearing and hearing aids retested. I'd been missing words and getting more tinnitus. 

When I called Monday I expected to be offered an appointment maybe December, but they had an opening Tuesday, I'm guessing a cancellation, so I seized it. I want medical appointments all done before winter.

Full hearing test later showed very slight loss compared to last year, but she changed out the tiny cables in the hearing aids and that fixed it all up. No need to see her again till next June.

The building her office is in was probably a seventies build, one story, glass roof, many plants, some growing in the ground left open when the place was built. Benches like an indoor park.  I like it as a doctor's building, seems very green and friendly.

I swiped this picture off a realtor's site, because I forgot to take pictures, but this is accurate.

Then home to the lunch HS had picked up for us, and a great chat before he left to get on with what was supposed to be his day off.

Then Textiles and Tea with yet another powerhouse of a weaver, painter, retired architect 

This bag is made of samples she wove, like knitting swatches, while planning big pieces. She learned leatherwork in order to make it!

 Here's a painting adapted to weaving on a TC2 Jacquard loom, computer assisted to enable the weaver to set up thousands of warp threads to create fine detail.

This is a 90 year old lady being joyful at the eclipse of the sun 

The blue and green garment is fully formed on the loom, no seaming, no stitching, just great design and flow. 

The piece is about New Orleans, and was designed to show there, hence the Mardi Gras bead motif. The occasion was HGA's 2026 Convergence in New Orleans.

This is award-winning yardage made in a very compressed time frame, a few days.  She's deciding what to make with it, open to suggestions.

 

Here's her planning for a complex piece 

And a realistic woven rendering of a painting.

She's thoughtful and did a great presentation. She dyes her own yarn, in addition to everything else.  Definitely worth going to her website for more.

I was just thinking about dinner after that when I had a sudden unannounced visit from two friends who used to be neighbors and were in the area that evening. 

That was great, a couple of the very few people who can drop in and take their chances and it's fine. 

We had a rapid exchange of news, and they admired and played with the stair lift, checked out the narrowband weaving on the table, then we did the required selfie before they left. 

They call themselves my pretend daughters, being HS' age, though friends of mine.  It was a great surprise and I was so tired when they left, but good. 

I didn't ask their permission to show the pic, so take my word for it: two vibrant and beautiful Indian women and a tired old white lady between them!  

One of them had moved away to reduce her work commute, and now her job has moved here. So the commute has reversed itself, and she tells me I'll be seeing her more often.

They'd parked right where they used to live, as if they'd never moved, just as a joke. I love these guys.

So that was Tuesday and today I'm recovering. So much peopling. Lovely, but I'm done for. Happy day, enjoy whatever ends up happening, often things we hadn't thought about.

Final bouquet maybe, FB, and tasks done

Saturday was one of those two-sleep times, up and active at 3am, back to sleep on the sofa, finally up late.  The last grasp of the COVID vax, with chills, complicated things a bit.

But I got a load of laundry done, this hemming finally finished

It's the linen panel I dyed and stamped and hung in the passthrough between kitchen and living room in summer. 

It blocks the western summer sun from shining in my eyes when I sit on the sofa, and blocks some heat, too. It's been waiting for hemming for about two years. One of those jobs that took about ten minutes in the end.

And I planted the bulbs for late spring blooming next year 

They're blue Jessie Starflower, and I'm hoping for a succession between daffodils and day lilies.

I finished my little weaving

Swept the downstairs. Took out the recycle and garbage. Took a pond walk. Observed yet more flowers blooming despite frost. 

Picked them for maybe the last little bouquet of the year 

Created a couple of brief videos including geese overhead

I seem to have done quite a bit on a day I'd thought was mainly sloth. 

Sunday was Big Quiche day. 

I have an easy way to reduce vegetables, such as spinach, seen here, or other leafy greens, to small bits. I freeze them then just pound the bag and the leaves shatter into tiny pieces. Fun, too, punching and working off frustration on innocent greens 

And here's the current reading, at least one of the books I'm deep into 

It's a very readable, fairly terrifying insider view of early Facebook. She was a young new Zealander, interested in working there, seeing FB as the political tool of the future, after working at the UN in back rooms on documents which seemed to achieve nothing.

She pretty much forces her way in, and is dismayed to find the principals, Z, Sandberg et al, clueless about the future, seeing FB only through the lens of a business model of endless growth and accumulating wealth.  

In some ways they're so narrow they're stupid.  In others they're like the characters in Gatsby, wealthy, uncaring, breaking things, doing anything that will increase membership numbers. 

They focus on communication with no interest in what's being communicated. The algorithm is king.  It's a documentary which reads like a horror story. But it's readable.

I have only contempt for Z and his products, but I'm reading because I need to know better what they are and why.

Happy day, everyone, do/build/weave/cook/video/read all the things. Or maybe just postpone them, life's short.

,

Soup's up and the bathroom's done

It's soup weather and I made a pot of soup with all the vegetables, plus vegetable broth, flavored with Better than Bouillon, smoked paprika, turmeric, cumin, lemon juice, salt and pepper. It's very good. 

Chickpea, mushrooms, spinach, kale, carrots, potatoes, chives, onion and garlic. I think that's all the veg spectrum in a bowl.

And Contractor Mike finished up the bathroom, which, newly painted, partly tiled, bathtub in use now, is so much better.

That insert in the wall is one Mike installed years ago at my request. It pops out and gives access to the plumbing behind the shower in the other en suite bathroom.  I also had him create a couple of other access panels like this, to save sledging walls in a plumbing emergency.

The bathtub is officially open 

Here's the insert, ready for use. See how low the step is, very useful.

And here you see how he hung the shower curtain to hang low enough to catch splashes.

He did a lot of detail work, new door hinges and switch plates, new caulking round tub, toilet, door, vanity. He kept finding just one more thing to improve before he finally declared it done. He's a meticulous craftsman.

And to our payment meeting, he brought homebaked pumpkin bread and a hot baked sweet potato. He's the family cook and we snapped tips and hints while doing business.

Someone commented yesterday on how lucky I was to afford the changes in the house. Hm. The more frugal I am, the luckier I get.  

I've been saving for years for this. Then all the savings were wiped out when I had to replace the heat pump at the condo. 

I started saving again. Then I applied the proceeds from selling the car to this end, and all's well. More planning and saving than luck, I'd say.  But it's all good. If it looks effortless, that's fine.

Yesterday I found this little guy waiting to either get indoors or be stepped on. 

I moved him to safety and hibernation. 

And here's a glimpse of the kind of passing scene I love, created by early morning sun.

My fall and winter project arrived, from Gina B Silkworks, UK. I had pictures but removed them when I read the small print. She's had design theft, so I respect her patent. She has a YouTube channel if you want to see.

Tiny acrylic looms for creating woven leaf shapes.  I had thought of making them from cardboard, then decided it was better just to get the real thing and buy from an artisan. 

So watch this space. The little woven pouch I started will be finished soon. And these new tiny products are portable for the knitting group when I get there.

Happy day everyone. This about sums up where I am just now

 

Textiles and Tea, Misfits, Knitting group, third party Freecycle

I made it to the knitting group this week, bringing my new portable weaving.

M brought her wheel and was spinning some bluefaced Leicester and silk roving. I made a video for the YouTube channel which caught her explaining the process. 

Here's my new little weaving, a seamless pouch for my phone. The loom is the side of the box my Ashford loom clamps came in.

You see how you weave round and round to make it a seamless tube.

Such talent in this little group. Chat fell into many tributaries rather than group, for various social reasons.

Home again for Textiles and Tea with high energy 

She's an English woman, former professional oboeist, now wildly creative weaver and teacher, currently based in southwest France, in this great studio/teaching space 

 Here's her latest book, full of fearless ideas and philosophy 

Behind her are stalactite forms woven in a variety of threads including paper

She pursues seemingly impossible results and gets them. When she teaches, she limits the group to two or three so as to give maximum attention to each person's journey. 

I asked her if high jinks pretty much summarized her life and adventures and she cheerfully agreed that was a fair assessment.  I've rarely seen a happier more joyful worker, who tackles steep learning curves with total energy. 

Meanwhile back on earth, Wednesday saw me in the cardiologist office 

Shortly before being seen by a procession of nurses, nps, and the cardio, all of whom told me I was doing well and needed an annual ultrasound, or something, come back in two weeks. 

I notice my doctors now all have a walker at the scale, good thinking. Stepping onto that wobbly platform is a fall waiting to happen.

Then Misfits arrived so early today I never saw the driver, being upstairs getting dressed.

A couple of items were out of stock, dandelion greens and salty chocolate mix. Too bad about the greens.. 

I ordered a couple of starkrimson pears, of one of which I gave a sample slice to contractor Mike, who made a note. He and his wife are once again eating healthier, so he was glad to learn about a pear he'd never had.

The carrots are partly cooked for future quiche purposes, with the rest of the kale and maybe mushrooms from the freezer.

This is why I stocked up on the various cheeses. They're not in stock often, so I seized the day. Lunch may be a tuna melt, haven't had that in a while.

The strawberries will accompany the favorite yogurt, now back in stock. And maybe a smoothie or two involving bananas. Black beans to go with other pulse foods in the house. 

The bathroom is almost complete, soon to be usable again. I'll be glad to get my house back. I haven't seen so many people in years, more than I need really. 

The knitting group, all the doctor personnel, Handsome Son, who's always welcome, contractor Mike, neighbor who brought over a fall chrysanthemum, on and on.  My social cup is overflowing and I need recovery time. 

I put up a "spotted locally" Freecycle notice about this bicycle 

I know little about bikes, but I see the chain is rusty and needs attention. Maybe someone will want to rehab it.

Happy day everyone, well done, Alberta,  and everyone keep pushing for the good people. Most countries are in a right wing wave just now, and resistance is required, sez Ted and Big Ursy and Pony and Ursula