a few photos

 

goat out in the fenced in yard on a very cold morning

she is peeking out from behind the tree 

two dogs out there, too - but you can't see them laying down in the sun in the leaves

an elephant flower pot Mark made on his 3D printer, but he wasn't sure it would hold up to soil and water.  I'm not sure what else to use it for, but it is cute.  That is a tote bag I am crocheting in the background in the box

seared pork with lots of spices on it, and some zucchini added at the end, if I use a sharp knife and cut the meat up into shreds, I can eat it.  The zucchini wasn't quite done enough to mash, but I was able to eat some of it.

 

another picture of the same little goat from about a month ago, she is totally blind in one eye and can see some light in the other, she wasn't supposed to live past a few months old - they didn't think she could get past weaning onto solid food etc.. but she is over four years old now
 

Our unconventional Christmas tree, because when we had the hvac installed this summer the stand went missing and we cannot find it.  Didn't let it stop us - Mark and Esme both said 'Australian Christmas' without hearing the other one say it.  This is the same little tree and ornaments we have had forever, and it is on a switch so I can turn it off at night.

 

Finished Objects trickling down

 crochet cat / kitty toy  

(Available: mariemeyer.etsy.com )

'whale shark' woven sketchbook and pens pouch

I was working on keeping my mind off other things, so I started finding things that needed some work on them.

on the finishing table : crochet orange / yellow / gray striped rug (just have to tie up ends)

in progress : pink cat and grey sheep small knit toys (might be a bit on those)

rabbit rabbit it's August

 

Library books, probably won't finish them but there is a chance I'll read them, the one on the right is about Paris, and magic, but the text is on the small side.  The center one is about a Native American community, and the library has the sequel out which made me go see if they had the first one.  The one on the left was on sale for two dollars and the premise is quite scary and intriguing (future, one child per family, identical twins and mother died, father made an elaborate ruse in her memory to appear as if there was only one daughter and now the daughters are older and trying to figure out how to go on when they only have one identity and fear of death on discovery).  But, now that I own that one - however intriguing it is, I will look at the other two first since they are two weeks loan.

 

our local library had such cute children's decorations I had to take a picture of it - mushroom window, waterfall in the back (out of streamers) and paper chain tree leaves on a column made to look like a trunk (complete with owl)

we had donated a lot of coleus one day after a farmer's market trip - and they put some out front in planters :)  We were so glad they were loved

the community garden raised beds were full of interesting plants

 

Also, little chicken did not improve, and I think perhaps she also had a fractured bone in her leg that had actually caused the other problems and was the reason she could not improve even with warm baths and eye-dropper feeding.  There wasn't anything else we could do for her, and she wasn't eating and barely drinking.  Esme was sad, but we did what we could - cleaned up all the care things this morning and then I continued and cleaned out some garden beds and the dry goods pantry - trying to sort my brain out, by sorting what is in front of me ie ie....  I hate losing one, even when there are twenty - and twenty was a bit much for us, but when you buy them small you almost expect to lose several - and we were lucky in that we raised all of the last batch to adulthood and hadn't lost any of the batch before (which we had also expected).  We let them have as long of lives as they can, whether or not if they are laying eggs keeping up 'production'.    At the same time we don't do anything elaborate, like the heated houses that look better than doghouses that I see, or go out and spend hours with them every day as I see online as well.  We will give them greens and vegetable cuttings and make sure they have layer feed twice a day and clean water, and collect the eggs - that's a pretty good life for a chicken, especially around here.

Knitting a little this morning, going to go take a look at that crochet bear or cat I was working on.  Doing laundry and sweeping and wishing I had more energy to go further and deep clean other things but the pantry did need it.  I want to 'make it better' on a lot of little things but the little things add up.  That is good - because they should add up to better, but they also add up in exhaustion, so a little at a time, easy does it et al.  And I washed one of the dogs, she is always so sensitive she was begging me to give her another bath.  She hasn't quite figured out how to distinctly ask for a bath - but I've been getting more signals from her a few times lately and trying to see if we can get an actual trained signal.    I finally studied amigurumi stitches and see what I'm doing that makes the weave not tight enough - will see on the next if I can correct that.  We do plan, at least Esme and I, to go sell at the market this afternoon, and then we need groceries tonight or tomorrow.

Doing French at the high-grammar level, Chinese at the lowest level when the French grammar annoys me, and Spanish on my phone although that is a higher grammar level as well and I might have to switch down to something else there for a little bit, as well.

bits

 

I should be sleeping, but woke up to check on the chicken downstairs in the garage, and now I'm still awake two hours later.  I have a luncheon date later today with a post office colleague, which was set up three weeks ago but had to be cancelled.  We're going to the Chinese buffet but hoping to try out their adjoined Sushi bar since the other restaurant I like to get sushi at is strangely closed on Tuesdays.

(Above : Lyffan, sleeping by my computer - she woke up and stared at me intensely when I sneezed earlier!)

The sick chicken is still drinking, but I followed the instructions on a site and gave her a ten minute soak in warm epsom salt water yesterday, and she actually hasn't been quite as happy since then.  So, I'm not sure - She isn't eating anything - just drinking, and standing up and moving a few steps, but not running around.  We gave her a good look over - all three of us, and couldn't see any external damage or anything obvious except where she had lost some feathers with the yuck that had been on her (that we washed off).   I stopped putting her in the cage and just left her in the kiddie pool because she isn't moving around much and I wanted to reduce the stress of putting her in and out of the square opening in the cage.  

I put 'electrolytes and vitamins' in the water I was giving her, and she is trying to drink out of it all by herself when I'm not there (drinks much more I think when I squeeze the bottle for her right there, but Mark says that is a false observation) - so I might try to find a better way to set up the waterer for her later.  There is food right there available for her, but she hasn't even tried to take any out of my hand since yesterday morning, and that was just one piece.  Really, I'm just not sure she is going to make it - I needed to get to her sooner and Esme told me yesterday that she had been 'broody' and not wanting to get off her nest for several days, so maybe she had been without food and water holed up in the house longer than we realized.  It's so hard sometimes when you have twenty of them to notice some of the less obvious things you'd notice more if you only had a handful.

I finished the second blue crochet bag - and a few dishcloths, and am thinking about making a few toys in a simple style that I saw and liked.  But I said that yesterday and I knit another dishcloth to finish up the yarn I had - so we'll see.  I took a try at making a stand for the bags out of some things I have - pvc pipe and a wreath ring - but will have to keep working at that, it needs a more stable base.  I've been looking at a lot of yarn online - so many different kinds unlike anything I have, but I'm not willing to buy any of it sight unseen, especially.  

recipe : olive oil, frozen white onions, half a tomato, soy sauce (2 caps), garam masala, about 1/4 tsp or less, brought to a sizzle, add about a 1/3 cup of water, brought to a boil - then added a chunk of the jasmine brown rice that had been cooked yesterday : Esme said it was good, not too strong of spice (Minerva was drooling by my elbow the entire time I was eating), but the rice was 'chewy', not bad, but different  we had the same rice in a fried rice with egg yesterday and she hadn't noticed the chewiness then, but it was only a few hours cooled off and not in the fridge all night - I'm still evaluating whether I need to buy some biryani masala, this was pretty good this way

Still doing mostly French - touched into Chinese.  Played the meadowlands ranch (in the Stardew Valley game) up to the end of Spring - about to build the barn.  I was in the second year on the other game before I decided to try that - somehow I always start over more interested in trying some other method etc. 

bits of smurf, plants and rocks

 

 

I didn't even sleep until 5:30 this morning.. and I can't say it was a specific dog or chicken noise... it just was, and it was morning, and I was awake.  It was 5:23 and I turned off my 5:30 alarm.  And then I puttered around until 8:30 to feed the chickens!

I made curry rice and egg, and drank two pots of coffee (12 cuppers), and potted two houseplants, took pictures, and did the dishes, and some laundry, watered the gardens and worked on this bag, and French, and Danish, and Russian.  I still need to do something on my mobile Duolingo.  I looked at art supplies, and yarn, and plants online, and a few other things.  It just makes me want to use what I have all the more... although some Italian sketchbook paper did catch my eye enough.  The paper I currently have is so bright white that sometimes it annoys me.

begonia plants

the begonia cuttings we had ordered came, after being lost for TWO days in the mail (misdelivered) and we were a bit unhappy, not with the seller, but I told her we'd give them every chance we could and if they don't bounce back she said to let her know.  This was the picture Mark took right after he opened it.  When I came home after work Esme said 'That package finally was delivered, although it didn't turn out well...'   She and Mark put them in pots and in the room with the other begonias and we can see if they do anything.

 

 

apparently, I'm a penguin

I have rocks in my pockets, my wallet, my purse, on my desks, and in numerous dishes and drawers...

Amanita type mushroom (poisonous, of course)

I succeeded at making a 'dog joke' today, when I told Charlotte not to eat that, just because I was taking a picture of it.  She 'said' to Daphne beside her something on the order of 'sheesh, humans / can you believe she said that?'  and Daphne must have 'said' something that I didn't catch entirely as she was looking the other way towards Charlotte - and then Charlotte 'said' 'LOL oh you made a joke!' to me.  

  

spider plant

 I checked the umbrella plant - it's almost ready, but not quite.  The roots are just beginning to be tiny hairs on it, and I need to change it's water and hope it gets some good light for another few days.  BUT - as I was doing that, there were several little spider plant babies (this is one, just one! - and then I put two smaller ones in another pot together) that had fallen down behind the shelf and I clipped them and gave them pots.

textile play

just playing around with textile stuff - again, not sure what I might actually get done or not, but it's a journey and I do like the processes.  I usually find a use for whatever I end up with... sooner or later.

 

 

 

It is about 8 inches across and could perhaps weave something 3 times that in length when it is finished - we'll have to see.  I do like knowing what kind of dimensions I can get out of a setup.  I've saved that somewhere else for the other looms.

Took Esme out to town for breakfast, and library, chicken feed and grab groceries on the way home.  We also stopped in a thrift store and she chose a small sweater with lots of cables on it - and I picked up another picture frame to do more experiments in weaving on, but this one I didn't want to go through all the wrist-breaking action of putting screws in it right now, so I warped it up as it was with a 'pull over' warp that can be woven twice the length of the frame if pulled over the top once the one side is woven.  I've also been playing with the crochet techniques for the thread - although I'm using some 15-20 year old embroidery thread that we had bought on a closeout and I've never gotten to using too much of in the past.

 

I work again tomorrow, and Friday and Saturday and Sunday again after that.  But it was nice to get out for a girl's morning again, to break up the sit at our screens all day that we otherwise end up getting sucked into.

 

Mark is making dinner with the groceries we bought, after installing his new printer parts and getting that working doing what he wanted again.

 right now, the weaving is reminding me of this - a whale shark, but I'll get a little further up in a minute and start working on the red stripes - I really like this look, but I'm worried that the other grey yarn I have is not a perfect match, and I want to break it up a little with other colors so that doesn't matter quite so much

Notes : 7.5 inches wide, 4 inches gray (undetermined length, spare stash ball of yarn), 25 handwraps red to start next color

work weekend

my work weekend extends to Monday this week - and it will probably be a long day... still just working on a few things here and there, want to do more yarn work, crochet, weave or knit - but I don't have a lot of energy after doing other things - water garden, feed animals, cook dinner (often they make their own but then I'm still poking around finding something for me and asking if anyone else wants something) and doing laundry.. I've also fallen asleep for three hours a day nap several days in a row here because the heat really gets to me out on the route, come home, drink and eat, and then try to work on language but end up drifting over and going to sleep until actual dinner time, feeding animals etc.

Am at about 40% on the A1 Russian course I've been taking.  It says I've been working on that for six weeks now.  My Cyrillic reading is doing much better, and I can understand the Bulgarian things I was trying to learn a little better.  It sends me a daily word in Cyrillic and often I can read it and guess what word it is before I click it and look at the picture and hear it.   And yet, Russian sounds so much like Czech in so many places, which helps - because I have gotten pretty far along in Czech over the past few years.  Playing babadum vocabulary though, I realize how limited the vocabulary I've learned is - lots of grammar words and verb words, but a limited amount of nouns - and that needs some extension that babadum is perfect for.  I've stalled a bit on the Latvian and Lithuanian just because I haven't had as much time and have been tired with the heat.

Mark has been working on a Scrabble type word game player that pulls word lists from multiple languages and can play the words.  He's talking a lot about statistical linguistics and occurrence and distribution of alphabet characters in the word lists ... I get some of that, but when he gives me the word lists I'm looking for meaning first.   I've been able to recognize his word lists of Welsh, French and Czech, and some Romanian (although fewer of the words that his program pulled up were ones I knew there).  I am quite interested in him making a Czech spelling set for me, and maybe Greek and Cyrillic as well, but he wants to do this first so he knows how many of each letter is required for every language.  Also, reminder to myself that he is waiting for a replacement part for his printer, so he's working on this while he's waiting for that.  For study, I've been doing mostly French, Russian and either Czech or Spanish lately, a little Greek thrown in.


the main profile on Duolingo

French        L 25 XP 51194 21194 XP beyond Level 25
Welsh          L 25 XP 30004 4 XP beyond Level 25
Spanish       L 23 XP 25020 +980 XP to next level
Japanese     L 19 XP 14335 +665 XP to next level
Czech          L 19 XP 13734 +1266 XP to next level

Romanian    L 17 XP 11143 +857 XP to next level
Portuguese  L 16 XP 9632 +868 XP to next level
Italian          L 15 XP 7625 +1375 XP to next level
Greek           L 14 XP 7141 +359 XP to next level
German        L 14 XP 6046 +1454 XP to next level
Finnish         L 13 XP 5515 +485 XP to next level
Catalan (es)  L 12 XP 4052 +848 XP to next level
Swedish        L 11 XP 3689 +211 XP to next level
Russian         L 11 XP 3299 +601 XP to next level

 I downloaded a two dollar pattern with a lovely crochet camisole in it (among other things).  I don't know if I can ever finish something like this - although, without a pattern, once upon a time, I had started one.  I normally find the typical crochet threads itchy to wear - but I hold out some hope that I can find something that would wash well and not be itchy.

link for later, similar creature and a good blog to revisit : https://www.crochetology.net/2015/05/camisole-exercise-no-1.html

It's been a long week, she said on Tuesday

 Denoxii conlang

 the days this week have added up - headed to bed here in a minute but as my head hit the pillow I thought I could try to make a little drawing, by starting to write something simple in Denoxii, and then seeing what wanted to fill in around the edges.  I put a few more rows on this shawl thing made out of the slightly stretchy fine yarn I had found on clearance a few years ago, and never found a good way to use.  We'll see how it works - I am thinking of switching between the two colors because I only bought one of each skein. (but it's hard, because this skein is so pretty, actually, worked up)

Addition : I have not continued the book I got from the library - I should bring it into work today (Wed, June 19th), and read it before we start the package run.

One of the other weird things I often say is 'donnes craw se vee'(phonetically) and in my head it looks like donc cru se fi  which in Welsh/French patois would be something like 'it's so rude (raw) to me'?   or is it donnes as in 'giving me' and means something like 'its giving me a hard time' ... because that is how I use it - like when the hose drops from the holder right after I begin to walk away, or I nearly drop something twice, catch my foot on some netting in the garden that I was being certain to avoid... and it also comes out naturally, quicker than any English ..  I know when Esme was younger I used to say the 'da se nay' (with the nay very strong and 'thrown down') (and Esme still says it!) in this circumstance as well, and that was picked up from Futurama we were watching a lot Amy Wong says that whenever things go wrong or she doesn't agree with something.

yarn and thread

 

So, is it madness or patience?  I tend to think, only based on what others say about it - that you have to perceive time on a different scale to work with yarn, weaving, crocheting, knitting, oh especially spinning then doing one of the above.  I didn't spin this - but I am crocheting it because I have thought about what it might be like when it is done.  It is forever time wise away from being done, so much infinite perhaps that it might not be completed, in fact, the probability (as so many knitters know with unfinished objects) is that it will not be done.  But yet, we begin, and often, we persist.  Is it madness or patience?  

Same with gardening.  Perhaps, with my learning languages without having any useful place to use them.  But I take a 'sense of cadence'? could it be a 'zen'?  from making something -for myself*- that takes a long time, and from checking on plants every day and eeking them along - from learning more again and again on ten different languages round and round and round the spiral.  It is like making hash marks on the stone wall except sometimes, you get to hold the object, or behold the plant, or understand the sentences in a foreign book or movie - and say 'hey, if I hadn't started this - I wouldn't be here now, using/admiring my persistance.'

So yes, a bit of both.  I still recall the (seriously different than me) lady who said I must be so bored to sit and knit an item - don't you have anything else you want to do.  Not that will become this, through me, and I will use literally for years etc...

I put on my little blue bolero thing the other day - one of those things made like this, out of fine blue yarn in a net foundation, with gold thread crocheted along the edges - and it has kept well over the past what.. nine? years, holding together, and being a pretty piece of clothing.  And there are a lot of things like that.  And if I hadn't started them, they wouldn't be something I have to use now.  And yet, we can't guarantee that we will finish things - we can't bank on the persistence part - so much could happen, and yet.. we start. And that depends deeply on who we are, what we value, how we reflect.  All of it.

//We shopped early early and it was already hot when we got back.  I did some watering in the garden and planted more seeds.  We planned to go out to a farmer's market today and get some produce.  It has started to rain a bit now, but we'll see what happens with it.  Mark has some alphabet and language stuff he wants me to look at - I made him a Czech list of 8,000 words, but he wanted 3 million, so he found some spell checker that has every form of every word in it.  I still like my 8,000 word list - it has a lot of useful words I didn't know all of, and could use for myself at the very least.  I did French and Spanish today, and a lot of Czech vocab, and need to finish out my Russian lesson.  Then I work the next two days.

*and yet, I have found that often, for others, I do not persist like this -- art projects, or specifically requested things that I did not want to make (because when I want to make it anyway, or made it and then give it away, it was the journey that was the reason for it, not the end point).. and the difference is in  because perhaps we never know how they will value it, and then when we do not have it later - that time is gone, but when we do have it, and use it, the time is still captured ... planting the orchard of trees that you may never see fruit from for years, means something different on another person's property when the chance to see them even if you live that long reduces nearly to nil by giving it away?  Sometimes though, we still persist on those - and that is why knitted and handmade gifts made with intention are special.//philosophy

where the cabinet was

 

oh, the bits...  this had been a cabinet that had been there, screwed to the wall and full of flotsam, since Esme was a baby - it used to hold her baby clothes, once upon a time....  and today I demolished it with my vacuum cleaner, well.. 'our' vacuum cleaner because I really don't like the thing, but it seems to be the style we always end up with *sigh*  

Other bits : doing Welsh on the whiteboard, heading up some of the grammar and spelling mistakes both that I keep making.  Also, now trying to find places to put the things (many of them keepsakes) that had been in that cabinet, regular cleaning and this 'advanced cleaning'.. that other shelf is also screwed to the wall, but intact, and I can never clean behind it adequately and so often don't try too hard *sad* but there had been a flight of carpenter ants that came through a crack in the wall right THERE and fell down to the floor under the cabinet, and I was trying to pull it out just enough to clean behind/under it.. and it was screwed to the wall until it WASN't... and then the plastic bits actually shattered, so it is off to the curb (which here means the dump, eventually, after it sits in the garage for a week or so)

I should make more madeleines - but I got into this, and I'll probably skip it today and just keep cleaning some odd things, doing language, and then clean myself up and make dinner instead.

Here is a bag I made while we watched the Librarians this week - it was meant to be a rug and it had so many joins I put them all on the inside and made it a bag for carrying apples and peppers and soforth  - I'm also working on a blanket sort thing in orange and grey with a yellow stripe in it.  I really didn't like the yellow when I first put it on, then it got softened by the other colors again, and I like it a lot.

catch up

I'm tired, there has been one long week of working mostly every day between last post and this, and more... it will be good when the paycheck comes but it was exhausting while it was happening.  Everything is expensive, and Mark is worried that by the end of the year we'll be short again because I've had to get both vehicles serviced (one is in now, the other one will go in after the first is fixed) I've been trying to get more of a focus on everyday expenses, because groceries and gas just keep going up..   Last year we got cornered into a very bad vehicle repair from another mechanic than the one we usually use - and that set us up badly with the increasing fuel and grocery bills.  **still thinking on all of that**  But I've done some things in the past few weeks, some might call it just edging myself along.

 

Bread (the same kind, that Mark and Esme like to eat) was 1.79 in 2021, now it is 3.19 Gasoline has followed the similar trend.  Everything else has gone up proportionately.

Drawing : did a lot of drawing here and there - with some new pens and pencils, and to try to draw a plant sale we went to, and a thing that happened on a postal route.

the plant sale, my daughter on the right, my mother-in law in the black pants

this was at a farm not far from ours

the White squirrel situation - something that happened on one my postal routes I covered - a white squirrel was sitting in the road and there was a cat stalking it - I could not get my phone to cooperate to take a picture, and the squirrel saw the cat and my oncoming traffic and took off up a tree

 

I found some Zebra gel pens (which I've had a pack of before, they come in interesting colors) and also Zensations (also from Zebra) mechanical colored pencils - I picked up a couple of each to try them out.  Below, is another page drawn with the same tools

I used to cover all of my sketchbook pages in drawing montages like this...

Baking : baked madeleines with the lemon zest in them, and that was very good.  Made an egg-heavy crepe like thing today as well with four eggs, half as much flour and a bit more lemon zest in it, and it was good, as well.  Made a 'leftovers' soup with fresh carrot and split peas, beans and rice hotdish, chicken boullion, green onions and peppers -it looked like refried beans when it was finished, but it tasted wonderful, and I served it with some noodles and a tortilla.

 

lemon madeleines

1/2 cup butter (1 stick) softened to nearly melting

beat with 3 eggs, vanilla and 1/2 cup sugar, 3 tbsp brown sugar - 3 minutes 

add some lemon zest and a small amount (less than 1 tsp) of lemon juice

1 cup flour, 2 tsp baking powder, salt, beat to combine

less than 1 tablespoon of batter in madeleine shells brushed with butter

375 degrees, 10-12 minutes, do not flip

(I made a cream cheese version two weeks ago, too - and it was very good - 1/4 container cream cheese, and I think it took a little milk and extra flour to make it right)

 

crepe like thing

4 eggs, 1/2 cup sugar, some vanilla, 1/4 stick (1/8 cup? melted butter, cooled before adding), lemon zest and small amount of lemon juice  beat by hand in bowl

add 1/2 cup flour, 1 tsp baking powder, some salt, stir up well, should be gloopy but stick to the fork - get a measuring cup for pouring it into the pancake pan

fry on hot buttered pan, flip once

leftover soup

about 1/2 cup of bean, rice and green-chile hotdish ( I make this sometimes for myself and have some leftover usually)

1 large carrot, peeled and chopped

1 handful of green split peas, washed

1/2 bouillon cube 

1 handful of old fashioned oats

1 handful of green onions

a few jalapeno peppers (from last summer's harvest) (made it quite spicy)

black pepper, olive oil, salt and celery seed

water (of course)

bring to boil, then simmer for about 40-45 minutes stirring as needed

you can use an immersion blender and blend it up if you like

I've crocheted several new bags for the eventual art shop - and am working on a topper rug thing for a footstool I have that never seems to get rid of the cat hair on it - so I wanted something washable. It's the same technique I've used to make the machine-washable bathroom and kitchen rugs that we are getting so much use out of - except this will fit over the square lid of the footstool like a hat.

Esme has had a few 4H wildlife meetings, and I'm reading 'Lessons in Chemistry' by Bonnie Garmus that I got at the library sale while I wait for her to get done with those.

Working on a multitude of different languages when I have the time and energy to do so.  Did a lot of Czech today, caught up with some Portuguese, Greek, Japanese, German and Romanian in the past few weeks.  I don't usually do German on DL because I took it in school, but I watched a show in German, and on DL I still get the order of the verb wrong, especially.  The show is  'Mindblow' which is about sort-of time travel and alternate timelines - hope I can find the second episode when it airs.  

 

Language update : 

French -       L 25 XP 49620     19620 XP beyond Level 25
Welsh -         L 24 XP 28243     +1757 XP to next level
Spanish -      L 23 XP 24570     +1430 XP to next level
Japanese -     L 19 XP 14317     +683 XP to next level
Czech -          L 18 XP 13083     +417 XP to next level
Romanian -     L 17 XP 10969     +1031 XP to next level
Portuguese -  L 16 XP 9632         +868 XP to next level
Italian -          L 15 XP 7544         +1456 XP to next level
Greek -          L 14 XP 6927         +573 XP to next level
German -      L 13 XP 5956         +44 XP to next level
Finnish -      L 13 XP 5515         +485 XP to next level
Catalan (es) -  L 12 XP 3923     +977 XP to next level
Swedish -      L 11 XP 3689         +211 XP to next level
Norwegian -  L 11 XP 3082         +818 XP to next level
Spanish (fr) -  L 11 XP 3025         +875 XP to next level
Hungarian -  L 10 XP 2438         +562 XP to next level
Ukrainian -  L 9 XP 2228         +22 XP to next level
Irish -          L 9 XP 2174         +76 XP to next level
Turkish -      L 9 XP 2020         +230 XP to next level
Polish -        L 9 XP 1793         +457 XP to next level
Chinese -     L 8 XP 1426         +224 XP to next level
Russian -      L 7 XP 1023         +102 XP to next level
Zulu -          L 7 XP 759             +366 XP to next level
Guarani (es) -  L 6 XP 611         +139 XP to next level
Dutch -          L 6 XP 540         +210 XP to next level

(es) learning from Espanol

(fr) learning from French

our cat Lyffan, a Manx cat, sleeping on my bed

she couldn't be happier

Some more Crochet

 

  

Mark and I have been re-watching a tv series at night, and I've been using up some more stash yarn.  I made the green bag first, and have been using it as a purse.  The original reason to make it differently than my other net bag pattern was that it was more closed, and could keep rain off a library book.  I really like the way the stripes turned out on it, and the handles.

 I started making two other things out of the dark green yarn, but there wasn't enough to do much with - so I made a pair of slippers out of it instead.  I ran out of yarn just as I finished the second one -  and then ran an edge of gold yarn around it to make it a bit more even looking.

 

And the dogs had told me something about needing even more floor rugs - since we keep having to boot them off the one by the stove when we cook.  I'm not really sure where another rug could fit - but I used up a bit more stash yarn to make a really nice striped pattern.  I still have to tie up all the yarn bits on it.

striped square and mouse

 

A magic square I saw in a Japanese handbag pattern and understood something from the symbols much better than I have from English-language instructions before.. first one to try, I've cut this one off and will try to make another one to match (the bag takes three)

 Other things in the works : that alpaca scarf still needs one more long length of white yarn knitted on...  the orange weaving is coming towards the end and after I cut it off and put the ends in I'll have to figure out what I want to do with it.  I've started a third market bag, just because it is very easy to do those while watching movies, even in the dark, as long as the yarn isn't dark colored.

I made a mouse, or an opossum / flying squirrel thing.  I don't know - I wasn't even trying to follow a pattern, just looking at a picture.  It was supposed to be a cat, but it had it's own plans.  A friend said it looks like a mouse that smashed it's face into a birthday cake, and that made me smile.  Also, he could have had stuffing in him, he has a pocket but he's flat, and feels actually very nice to sit and hold and stretch him out like a flying squirrel in your hands.

 

languages : Swedish, Espanol, French, Czech, Russian, Italian

I dropped Catalan for a few days, but will probably pick it back up soon.

whereupon I turn myself into a crochet workshop

 

 This is the second one of these I've made, a bit smaller than the one last year - and for me, not for 'the workshop'... but I've also made two pink market bags for the workshop drawer, a couple of washcloths, and a little sketchbook full of potential stuff I could make, but I'm not sure if I want to get into it that far type stuff.... And I've dedicated a drawer to 'stuff I'll make in case we go to sell at a market or bring things to the gallery', which used to be the entire six drawers were full of yarn, but I've been using some of it, and moving it around, and now there is enough space to start putting finished objects in it.

But at the same time, I don't want to do a lot of projects actually requested by other people - I'll sit up and chat with someone or watch a movie and make something, but my personality is often (not always) that if someone actually wants me to make something and I didn't come up with the idea, I'm not very likely to finish it.  What makes me do that?  Something about an overbearing parent, I think.  Anyway, that was the big chat with my sister the other night - about how after she left to live at her father's house my mother had cranked down hard on me while at the same time she was losing her memory and always having health issues with her diabetes so I was straddling three worlds at one time - can't do anything she doesn't tell me to do, can't figure out what she needs, and figuring out what I actually need and where it falls outside of those two enough to become an adult.  It was a hard talk - and I don't think my sister will get half of what I was trying to tell her or remember it.. 

but I finished nearly an entire bag while talking to her - because my hands needed to be busy.  We had the talk because it was our mom's birthday, and my sister had posted some 'rose colored glasses' things, and I let them stand publicly but I had to have a 'this is the way it was for me' discussion with her that I usually let slide.. because no, it was not all rose colored glasses and unicorns when she was away, and even when I moved out and she moved back and left her kids with my mom often (and really, my mom was not entirely capable at that point, but she didn't seem to care and had her own issues going on too deep to fathom here) I still felt she should remember it right, even though it was tough, and not paste flowers all over it.

Esme and I took a nice nature walk / bike ride (she biked, I walked), and went and got some groceries and talked about up and down mix of all sorts of things including past present and future... she understands the 'its not all sugar coated' thing maybe too well for her years at times (sigh)   I am going to make her a Mexican inspired taco meal after a bit.  We bought mole sauce, and looked up how to pronounce it, what ingredients it is, what is usually eaten with... and then said eh, we'll make tacos and Spanish rice both how we know we like and then try some of the mole sauce on the side of the rice.

Languages : added Italian to my phone, tested into second section (better than I tested with Czech, not as good as the Spanish) even though I really don't know very much Italian and it is just as 'sticky' to my brain as Spanish is.  (sticky is not good, sticky is I want to separate it from other words and I can't they come up all together four words for the same thing in four languages and it makes it easy to read but hard to speak)  French and Spanish 'stick', Spanish and Italian 'stick'.. Czech and Russian stick but Russian has a different alphabet.  When I try to remember how to say something in one of those languages and have been doing another sticky one - I can't decide which one to respond in, although I can read them just fine the road is not two-way.  Went back on my other computer and continued in French and Russian and Czech and one lesson of Japanese to make sure I could still recognize stuff.  

currently staring at a little Pinterest crochet cat thing and wondering if I could figure it out

pvc loom crochet hamper huge cat

 

I had set up a very simple pvc loom, but a bit more complicated than this, about eight years ago.  Of course, I drew three plans last night thinking about it, and then went and looked in the box of stuff in the garage, and slapped this together without having to cut anything or go to town for parts. Currently, waiting for my brain to kick in what I've forgotten - or throw some simple acrylic yarn on there and see what the in-real-time issues are that show themselves.  I made a purse on this last time and I know it had a cross-bar of some type.. and it was always falling over with JUST ts on the bottom, so I put some extensions on this one to hold behind the brick.  But still - I know this is only 1.0.. maybe even .99, because I didn't even have to cut anything.  

(curiosity / techie : the height is a good 36 inches (plus a few, so finished 36 is possible), by a potential 36, more likely a 30 or 24 inch width.. we'll have to see.  The bars are now glued in such a way that the top 'u' can be removed, and extended with a coupling and more pipe for greater height, but the bottom cross-bar is glued tight to keep that from slipping and the elbow and T are glued at the top corners, as well)

I would like to try a twill or a herringbone type thing again, and that takes some distance to make it look really nice, but it's also 'tetchy'.  I'd like to try multiple coloured warps.

Mark wants to bake today, and make candy. 

He made terrariums for propagating begonias with Esme the other day, planted coleus and tomatoes etc etc.. They've been very busy there.  Esme bought a new bike with the money I had set aside for her, as her other one was not adult sized and she has grown.  She could have bought whatever she wanted I told her - and that is what she wanted.  It was on sale, and we had to replace some parts on it right away, and it was a bit fraught and tense, but between the three of us we did get it operational and she learned how to use the new gears and brakes which were different from her old bike.  Sometimes when Mark and I are arguing about tools (wrench type and sizes) and methods though, Esme feels like she is caught in the middle... but we got through it, even with my dyslexia that always adds to that.

I made a little distance on the orange weaving although I have no immediate use for it at the moment.

 

Mark was watching a horror film last night (well, historical vampire thing) and I had just begun this, so I continued working on it so I could look at it and not the screen most of the time.  Still, images tried to repeat later when I wanted to sleep - such is a half-photographic memory.  But I made a good progress and I love the colours on it - it is almost all black with the red thread on the bottom, and then it will stripe, then be the lighter color on top with the handles - I made a bit larger one a few years ago and use it as a hamper hanging up, but keep forgetting it by the washing machine and then coming upstairs and saying 'oh, the hamper is gone'.  A second one won't help that entirely, but it can't hurt, and I do love the stripes.

 

Loki cat with all his stripes

telling me I can't make the bed because he is so huge and can't move... it's a queen sized bed, and I usually do put all the blankets right in the morning - but with twenty pounds of parked cat, it's a bit difficult.

 

Charlotte and Minion cat

Languages : Czech, Catalan, Spanish, French, 

bit of still very introductory Russian to compare the Cyrillic

 spellings with the Czech

I tested into third section with the Spanish on my phone, only in the first section of Catalan (tiene muy poco!) which is in Spanish (so it's really double-duty and fun because of that), and into the middle of the first section of Czech, which I was quite happy with as I didn't remember how much I remembered.  Doing the (high level grammar) French and Russian alternatively on the other profile to round out the xp there daily.  Sometimes I can do the French all day and that is the best thing - sometimes I only want to do that grammar once and then move onto something simpler.  I really appreciated alternating with the Cyrillic alphabet today - it felt like I was using another part of my brain that needed the exercise.  I've been considering updating and practicing the Greek again for exactly the same reason, but not quite ready to dive back into Japanese - I feel like that needs more time to percolate through layers and then well back up to be interesting again.

Charlotte snoring loudly and having what seems to be an excellent afternoon nap...  We've made four dozen cookies, Esme has put a ring with the hatchet around a tree that we intend to cut down sometime in the coming years, and I've used some pvc glue on half of the joints of the loom and warped up a strap to test it out with.  I remember I had made myself a 'nail apron' pocket thing to tie to the bottom rail to hold bits of yarn bobbins that were in use - going to have to find that again, it's in the gardening things likely.

textiles

 

Esme has had strep throat, we're trying to power through it with antibiotics and food and rest - but she has had to go to school because of changes in attendance policy.  They gave her one day off to start antibiotics - then she had to go back even though she feels awful.  I don't get modern education on this one - only a hard number of days to be absent, for their bottom line etc.  I hate having to send her in sick but they've already sent me a letter this year saying she is at warning level *angry face* from being sick in December with a sinus infection.

 

I will have to work the weekend - I'm trying not to be sick myself, and that winter Ice storm did a doozy on our budget for this month, so I've tried to pull my head out of that.

    

 

strung up a new frame to try again to make the bag I was going to make out of the neon colored one.  The neon one is a big favorite now of our cat, Lyffan - so I've decided to let her have it.  It went through the washing machine once already and was really soft and nice after that, especially.  This blue one is already a third of the way woven, but I gave it up for a bit because it gets that hitch between my shoulder blades hurting when I do it for so long.  I hyperbole'd that it would 'take me a month' but on average, yes.. I put it up for several days because of the pain in my shoulder and then work and life happens and that adds more days to a week -- and then I pick it back up again and continue.

I feel like I've 'been away again' in a couple of dreams that had lasted for more days and weeks -- it's just a feeling though, but confusing at times.  Started watching Farscape again yesterday, partially because that feeling that I've been transported elsewhere, to another time, another place, among different people and tried to figure out what to do about it, and all I could do was go through and finally wake back up at the end of the dream.  Quite a bit like that weaving experience - the real world just 'picks back up' and I know the difference but when I'm inside the dream I know the difference too, I just can't pinch myself and wake up and have to keep trying to make it work even though the logic of dream worlds is slightly off - languages and maps and books... apparently my brain just has to have a field day, especially when I'm probably also fighting a cold or bug the same as Esme has.

I started making this little brown bag after seeing the pattern of Aeryn Sun's shirt.  I think it's supposed to be 'chainmail' and it is from season 1 episode .  It came up remarkably fast because it's all mesh (seen below tv picture I screenshotted because there was nothing online that showed it)

I think I'll just make another square and make it into another type of market bag with a strap on top.  I also had to sew back on another button this morning and got to that.

 

The other book bag pattern from the round basket style - finished this one that had been on my basket for a long time - it had only been lacking the handle.

 

nap zone cats

another language progression chart - I've been doing French mostly the past two months, did a lot of Japanese study last year.  This morning, I broke back into Catalan a little (because of those dreams, some were 'French but not French' and Catalan is between Spanish and French) and was expecting it to break my brain like Spanish did last week (I loaded up Spanish and said 'no thank you' after a few minutes last week).  The Catalan wasn't bad at all, I remembered so much, just a few spelling errors.  

Numerical from the chart:

Language :  May 2023 vs.---Feb 2024 : DuoLingo Level

French : 35118, -----45427, 25+

Welsh : 26131, -------27991, 24

Spanish : 20573----- 24416, 23

Japanese : 6294------14292, 19

Czech :     12274----12579, 18

Romanian : 9508----10270, 16

Portuguese : 9318---9632, 16

Italian :        6867---7544, 15

Greek :       6502----6810, 14

Catalan :   xxnodata---3474, 11

(plus about 10 other languages, but still)

German : 5837, 13

Finnish 5515, 13

Swedish 3679, 11 (did some work on this in late 2023)

Norwegian 3082, 11

Hungarian 2438, 10

Ukrainian 2228, 9

Russian 610, 6

Irish 2174, 9

Turkish 2020, 9

Polish 1793, 9

Chinese 1282, 8

and Latvian - but on another site that doesn't have levels