'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)
We had been out to the farmer's market last night, and then I had a small route to run this morning. I woke up way too early for it *puff air up forehead* So I would like to get myself to sleep earlier tonight for the larger route tomorrow, but so far I've gotten up and strung the warp (above) and haven't achieved laying down to try to sleep yet. I haven't done anything on the blue weaving for a little while - and I didn't add anything else to this but the warp because I want to save my hands for tomorrow.
Last night at the farmer's market I had gotten some peppers that weren't quite 'sweet' and weren't entirely hot - but my fingers stung a little for three hours after chopping them up. So I made sure to get some sweet peppers to cut up today to mix in with them in food to counteract.
When I got home from that route, I chopped the vegetables and kielbasa I had bought and put them away in the freezer for quick dinner stuff. I took care of the garden, then since it was way too early for Mark and Esme to have dinner - and they had just finished making cashew butter fudge, I made my own beans and rice dinner at 3 pm. They made a larger dinner later, at 'regular' dinner time.
Did finish the 'smurf blue' bag just a few minutes into starting the market yesterday, and started another one. I've been thinking about other things to make to bring to the market - dishcloths and potholders and so forth... I've been thinking of what to do with the cone of cotton yarn I bought and looking at ideas on Pinterest for different textures and designs. I like some of the fancy things I see but they aren't practical things, wall hangings and such - and for sale as art is one thing, but for myself I like it to be something with a purpose and something that can be washed and used. Most of what we are selling lately is plants - begonia and coleus, and a few 3D printed things Mark has made.
I did French, and Spanish, and Danish today, and played a bit more on the farming game to get it into the Winter months, and start being able to have cows, make cheese and so forth.
Mark caught Loki sleeping in the downstairs bathroom sink - and asked me to sneak up on him with the camera. But, he heard me coming! I had posted that he is our 'Batman' because of the little double cloak shape that is on the back of his neck.
navy blue cotton thread cone
ordered this thread online to try to weave something in all cotton - it is quite a bit thinner than I thought IT would be, but about the thread width of what I had previously wanted for another project. So, we'll see. It said I have 800 yards of it to try probably both projects out. Been making a bit more progress on the navy blue weaving - did a big block of the blue and will be switching back to the red in a bit. I have to pull it over the top to continue weaving soon. I still didn't take the navy and green acrylic mat off the other small loom. I did make a big waffle-weave dishcloth for the sink (needed a new one) and two potholders, both in just plain red yarn. And that was my weekend, other than grocery shopping and working much more than usual. It's Tuesday and I'm saying the weekend is done now, so see what that tells you about that /ha /sigh
This morning I was up from like 3 am to 5 am then even slept in and would have forgotten about the small route they had put me on except something nagged me in the back of my brain - and when I checked the schedule again yes lo and behold, there was me scheduled for it. So I put some of what we were supposed to get done today off to tomorrow and went and did that.
It rained some yesterday and a lot this morning - and then even a bit more. The garden appreciated it and nothing looked flooded. I bought one more pepper plant for the garden when I went for chicken feed, and planted it after I got home.
rant :
I had a hassle with the electric company and a fee that was really their mistake, but I paid it, unhappily. I was disappointed in their logic, and felt down quite a bit yesterday after I talked to them because it just didn't make any sense what had happened - they should have known better trying to double cash a 78 day old check when they were already paid in full (for the three month bills since then!) - there was no way to win-for-losing ...I would have gotten some fee from them or the bank any way you slice it apparently - yet, THEY 'have to get their fee back' from me and the girl was very bubble-gum chew and 'but yea, that happens, we don't like, control it or anything, it's all the computer now'. Well then, the computer can be better, can't it? Can't it?
...(and there my faith in logic becomes Stoic Spock and I have to reorient that not everyone is this stupid, I'm sure... ) Esme and I have had this discussion about similar things - in the car, describing how many people don't think ALL the time, they simply don't have to juggle five streams of thoughts that are overlapping and reminding you about this thing and that and doing calculations - their mind is focused on one or two things at a time that are right in front of them usually and when they finish with it - they move to the next thing, and sometimes their minds are even just blank, and they like it that way, they often aim for it. They don't watch a show or read a book and have it reverberate with a hundred other connected thoughts for weeks and years later. They're definitely not estimating the number of cows in that field or thinking about dispersion patterns or trying to compare the electron shell diagrams of Strontium and Tin while driving to work. They don't remember the last things said in one place returning like echoes of the past when you return there, or have a constant back-checker making math calculations adding things up and dividing percentages after they leave the supermarket.
 |
| Strontium and Tin |
They probably don't have a 'collision detection' system running all the time about what calamities might befall everything around you - people running into each other, cars on the highway, things falling, burning, breaking, times and schedules (it helped today, with the 'boy you should look at that schedule it looks weird from here (here being looking at it for thirty seconds last week)) - it involves everything announcing what could go wrong with it in some extra 'awareness' box like a red light on your mental dashboard that won't stay off... my mom called it the protector instinct, when we discussed it when I was a bit younger than Esme, before I got a good handle on it - it can get really loud some days when I've already got too much to juggle and keep track of actually doing myself and yet sometimes especially with radio or music I can tune it down to a normal level. This is how my brain works - and Esme has some extent of it, and she finds it annoying at the very least but does understand it. I know I'm being cynical in some percentage except, that she listens to my philosophy rant and says it 'explains a lot, actually' - about the world she sees, about why we are always anxious (because we don't 'turn off' our brains) and why everything so spectacularly doesn't work in many places, even after a millennia of people fighting over the right way to do things.
Anyway, gah. The more I think on it, the more lost I will feel about it having no solution. So, I'm weaving, and knowing I need to sort a hundred other things in the house and I've only begun to do so in my head here and there and pick up and move a few things at a time. There are one or two things in 'space' I would like to lay hands on again and I know where they are or were before the storage container fell a few months ago, and that I put them safely somewhere new, but when I tried to get them earlier today I didn't take the time to feel 'down the rope' to where they were now. Instead I ran into something else that would serve, and grabbed that up, and hung up the phone on finding the thing until later. I've done mostly Spanish today and will do my Russian program in a a bit. Hopefully, I can continue and finish running the errands tomorrow.
Lyffan in from the wet outside, after her dinner. Mark had seen her chasing frogs when we first called her for dinner - after a rain like this there are hundreds of little hop frogs that appear all over - she was 'completely occupied' he said - and so we watched a bit more of a movie for another hour and then all the cats were finally ready. Now she is sitting here sorting out her belly fur and trying to fit in this too small of a space, and maybe knock my garbage can down. Minion usually sits here - right next to my computer space, but she is downstairs taking Loki's chair away from him that he has been in all day. I saw him stretched out in the hallway floor and that's unusual for him, peek in the bathroom and there she is licking her feet in his chair with Charlotte lying on the rug saying 'I don't get it - but I'm not involved, I just sleep here.' As I type this Lyffan has now fell asleep and is shaking her paws and whiskers chasing some outside creature in her sleep.
seems relevant short story idea : several geeks in a big office with headphones on jacked into some machine they haven't been told exactly how it works yet. And yet someone is standing there with a clipboard trying to see what the results are. Hey, do we just say 'Aliens, Hello?' or what? How are they going to hear us? Where is the microphone? Do we just think really hard : 'Hello?' No, man, you have to try something original, like 'And here we are back from Planet Earth with another line of smooth jazz and greetings to tell you, 'hey, we're listening'.. to what though? How does all this work?<--that was the line of reasoning in a dream this morning just before my alarm went off.
So our internet was down when I got back from the short route today - and you would think I would get some things done? Well, I made rice to put up for making fried rice for dinner... but other than that I played an hour of Stardew Valley (in French) and did language lessons on my phone and took a nap. I thought maybe I'd read some of my library book (did a little bit the past few days, it is 'Beautiful World, Where are You?' by Sally Rooney) but it was a bit depressing in the interpersonal relationship descriptions and felt like 'rolling in mud and leaves' the other day, stuff sticks, and rolls along, and then stuff falls off and more sticks, and it just keeps rolling without much too much significant, but then maybe it's still building the story.
When the net came back up I finished the other two language sites (Czech and Russian, I did French on my phone earlier) and we made dinner. Mark has finished the rest of my 192! tile set for spelling Czech - I was playing with the first 48 and it hadn't been quite enough. Mark made a pizza for him and Esme - which opened me up to try to make a Black Sesame Seed Chahan recipe with the black sesame seeds I had bought at the natural food store. I couldn't really tell the difference from regular fried rice - but maybe if I make it again without the seeds and then with it again I can see what the added taste is. I have a longer, hot route tomorrow - and am needing to make liquid to bring with (Sharkleberry Fin Kool-Aid) in my thermos - and probably head back to bed again. I have done a little bit more on the blue 'whale shark' weaving, but it still has a long way to go.
They've also announced the application for the September arts program I did for two years, but skipped last year. I told Mark I am not deciding tonight about it - I'm tired, and I'm not sure 'what I have to say'... I have the new book, but not a lot of copies to bring to a sale table. We have a nice sale setup now, a canopy and a folding table for the flea market, so it would not be so hard to make a nice setup - but I'm not sure what exactly I have to sell (Mark says I have so much, and then, there is the 3D stuff we have that he has made, as well)... but still, I don't have to decide tonight. And it's better not to decide when the highest things on my mind are sleep, laundry and getting through tomorrow's 110 degree Fahrenheit heat index. I work Sunday and also Monday again, as well.
recipe :
2 eggs fried in olive oil, set aside on a plate
add butter to pan - fry green onions (the white parts), yellow squash (diced) and orange pepper
once that is sizzling and cooked through, add two large heaping tablespoons (probably more equal to four regular) of cooked rice (it had some white sesame seeds in it, but no sugar this time, just put up in the fridge after being made in the mid-morning)
bring back to sizzling, add 1 tablespoon ground black sesame seeds ( I ground 2 tablespoons, but one looked like way too much in the pan), add back the egg and stir it through and some green onion tops (which I keep in sep. bag from the white onion parts in the freezer), add a good big dash of soy sauce
once that is heated through serve up on a plate
note: the other day I did make some fried rice (yakimeshi, apparently, is a word for this in Japanese) with some sushi rice that had sugar, rice wine vinegar and white sesame seeds in it - I just put an array of vegetables in oil and then added the rice and then the egg and soy sauce at the end, simple .. but with the sugar in it almost made it taste like what I've had in imitation crab cakes ... which I found an interesting comparison.
the thing I didn't have that was in the recipe was Japanese mayonnaise (which is made with duck eggs?) but they do sell it at one of my stores. I'm not sure if that would have contained the black sesame seed from staining the rice gray - which it really did.. but since I knew everything that was in the recipe I didn't find that unappealing (although, Mark screamed and said it looked like zombie food - zombie chow! oh no!) and put a piece of pizza on my plate with it (for protection)
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
It's a tight fit in there with wallet and phone holder - but it does fit
It was my birthday today - and we did quite a lot. I took my pre-sunrise walk and took it slower than yesterday, staying out there to see the actual sun rise through the tiny keyhole in the woods where I finally found it. I know of three places where I can see it at different points - all the way to the horizon, through the leaves - but it is finding them that is part of all that. I also found the morning glories and took a picture of them.
Early in the morning we got groceries and a new garden hose and fittings that I've been planning in order to extend the reach in the raised beds in the garden. A few weeks ago Esme helped me measure and our 75 foot hose wouldn't quite reach the back two beds that I've been having trouble with - needed 89 feet to make it. So, over the next few days I will need to find time to put that on and test it all. After we got home from that excursion I took Esme out to the swimming lake and we spent about an hour there. There was a small school of bluegill fish that were curious at first, and at one point decided to take a taste. Esme: One bit me!' We fell out laughing, but were a bit wary about them after that - we'd already been swimming an hour, and both of us have sunburned quite badly in the past in relatively short amounts of time in the water. I wore my big floppy hat - which looked ridiculous, but I think it helped.
After we got back from that I threw all the wet and sandy things through the washer, and made myself a cake (with trying out the frozen lemon trick, so-so results), and then fell asleep for a few hours. We made a pizza and watched one of my favorite movies 'Dark City', where the protagonist does not give in to repeated attempts to tell him who he is, he knows who he is, and it isn't that - and in the end when he has this amazing powerful gift to mold the world he could do anything with it - and he makes something beautiful, that reminds him of all the good things he wanted to be in the world but was having such a hard time finding and questing for... and it ends there, where we hope that he will continue to use his power for good, but we don't get to see. Mark says it is a twisted flick, and he likes a lot of very twisted flicks. He's compared it to 'Brazil' before, but I think the message is much more impactful and human in this one.
Now I work tomorrow, have two language programs to complete (did one earlier today) and fold laundry and get some more sleep. It will be over 90 tomorrow again.
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
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.
Mini Pouch
sewn from woven fabric about 6x9 inches
I had hoped it would be large enough to fit a pair of eyeglasses, and it just about does perfectly - maybe a bit too snug. I'm going to put two more screw pegs on the little loom I had finished making yesterday - and that will give it enough width to make an eyeglass case each time.
I had been experimenting with using only some of the width of the big frame - which produces about 15 x 18 inch cloth if I go all the way to the very top with a needle for the last few rows. To make the handbag I warped it only halfway across and also stopped a few inches from the top, making 10 x 15 fabric. But then I wanted the smaller frame as well to reduce the time to make something smaller, and to not have to support the entire weight of the bigger frame on something every time I wanted to work.
So now I have three sizes I can make something out of
15 x 18, table mat, pillow, larger bags
10 x 15, small handbag, small pillow
6 x 9, eyeglass case or small pouch, pockets for inside of other bags
If I really wanted to get fancy I could make four panels of the largest and sew them together and make a pillowcase or a rug - but after doing that much work on something I doubt I'd *really* want to use it as a rug - but it might be a nice thing to lay across the top edge or bottom edge of a bed over the top cover sort of thing (is there a name for that? Coverlet? I guess just a throw? I use some of my thrifted afghans like that, because I find it pretty, and it gives a 'landing zone' for the cat as well, and keeps the dog off my pillows (sometimes) or at least gives me an idea she jumped up there and I can stare at her disapprovingly as she asks 'but how do you KNOW Mom?' //Charlotte)
for the record : My standard pillowcase sham looks like it is 30 inches by about 20,22 inches. A coverlet, a throw? For that use it would have to be 60 (give or take) by 42-48 inches.
If I somehow managed to put all the screws into my larger frame that I already have marked out (it's a lot of work, just ten into the little loom yesterday hurt my arm - Mark says I should use the drill press) that would make an area about 22 by 16 inches. And if I put screws on the cross-wise of that frame, it would make an area 16-18 inches by 40 inches. That's a lot of screws. And that frame needs a stand really to make anything larger on it - it is heavy and hard to make sit still when you're working on anything. I was using it mainly for making really long thin straps warped continuously around the whole thing - the way I used to use doorframes when I was a teen and in college to make belts - and had worked up only a 2 inch by 22 inch set of pegs on it to make one strap a while back, but hated the way that yarn combined with the warp so I took it off after only about 8 inches and stuck it in a drawer *sigh*.
The Bits:
I did too much weaving that yesterday - but I am sending it off as a birthday present. I have five days on starting tomorrow at the post office, so I need to resist starting another project and make soup, do laundry et al. I have a book to read I've started but then haven't been stagnant enough to grab back up. I'm continuing to learn Spanish through the French interface at DuoLingo, and I feel that it is helping to sort out some of the grammar things that seem much more natural for French but when I try to translate them to Spanish I make mistakes by adding too many articles etc.
This was woven on a picture frame set with evenly spaced screws and it took about two weeks or a little less to weave it up, since I had to take a lot of breaks with my shoulder joint. (not to mention I had the flu for a week in there, and it was tough, no thank you I don't want that again anytime soon). It is a random pattern of a couple of colors of acrylic yarn, made on a navy acrylic warp. I know a lot of people prefer to use cotton warp - but I like the way the same yarn weaves up evenly, and the fact that when I wash it (which I've done with a few others) it comes up soft and even then, as well.
I left the 'self edge' from the bottom of the weaving on the side I wanted to put the buttons on - it looks a little decorative and yet it is rough and shows how handmade the item is. I knitted the strap in a simple alternating stitch (not quite idiot cord) that stretches out nicely and is strong (on two double-pointed needles cast on 3 - knit, purl, knit - turn over, repeat - until length is proper) I fussed up a way to put the buttons loops on because well, if they come loose, it's no big deal I just put them back on. The buttons are a nice find out of my vintage sewing box I scrabbled around the bottom of it until I found something I liked.
The resulting purse holds my regular wallet, my phone case and a few other little things, which is just big enough. Any smaller, (the finished cloth was 15 by 10) it would have been too small
It took several hours to get all the edge tails woven in and then I did a sort of complicated edge treatment on the dark blue edge there that I got better at the further I went - and will have to try to remember how to do it better next time. I started out too much fuss, and it got easier and neater as I progressed to the left.
Then it was just a matter of turning it inside-out and whipstitching evenly up the sides so that I got it looking finished on the outside, attaching the knitted handle and putting on the buttons.
I was telling myself that every single time - every time! - I start to make a piece of fabric like this I ask myself 'But, what will I actually do with it when it's made?' I know there are a lot of things to do with it - but every piece takes so much work I start out from the point of futility sometimes, that if I wanted something, I could probably find it so easily - what do I want - do I want anything - why I am taking up this 'endeavour'? Do I really need another bag? I use the ones I have. I use my socks, shawls, rugs, blankets, hats, gloves, net bags and woven ones, baskets, hampers, pillows, dishrags and potholders all over the house almost every single day. So, why am I still so 'stingy' with myself thinking of what I must accomplish with the time spent? The only thing I can figure out, perhaps, is that it is an attachment sort of thing - I am making certain that I am going to proceed, and use the item even before it is made, by investing such thoughts into it, defending it, and continuing to work to the finished item. And then, when I use it, I reinforce that 'I wondered if I'd ever use this when I started it..' with 'see, here it is, and it is useful'. I'm an odd duck... but I know I have my ways.
The Bits :
Oh one other little thing - I won a 'spinning tools - learn to spin' basket from a fiber site I started following. I don't know when or totally what I am getting in the mail but we'll see! I do know there is a drop spindle in there, and some fiber. It has been 20 years since I had a real spindle, and I wasn't very good back then. I did make one out of K'nex and work up some Jacob sheep yarn with Esme during the homeschool years - I might still have that package somewhere around here as well.
One of my tasks today that I don't know if I'll get to it - is to find a box of screws I've hidden away on myself and put a few more posts into my small picture frame loom I did not finish making. I scrounged around last night for it but did not find the screws - only the small frame and the screwdriver I had been using. I'm sure I've hidden it away on myself 'in a safe place'... I hung up my little painting in the writing nook, as I had taken it down from one place and then put something else up there. Not much else to do - still getting over the last tiny bit of the cough from that flu, because it got into my sinuses.. and the weather is improving but still not good enough to be outside. Later we have to get some groceries, but I have to wait for the bank to deposit things.
my Painting on wall : Johanna's Woods, in acrylic
We lost one chicken yesterday, Esme was sad. I told her it's Nature sometimes that we don't know what gets them - she was a big fat fairly happy chicken with a little bit of a limp that started three months ago and had not gotten any worse or any better even through that terrible cold snap and freeze she was out with everybody else eating and hopping a little but not singled out and definitely not wanting us to separate her (I thought one day I might try to see what her foot issue was and she had NONE of it). She was just sitting in a corner, on an egg, and gone - perhaps one of our eldest group which is about seven years old now, but we weren't entirely certain (half of our flock is that same breed, and they are hard to tell apart otherwise)
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.
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
