Friday fragments, literally and figuratively

in which our plucky heroine finishes a task...

... back in December, at Tri-Baronial Yule, I was added to the rolls of the Order of the Mountain Sun here in Three Mountains, a Baronial award "given in recognition of exceptional performance in the Arts and/or Sciences in the Barony" To my delight, my dear friend Marya made my original scroll. Only now have I managed to complete matting for the shadowbox frame so it can be added to my Wall of Honor here at Acorn Cottage.

There were a few unexpected complications between bringing the scroll home, and hanging it on the wall... The seal on the scroll shattered to flinders, so I needed to acquire a replacement seal from the Barony. This ended up taking months, and when a new unbroken seal finally made its way here, when it arrived, it was not flat, but rather curved like the rockers on a rocking chair...

I dealt with that by applying gentle heat (about 100F) in the little convection oven, just long enough for it to nicely flatten out. However, in moving it from the baking paper to the tabletop, it just barely tapped the edge of the table, and promptly also shattered, though only into two pieces. The wax used for the Baronial seals is apparently extremely fragile, more than any of the other seals on my other scrolls and charters...

Sigh... rather than wait another three or four months to acquire a third seal, since the cracked pieces aligned near perfectly, careful gluing attached the seal neatly to the document/scroll. (after much conversation on the Book of Face, apparently this sort of cracking of the wax seals is very common) I was able to cut a custom mat, with a curved section to properly accommodate the seal, and finally this lovely piece is safely on the wall where I can enjoy it every day...

The text of the scroll reads, in a faux-cyrillic hand:

So We, Sebastian and Erika, Sovereigns of Kaldorness, of Three Mountains, Magistrates of the ports, Rulers of the Mountain Passes, and so on, for the fact of your many and continuing contributions to the arts and sciences of Our realm, do give you Fjorlief in haga, entrance into our Mountain Sun.

Be then inspired to ever make, learn, and teach, for the good of this Our realm. None may speak against this without risking Our wrath, and so we give our hand and seal, December 16th AS 52

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March SMART goals (x=extra)

#	THINGS MADE	THINGS FIXED	THINGS GONE
1	stone wool mitts	hook added to mirrorside	bag of fabric
2	skystone wool mitts	quince tree planted	bag to Goodwill
3	12 jars applesauce	soles on house boots	yard waste bin
4	charter #5	2 cutting boards	1300# deck debris
5	original scroll #1	framed Mountain Sun	3 bags to Goodwill
6	Red Hart pendant	x	x
7	Tigers Claw scroll	x	x
8	charter #6	x	x
9	x	x	x
10	x	x	x
11	x	x	x
12	x	x	x
13	x	x	x
14	x	x	x
15	x	x	x

bizzy buzz buzz

in which our plucky heroine plays catch up...

Two weeks ago, Blue Cedar House folks helped transport over 1300 pounds of former deck detritus to the transfer station, so it is no longer cluttering up the back yard. While we were there, I saw this strange door into a concrete wall, across the way, where usually the discarded yard waste and trash is piled. Something about the mystery intrigued me...

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Two of the three kitchen cutting boards sent off for Farbjorn to reshape are now back in the kitchen and ready to be used, now that I have done the sanding, final detail shaping, and oiled them. The third one is off visiting my friend Bob, to be run through the planer, it had some unfortunate large chunks missing. But even the two more cutting boards make a vast difference in kitchen convenience.

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The fourth pair of Log Cabin Mitts. Knitting the stripes entailed changing back and forth between brown and blue every two rows, but the end result was well worth it.

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Since it has been handed out over the weekend of the 17th, I can show this original scroll I created, a Tigers Claw, for the Summits... I did both the calligraphy and the illumination:

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I'm quite pleased with how I was able to include the Griffin of the Summits in the center of the medallion in the illuminated capital initial. Figuring out how to paint such a detailed motif at such a tiny scale (less than 1/2" across) was an enjoyable challenge

Finally, this is the original historical manuscript page that inspired this scroll. I just could not resist, as instead of the usual flowers and/or foliage, this page has tiny acorns as part of the decorative borders!

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I went to see the "A Wrinkle In Time" film. While there was much to like about it, overall I was not thrilled. I remember the book as being much more nuanced, and will have to re-read it to check if my memory is correct. I liked very much the multi-ethnic aspect of the film, and didn't mind how they moved the location both in time to more current, and in location from the rural Northeast to urban mid to southern California. But I am not sure that the story translates well into the context of a feature film, I don't know if I would have understood what was happening if I had not read the book many times already.

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March SMART goals (x=extra)

#	THINGS MADE	THINGS FIXED	THINGS GONE
1	stone wool mitts	hook added to mirrorside	bag of fabric
2	skystone wool mitts	quince tree planted	bag to Goodwill
3	12 jars applesauce	soles on house boots	yard waste bin
4	charter #5	2 cutting boards	1300# deck debris
5	original scroll #1	-	3 bags to Goodwill
6	Red Hart pendant	x	x
7	Tigers Claw scroll	x	x
8	charter #6	x	x
9	x	x	x
10	x	x	x
11	x	x	x
12	x	x	x
13	x	x	x
14	x	x	x
15	x	x	x

blue transfer ink

in which our plucky heroine finds herself in a sticky situation...

Ever since I changed my heraldry*, making a new quarter-circle banner for camping season has been on the list of desired improvements Since I've barely enough remaining of the bright blue melton cloth, I decided that sandwiching it between two layers of white wool felt and doing reverse reverse applique would be a feasible way to get a two sided design. My former banner had two layers of blue with white wool in the middle, and was reverse appliqued, which has worked really well.

wool felt with transfered image on right, reverse of image sketched on paper on left

However, my usual method of marking out a design for stitchery, using chalk, would not work on white material. Wanted to see if I could find a way to transfer the design using stuff I had at home, rather than spend several hours on transit acquiring transfer paper. Remembered reading long ago about using sugar syrup mixed with "blueing". Have no blueing... so wondered if blue paste food color would work instead. It does. Did a small sample first, and the blue lines wash away completely using plain water.

The dip pen made, as you can see, somewhat irregular lines, which transferred exactly to the felt, leaving guidelines good enough to sew along. The sugary sticky transfer "ink" didn't dry on the paper all the way, given the moisture in the air yesterday, but dried enough to be able to carefully place the large drawing sticky side down on the felt, and iron the surface to transfer the image.

The only tricky part was that the transferred lines were also sticking to the paper. I solved that by carefully re-ironing the paper and peeling it away a bit at a time while still warm, bit by bit. This DIY washaway transfer media will become another useful item in my "toolkit of techniques" I am also wondering if using a ruling pen would work better than a dip pen for applying the lines to the back of the paper drawing...(I once had a ruling pen, but that was back in 1973, and at least a dozen moves or more ago, no way to know where it ended up...

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March SMART goals (x=extra)

#	THINGS MADE	THINGS FIXED	THINGS GONE
1	stone wool mitts	hook added to mirrorside	bag of fabric
2	skystone wool mitts	quince tree planted	bag to Goodwill
3	12 jars applesauce	soles on house boots	yard waste bin
4	charter #5	-	-
5	original scroll #1	-	-
6	Red Hart pendant	x	x
7	image transfer ink	x	x
8	x	x	x
9	x	x	x
10	x	x	x
11	x	x	x
12	x	x	x
13	x	x	x
14	x	x	x
15	x	x	x

* former Arms were: Azure, a horse courant reguardant between three mullets (five pointed stars) Argent, changed to "between three acorns slipped and leaved Argent"

Friday fragments

in which our plucky heroine has a productive week nonetheless...

Workroom time happened this week for both enameling and scribal arts (illumination/calligraphy). This Red Hart/Goutte de Crystal pendant is completed, repaired, reset and ready to be transported to my client. I also completed a rush order champleve component needed by my colleague Mr Dawson. There will be some more enameling in the next week, as I tackle a few of the other remaining custom orders.

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Eye weirdness continues unabated. The combination of flashing and the new related floater sometimes takes the form of my thinking I am seeing a spider in my peripheral vision. Not okay. Trying to remember that it is not actually in the bright world, but inside my eyeball.

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Seems like my various wardrobe efforts continue to ebb and flow. Most recently my desire to sew has been completely overtaken by knitting Log Cabin Mitts, which are proving incredibly useful. This does not, however, get me any closer to completing my SWAP sewing plans. It might be prudent to at least sew up the pinafore and dress that are already cut out, in hopes that the missing mojo will get a little bit of a kick-start. Can seven more garments (pinafore, dress, four tops and a poncho) be made between now and the end of April? The tops and the dress will be particularly welcome...

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Every time I listen to this, I hear something different...

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Grateful: My neighbor Tracy helped me plant the baby apple tree, which had been waiting patiently for a spot. Before my eye rebelled, I had started digging a planting spot near the lovage along the front walkway, and since the near constant flashing was worse in the sunshine, that project had been on hold for several days... I am much relieved that the second tree baby is now in the ground, and hope that it will take hold and continue to grow.

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March SMART goals (x=extra)

#	THINGS MADE	THINGS FIXED	THINGS GONE
1	stone wool mitts	hook added to mirrorside	bag of fabric
2	skystone wool mitts	quince tree planted	bag to Goodwill
3	12 jars applesauce	soles on house boots	yard waste bin
4	charter #5	-	-
5	original scroll #1	-	-
6	Red Hart pendant	x	x
7	x	x	x
8	x	x	x
9	x	x	x
10	x	x	x
11	x	x	x
12	x	x	x
13	x	x	x
14	x	x	x
15	x	x	x

Tuesday tidbits

in which our plucky heroine is charmed and pleased...

In this clever advert, Oregon is cast as a Miyazaki-esque tourist destination, which, in many ways, it actually is...

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Yesterday was Scribal Night, when local Three Mountains folks interested in calligraphy and illumination get together for a bit of social scribal time. I worked on painting a Summits Grail charter, that had been designed by my friend Rafny.
I tried a slightly different palette on this one with some subtler greens and several different shades of red. My thought was that a dark, but diapered, background would help the decorative ribbon to stand out from the background. The gold highlights in the diapering are so narrow that depending on the lighting they either shine brightly or almost disappear, and I quite like that effect:

And, lastly, a small error (the dreaded though thankfully rare, accidental setting my hand down on a not yet dry area, and transferring a blot of paint) ended up offering a chance to add an additonal detail to the line filler - I am rather ridiculously pleased with my "save" showing the Red Grail of Service

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March SMART goals (x=extra)

#	THINGS MADE	THINGS FIXED	THINGS GONE
1	stone wool mitts	hook added to mirrorside	bag of fabric
2	skystone wool mitts	quince tree planted	bag to Goodwill
3	12 jars applesauce	-	yard waste bin
4	charter #5	-	-
5	-	-	-
6	x	x	x
7	x	x	x
8	x	x	x
9	x	x	x
10	x	x	x
11	x	x	x
12	x	x	x
13	x	x	x
14	x	x	x
15	x	x	x

a small mystery

in which our plucky heroine regroups...

In the sunshine of a lovely Sunday morning, this curious not-quite-ready-to-blossom spring bulb caught my eye. I do not remember planting it, and it is not similar to other things in the front yard. The leaves look vaguely like my favorite Fritillaria meleagris, but until it actually blooms, it shall remain a mystery!

I have signed up with "ChipDrop" in hopes of getting more free wood chip mulch. Tomorrow morning I will move the fig tree pots, and the trash bins, to a spot out of the driveway, just in case. There is no way to know when the wood chips will be delivered, or exactly what quantity!

After the debacle Saturday of my right eye giving notice, today did not live entirely up to my weekend expectations. This morning I managed to carefully ride my bike to the shops to get some more canning jar lids, since the one thing I did yesterday was prep the applesauce for canning. Peeling and pre-boiling apples requires no great ocular focus. There are now a neat dozen 8 oz jars ready for pantry storage. However, the continued flashing in my peripheral vision was exceedingly distubing, and I finally gave up and lay down for a nap. Must have needed the sleep, since I slept for most of the day, waking only in time to put the chickens to bed.

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March SMART goals (x=extra)

#	THINGS MADE	THINGS FIXED	THINGS GONE
1	stone wool mitts	hook added to mirrorside	bag of fabric
2	skystone wool mitts	quince tree planted	bag to Goodwill
3	12 jars applesauce	-	yard waste bin
4	-	-	-
5	-	-	-
6	x	x	x
7	x	x	x
8	x	x	x
9	x	x	x
10	x	x	x
11	x	x	x
12	x	x	x
13	x	x	x
14	x	x	x
15	x	x	x

eye spy with my oddball eye...

in which our plucky heroine has a peculiar symptom...

so... woke up this morning and when heading out to feed the chooks, I see something in my peripheral vision. Hmmm... that was odd...

Then back in the house, it returns, like a flash of darkness across the upper right corner of my visual field. SInce the lighting is no longer flourescent tubes, there is nothing actually flickering in my overhead lights... HMMM....

... and intermittently, it keeps happening. Like many oddities, once noticed, it becomes harder and harder to ignore. Tullia arrives for her metalworking lesson, and I attempt to feign normality. Eventually I call the nurse hotline, and when they finally return my call, am told to go to the ER. Tullia kindly agrees to drive me there.

Eventually the ER doc, after running my sypmtoms through his Useful FIlters of Knowledge, eliminates both stroke and brain lesions as likely suspects, much to my relief, and I am discharged from the ER and sent across the street to the eye specialist. There they dilate my right eye:

... and after a thorough examination, determine that my retina is properly attached and all in one piece, at least for the time being, and that the strange intermittent flashes of darkness in my upper right quadrant are some kind of anomalous floater. Not like any eye floater I have ever seen before, but hey, I am not an expert on things optical. An appointment will be scheduled in a month, to check and make sure that all is still well inside the eyeball(s).

Needless to say, this is not how I was intending today to unfold, and now, with the Eye of Extremely Large Pupil, there is basically almost nothing useful I can manage to do, since they all require focused vision.

Friday fragments

in which our plucky heroine ventures outside without a coat...

Found another sign of springtime on my way to go do errands today... the patterning on this crocus looked particularly fetching!

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Have managed to find both my embroidered wool house boots and the non-slip dot textile used for slipper soles. This means that the next mending project will be stitching the non-slip to the felted wool soles of the house boots. This project has been a long long time in the making, as I began these boots nigh on 16 or more years ago, and then put them aside as they proved alarmingly slippy on any smooth flooring at all. At this rate I will probably have them done this weekend, and will finally be able to wear them around the house!

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Today while out and about, the clerk at the yarn store recognised my "Log Cabin Mitts" and admired them. I had been hoping to find some yarn similar to the scraps of Noro Kureyon that formed the turquoise skystone centers, as buying several balls of Noro just for the bits that were that color seems less than ideal. Sadly, no joy, there was nothing at all similar. Truly, the colors of Noro are like nothing else...

I began a fourth pair of mitts nonetheless, just to have something for transit-handwork... but will be starting up some of my actual work projects that will also fill that niche, so the knitting will take a back seat soon. Plus, it is getting warmer. Before too long there will be no need for wooly handwarmers, and they can be packed away with bundles of myrtlewood leaves until next winter. But not just yet...

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March SMART goals (x=extra)

#	THINGS MADE	THINGS FIXED	THINGS GONE
1	stone wool mitts	hook added to mirrorside	bag of fabric
2	skystone wool mitts	quince tree planted	bag to Goodwill
3	-	-	yard waste bin
4	-	-	-
5	-	-	-
6	x	x	x
7	x	x	x
8	x	x	x
9	x	x	x
10	x	x	x
11	x	x	x
12	x	x	x
13	x	x	x
14	x	x	x
15	x	x	x

some Thursday thoughts

in which our plucky heroine starts the day a little damp...

If one hangs the linens laundry out on a perfectly delightful afternoon of sun and wind, and then forgets that they are out there... and wakes up in the night to the sounds of the attic ventilators whirling and the thump of rain on the south awnings... it is sure that yesterdays laundry is going through the Eugene Rinse Cycle! Though I no longer live in Eugene, it still sometimes catches me. And since the rain is forecast to go on all day, I scampered out the back door and gathered all the flannel sheets up and bundled them into the electric dryer. Air dried sheets are eversomuch nicer, since they smell of air and not of heating coils, but needs must....

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Although I have the third pair on the needles currently, new ideas for variations on the Log Cabin Mitts keep bubbling up:

Since there is more yarn in the box of random stash, a few more pairs might need to happen. My current pair is called "Skystone Cabachon" for how the bright turquoise is surrounded by grey and off black, like the stone in a decorative silver setting. I think that the pair with the single stripe down each section is going to be called "Royston Ribbon" for the type of turquoise that is cut with one or more distinct bands of color in a larger neutral matrix.

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On the way home from the bus stop, down at my feet was this vivid springtime greenery... euphorbia starting to bloom, and daffodils almost ready.

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Happy International Womens Day to one and all!

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March SMART goals (x=extra)

#	THINGS MADE	THINGS FIXED	THINGS GONE
1	stone wool mitts	hook added to mirrorside	-
2	-	quince tree planted	-
3	-	-	-
4	-	-	-
5	-	-	-
6	x	x	x
7	x	x	x
8	x	x	x
9	x	x	x
10	x	x	x
11	x	x	x
12	x	x	x
13	x	x	x
14	x	x	x
15	x	x	x

Monday musings and media

in which our plucky heroine has faith in the future...

Yesterday the quince tree was planted in its forever home, on the south side of Acorn Cottage. This narrow area gets a lot of sunshine, particularly in the summer. My hope is that the tree will be happy here, and will provide beautiful flowers, wonderful fruit, and a small amount of shade. This Smyrna quince, which naturally grows only 8 to 15 feet tall, should be amenable to my plan to keep the size of the tree accessible without the use of ladders by careful pruning to about six feet tall.


A closer view of the baby tree, showing where it was pruned just prior to being planted. I have been following the principles set out in "Grow A Little Fruit Tree", which is a very helpful book about how to train trees that can be reached from the ground, and in ways that work well for urban yards. The three "branches" will hopefully end up as the basic structure of the future tree. As alarming as this pruning appears, it is more unkind to plant a potted tree with a great disparity between the aboveground growth and the size of the root ball in the pot. With luck, and supplemental water for the first two years or so, my dream of a quince tree for the steading will become reality...

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Log Cabin Mitts, pair #3 "skystone cabachon"; inspired by my recent fabricated turquoise pendant. This pair is all scrap/stash yarn in unsweetened chocolate and warmish grey, with a log cabin center of a scrap of Noro Kureyon turquoise webbed with brown. I seem to want to keep knitting these, but after this pair I may have enough… I can stop anytime... yeah...

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Excerpts from an audio interview with Leonard Cohen in 1974:

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March SMART goals (x=extra)

#	THINGS MADE	THINGS FIXED	THINGS GONE
1	stone wool mitts	hook added to mirrorside	-
2	-	quince tree planted	-
3	-	-	-
4	-	-	-
5	-	-	-
6	x	x	x
7	x	x	x
8	x	x	x
9	x	x	x
10	x	x	x
11	x	x	x
12	x	x	x
13	x	x	x
14	x	x	x
15	x	x	x

weekend whatnots

in which our plucky heroine adds future quince to the steading...

Today was the fruit tree giveaway by our neighborhood association, as a memorial to Brian Duncan, who served as the association chair, and died within two years of being hit on his bicycle crossing Rosa Parks, an accident that left him paralysed. Although I never met him, I ride my bike on those very same streets, and have crossed in that intersection many times. I intend to make a decorative tree tag with the words "Brain Duncan Memorial Tree" to hang from the branches of my new quince tree

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Finished up the second pair of Log Cabin Mitts. This one is made from some vaguely Noro-esque yarn in stone-colored shades of brown and grey. I have no idea how the yarn arrived here, but it seemed like a good colorway choice for warm paws in early springtime, when outdoor chores are beginning to be needful.

This time I stitched up not only the edge of the hand portion, but a bit further down onto the thumbhole, as my fingers are wee. I knitted the last two logs on each hand with five ridges instead of the seven called for, in an attempt to get closer to gauge, which seems to have adjusted the size to fit better and not require a spin in the washing machine to shrink them down. In addition, I used the extra length of the yarn tail to blanket stitch around the thumbhole for extra reinforcement. I love this pattern, for its speed.

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March SMART goals (x=extra)

#	THINGS MADE	THINGS FIXED	THINGS GONE
1	stone wool mitts	hook added to mirrorside	-
2	-	-	-
3	-	-	-
4	-	-	-
5	-	-	-
6	x	x	x
7	x	x	x
8	x	x	x
9	x	x	x
10	x	x	x
11	x	x	x
12	x	x	x
13	x	x	x
14	x	x	x
15	x	x	x