Puzzle, plain sewing and food, near and far

Yesterday I made a humble fryup, onions, a baked potato, spinach, the rest of the Gary turkey, the kind of meal I wouldn't offer anyone but liked for myself.

Which reminded me of a couple of wonderful non-textile references in the Silk and Cotton book

Flatbreads, and

melons, pride of Central Asia, wonderful climate for them.

But I can't resist, before I leave the book, which I hugely recommend, this great temptation to the quilters and sewing enthusiasts among us, looking at you, Magpie! You'd dive in here

Back at home, more humble doings, a bit of plain sewing. A (long) while back I upcycled a couple of heavy cotton turtleneck sweaters to make useful jackets, by opening up the front. I'd worn them for years, after getting them at a garage sale for $2 each, until the neck went a little tight. 

The cut edges of one curled back on themselves after cutting, so  didn't need any finishing. 

The other is this one which had been fraying a bit, and I finally hemmed it

So it continues to be useful. Now in its probably 25th year of use, along with the other one. Land's End made good quality back then.

And the puzzle, which has more than one possible answer

I've thought of two: garlic and gothic. Gaelic isn't admissible because it's a proper noun, usually not an option in word puzzles. Did you find any others? It has to be six letters, which rules out gastric, sadly.

The pattern, for those still baffled, is that the initial letter advances through the alphabet, the final letter retreats. 

Happy day everyone, use, reuse, enjoy!

Puzzle reveal and interesting art

 The puzzle seems to have puzzled! Debra hit on the pattern. Here's a next possible link after vortex: remain. Then a possible next: mainly.

Have you spotted what's happening? The third letter of each link is the initial letter of the next.  That's how come there can be various answers.

Meanwhile back in the sickroom, the patient is feeling very cranky and stuffy and coughy and not up to much, but a bit stronger than yesterday. 

I really think it's so long since I was sick that I can't remember how to do it!  I did have some supplies at home, and had picked up tissues, vital. Definitely an amateur at this, wildly impatient to feel better, but reminding myself there's no rush.

But I've always thought you need to push a bit to recover, not just wait for it to happen, which may not be great medical advice.

Anyway I did get the current gloves knitted, days ago and will mail them when I can get to the post office. And I saw an interesting idea for a bit of art, which probably is a good sign, that I fancy trying it.

It needs cardboard , maybe a section of the Misfits box which is finally marked "out for delivery". We'll see! 

The reason I use Misfits is that it's organic items and it's discount, also they don't make substitutions. If I ordered the equivalent locally it would cost much more, and quite a few items aren't available in this region. 

So although I've been very annoyed this time, it's the second problem in about 75 deliveries. Overall not so bad. And our weather temp has been dramatically worse than normal, which has affected a lot of delivery issues. 

Yesterday I watched a bit of this, mainly for the cosy scenes in the various homes.

So there we are. Happy day everyone! Keep on keeping on, we'll get there!

Great caroling, and timely greetings

I posted yesterday before the official first night of Hanukkah, so happy H, dear celebrants

And

Fervent thanks for my home state, from a born again, meaning naturalized,  Jerseygirl, who nevah pumps gas, nor takes nonsense. 

Meanwhile yesterday at the carol service, which, I realized at the last minute, was London time, five hours earlier than I'd planned. No time to get presentable, which why I kept my camera off 

Here's Jacqueline Bee Durban, host and MC

who was a load of fun, introduced a series of great clips, some pagan, some Christian, some just wintry, with carols in between which everyone could join in, muted, because the time lapses on zoom create chaos. 

Except at the end where she invited Christmas chaos with an unmuted rendition of the Twelve Days of Christmas, some people leaping while others were drumming and dancing and milking, just great fun.

It was exactly right for my down lonely mood yesterday morning, this time of year hard to navigate, especially this year with such losses. So that was my carol sing for the season, and it was great. Perfect timing.

Then this morning I looked out to see these little fellers in the best seat in the house, noshing on squash seeds and rinds

They saw me there, started to run then obviously thought oh we can take her anytime, and returned to continue their interrupted breakfast.

Speaking of animals knowing what's what, here are dogs modeling excellent theater manners

And I needed a little batch of cranberry muffins after the caroling excitement 

About learning cording, I learned it from YouTube, Sally Pointer to start, and I also searched on daylily cordage, having learned the term from her. If you do a search on "string" on this blog, that box at the top left, you'll find my early tries.

There are quite a few YouTube videos. Try it, you'll like it! 

I really like the whole process because it's so intelligent. It's a form of spinning, and the physics of it are the same.

Briefly, when you spin, here I'm talking as a spindle spinner, you first spin your yarn single in one direction, often clockwise, known as z. Then when you ply singles, you ply, that is spin, your singles together, in the opposite direction, known as s. The physics cause the resulting plied yarn to hold tight together.

That's exactly what your fingers do when you make cording, turning one set of fibers clockwise then drawing them, counter clockwise, down over the other set. 

Now they've changed place and again you turn clockwise what was the bottom group and is now the top group. Once you see and try it you'll quickly get it. 

That's why you see my cordage staying together, not unraveling.  If it unravels you know you did something you need to fix, probably you turned the top group in the wrong direction.

I'm always lost in awe at the people who originally figured all this out, thousands of years ago, with no tutorials.

Speaking of shock and awe, you'll be mad at yourself when you see the solution to the puzzle, if you were wrestling with word meanings, derivations, semantics snd semiotics, to find:

dynaMITE

wANT

mamMOTH

brieFLY

Yes, the words all contain insects. Patti (pictou) gave a huge hint in her clever comment.  

One of those puzzles which lead you instantly down an etymological rabbit hole, instead of seeing the words as just collections of letters.

Happy day everyone, don't make life harder than it has to be, it's hard enough already!

 

 

String and scones and things

I continued with the cording yesterday, now that the fibers were damp, much better 

There's a difference between using iris leaves and day lily leaves. You split them before drying then damping, and the day lily being long and narrow, has mostly long fibers, good for cordage. The iris is broader leafed and separates into smaller lengths, a bit trickier for cording but it still works. 

Quite a bit of what you see here is iris with a few lengths of daylily. And I've started to build up the wall of this piece, to make a straight sided container.

I'll use up the current supply then make more cordage.

 I found that my current Arabic course of twenty lessons only has seven on YouTube, so I had to look around for a new course. 

I'm now following this, from the beginning, and find it works as review, too, along with new words. Some really odd vocabulary, what with the words for secret, research, fail, sister, father, door, broadcast, repeat, pilgrim. Think of the dialogue you could have!

Since today's Sunday, I'm taking the day off from Arabic and trying to figure out the start time of a carol service I was sent a link for. It's in London, turns out, so I translated into their time, find it's not on, and wonder if it's already been translated into EST somewhere... We'll see. Oh, it's on now, must rush!

But first, Gary came over yesterday with scones! So my afternoon tea was lovely

Meanwhile another puzzle courtesy of Haggard Hawks

Hollies, tiny Santa and potato cakes

Yesterday's walk was about pretty much leafless trees, but a couple of little American holly bushes, lovely bright berries. I didn't cut any, left them for the birds. 

It's different from the English holly beloved of Christmas cards, and just as lovely when the deciduous trees are asleep. 

And down the street, a tiny Santa light bravely lighting the path

The walk took place in the middle of making potato filled pancake things. Since it's a risen dough, there was an hour when it needed to rest, so I went walking, happy the sun had come out.

This is the kind of food you make when you're in pottering mode, because it's a few stages, not fast food. I fried onions to brown not caramelized,  added in spinach till wilted but not vanished, microwaved three potatoes, mashed them, then picked out the skins. No need to faff around peeling them. The skins ended up with the stock makings in the freezer. Waste nothing!   All the vegetables you mix well.

You need to spice up the filling well, because this is stodge, needs the help. The potatoes got salt and za'atar the other vegetables got salt, Old Bay, how did you guess, and  turmeric. 

Meanwhile, back at the ranch, I  made the dough, yeast, warm milk, some water, flour, salt, kneaded a bit, left to rest an hour in an oiled bowl.

Once back from the walk, I divided the dough, I love my bench scraper for cutting dough, into eight, rolled them out, put a good spoonful of filling on each, folded the dough around, flattened, then six minutes covered, fried, turning once. It was like playing with clay, fun for tinies!

And as you see, came out well. I cut a piece, like the cake judges at the WI show, so you can see it looks done.

I liked making this, and it could be filled with berries, then dusted (cook talk) with sugar, for a hot dessert. Or any number of other vegetables, pumpkin instead of potato, loads of possibilities.

So I now have a plateful in the fridge, for several lunches. I expect I could freeze them, too, like practically everything else I freeze. I know it's no use offering a share to Gary, because shock, horror, it's got vegetables. He grows them to give away, not to eat!

He and vegetables are not friends. You could say he's an opponent of them, which also happens to be the solution to the latest word puzzle.  Tom gave the broadest,  funniest of hints in his recent comment! And the World Cup, my timely clue, puts out opponents on the field in every match. It's odd how hard a common word can be to guess when it's broken up into a puzzle.

Making soup today, squash and carrot, maybe chickpeas too, using the stock I made last night. Since the episode of the stove absent mindedly left on all night under the stock pot, and the more disastrous later burning out of the kettle overnight, I now have an alert on my phone daily at 10pm to CHECK STOVE TOP! 

Happy day everyone, try not to burn out your kettle, consider it a successful day when you manage not to.

Early bird celebration

To fit into Handsome Son's schedule, the official birthday bash, lunch here, will be on Tuesday, a bit early but best he can do. Fine by me.  While he's here we can put up Christmas decorations, such as they are, one small box.

Meanwhile, I had a rush of brains and thought if I want sturdy gloves, I can multiply the threads.  So here we go, holding three at once, nice tweedy effect and definitely sturdy, bigger size. I can use sock weight yarn until reinforcements arrive. Go me!

Since you're probably totally at a loss to fill your weekend time at this season (!)  I'm kindly offering a non festive, non seasonal puzzle. I'm going to get on with my library jigsaw. 

Except it occurs to me that I may need to clear the puzzle off the table for Tuesday's lunch..not as clever as I thought I was. Go me, indeed, who am I kidding?

 

Happy day, everyone, and keep going, despite logistical goofups. Remember, self, at least you haven't set fire to Notre Dame cathedral.

C of the W, October, puzzle farewell

Yesterday's walk was a great October golden adventure, best October ever

Complete with a whole new highly colored explosion of chicken of the woods, same location but I think a new fungus, much bigger, many layers, appeared since the day before. The camera didn't pick up the brilliant orange colors 

Vintage stuff. Not a mast year this year, few acorns or nuts, but evidently a great bracket fungus year. I'd like to try Sally Pointer's acorn coffee but that may be for another year.

The flock of  yellow rump warblers is still around, plenty of insects in the warm damp weather. Despite sheer curtains, one hit the window but bounced off and kept going.

Meanwhile celebrate what's at hand. Today I'm off to offer the completed Parrot Puzzle to the library for its borrowing collection, and check out another one, preferably fully interlocking, no sneaky bits. No parrots either.

Today's Haggard Hawks is a nine letter word starting HE, ending AT. I guessed hempcheat, one who escapes hanging, which is far too niche, turns out it's much more common, oh well. You try it  

And here's to knitters

Happy day everyone, enjoy whichever season your hemisphere is in.  

Puzzles and pasta, also wartime

Handsome Son visited yesterday, approved the crumble and demolished a large helping. He also helped me with the issue of my sister's Celebration of Life, next Sunday at her house in Ontario. 

I had been wondering about writing a little something for my nephew, who seems to be organizing everything, to read as part of the event and couldn't think what, the relationship not having been unmixed. Also I didn't know her as well as you might think, she having emigrated when I was very young. I'd seen her a few times at long intervals after that.

But he made a couple of helpful suggestions, he's really a good person to think things out with. Nonjudgmental, tactful. So now I'm set to write a little something.

I just read this

A fast read, sometimes funny, sometimes tearjerking, but good distraction when you aren't up to thinking deeply. 

It's set in wartime London, in the Blitz, the main character doing fire watch by night, office work in a women's magazine on the Mrs Bird column by day, sleeping when possible. The style is breathless beach read, though the subject matter isn't.

I'm about to embark on the next of the series, newly out, because I need distraction from today's dental work.

Yesterday I made a spaghetti sauce with the works -- Roma plum tomatoes, tomato paste, butter, onions, garlic, a lot of fresh basil and sage, Italian seasoning, chunk of Parmesan rind,all simmered for ages, for lunch today, cheerful food.

And I find a few minutes now and then with the current jigsaw is very calming, just a few minutes thinking only about shapes and colors.  

Speaking of puzzles, I follow Haggard Hawks the etymologist and love the esoteric musings on word origins, always a word geek 

Now and then they post a little puzzle and though I don't do puzzles much, once in a while, it's fun. 

There's a kind of unwritten secondary fun that goes on, where other posters who have solved it, instead of posting the answer, post funny clues to it, extending the game. 

Then there's always the heavy foot who doesn't grasp this and says what's the matter with you all, this is the answer, and posts it. Arghghgh. But in a way, funny too.

 Here's an HH if you're in the mood

- - - lpr - - -

The six missing letters are just two letters of the alphabet.

I'll post the answer later in the comments. It pays to read blogista comments, by the way, since some of the best material on the blog is to be found there.

Happy day everyone, life's a conundrum anyway, one step in front of the other.

Photo AC