Activist post

Resistance anyone can do. Please help apply pressure. This is from the Chop Wood, Carry Water newsletter.

Ed note: my email to corporate was rejected. Maybe blocked or full box.

Strength, cardio and misfits

Thursday is misfit day, and I did a workout to get my strength up ready for the Big Lift. In fact I bring the food in bit by bit, so the big lift is usually the almost empty box with maybe a few apples in it.

April and Aiko again. I hadn't done resistance, the physical kind, that is, for a few days, just walking and stretches and dancing in the kitchen, so I was pretty feeble. I did get through it, strength, cardio, isometrics, not resorting to sitting.  Strength really melts away if you take too many days off.

Yesterday I donated a bag of food to the food pantry with the help of a ride from Gary, and he carried in the bag. I did have a little agenda here, because he's been talking about donating and hasn't been doing it. 

But once he saw how local the pantry is and how easy it was to donate, no bureaucracy, he was all fired up with ideas about cans he has in the house that he'll donate.  He tends to over buy, so he can do this.   And he has plans to buy for giving in future. That will be good.

On the way home he said his phone, yet again, was out of action. Until he could get it to the shop later that day, he couldn't get on with some urgent calls. 

So while his latest top of the line $$$ iPhone, carrier some big name,  was out of action, I lent him my cheap and cheerful $Motorola, carrier Tracfone, and he got caught up.  I was nice. I didn't gloat.

Today's haul, delivered by Jeff. Pure cane sugar, fair trade, for general use, red onions to dice and freeze because I'm out, yellow onions dittto, I use a lot of onions, ginger and garlic likewise, spinach to go in everything, more or less, canned goods for the food pantry, beautiful brown free range eggs. 

These are real eggs, that need a sharp rap on the counter to crack them, and have a deep yellow stand up yolk. I don't crack eggs on the side of the bowl since Jacques Pepin said it was a way to drive eggshell fragments into the egg. 

Blueberries to go with the yogurt, bread because I'm too bone idle to bake, chocolate almonds because everyone needs a little something now and then. Some to my neighbor across the street whose soup container needs to be returned. Never return a container empty!

Look at these beauties. Too big for the supermarket -- this is two pounds each of the onions. They're now more or less diced and frozen, and the red onion skins are in a jar of water to make a nice pink dye for some future purpose or other. 

Happy day everyone, do all the things, follow the Yorkshire saying: break eggs with a stick. Meaning plunge in, regardless.

Marigold looking down from the blanket in the sky saying look at that, still running about doing stuff, she hasn't learned a thing.

Daily activism, saving the landfill, bergamot boxes

Wednesday morning I realized voting is on soon for renewed funding for a lot of things including Homeland Security which contains ICE.  I messaged both senators to urge them to work to defund and abolish HS, ICE included.

The day's walk took me past this dumpster with useful stuff I don't need. 

I put it up on Freecycle with directions on how to find it. There are more items than you see, evidently someone unenlightened, moving out, who isn't considering the optics, or the options.

Tuesday  when I wrote my post I was a bit tired,  full day, and plenty of material already, so I postponed the usual account of the subjects the knitting group ranged over.

Catching up: growing cotton, using whistles, local charity shop, downed trees in storm, Christmas markets, gluhwein, poutine, pelvic floor health, Korean churches, spinning wheels, soft toys, cars, creative playthings, large boxes, artefact restoration, lost violins and more. 

And here's the bergamot boxes 

The one on the left cracked as I was taking it off the glass, but I can repair it when I do the finishing. These are more brittle than the lemons were. I can maybe match the outer ones as one box, the inner ones as another. There was a gust of scent when I took them off the glasses, lovely.

Happy day everyone, say all the things! She does anyway, sez Ted and Big Ursy 

Daily activism, Tuesday Knitting Group, Textiles and Tea

Tuesday's activism was to message both my senators, Kim and Booker, demanding that they vote NO on the Clarity Act, which has no proper guardrails on the Bitcoin, and which comes up for a vote Thursday. 

It's before both the Senate Finance and Agricultural Committees. I have one senator on each.  US blogistas, please do likewise, even if you have no senator on either committee. Pressure adds up.

The Tuesday knitting group was a real party, with a new member, the return of one who has been MIA, and the usual suspects. 

And one member brought in sample cotton bolls she'd grown! 

She gave me a couple which I will gin -- remove the seeds buried in the fluff -- save the seeds and try them next year, then card the fluff and use it in papermaking. New adventure.

She also brought in her Ashford Joy traveling spinning wheel and let me try it out. I was pretty clumsy, but the wheel is beautiful. 

She makes it look easy! In the background you see its traveling bag. I priced the wheel, very $$$$,  one cheaper second-hand one lasted no time at all on eBay.  Maybe the spindle continues to be my spinning tool for now.

Meanwhile the toad of Frog and Toad, is finished and waiting for his stripey bathing suit.

And here's a member wearing two of her knits 

While busy on a third

And now a third group member is joining in with Driving Miss Boud, each taking a week, it's generous, also hilarious. 

Tuesdays are all go, home just in time to make a pot of tea and catch Textiles and Tea with Vicki Assegued, a wildly creative freeform artist in fibers, using a huge range of techniques and materials, including garage sale buys. 

she's a generous and great teacher of workshops and exhibits widely.  She designs as she goes, and refers  to testing each new material as she works as auditioning. Great concept.

Happy day, everyone.  Tuesday even had comic relief,  from Freecycle, the gift that keeps on giving

To be fair, the entry was about a red punch bowl and glasses, and the green ladle went with it.  The caption went astray.

 

Update on legislation and bathtubs

The bills in the NJ state legislature I mentioned got  swiftly through the Assembly and Senate and will be law as soon as Gov Murphy signs, which he will.

Here's the doings

So far, so good. 

On the bathtub front here's breaking news. 

Michael the artist friend contractor, came over Monday afternoon, remembered our conversation from years ago and was willing to get the kit, study all the videos -- he's thorough -- fix it, match and replace the few broken tiles, repaint the bathroom and recaulk  the tub. 

Solving a whole lot of problems at once. Even with materials and labor,  this is going to be affordable, yay. I told him no hurry, fit it in where he can, I have another bathroom anyway.

We also had a good catchup of news since before the holidays. All good. 

Happy day everyone, and try to do all the things! Or get someone else to..

Activism anyone can do, part 23,879, and more

There's a GoFundMe underway for the thug who murdered Ms. Good, his name spelled differently from other reports. They cite his mounting legal fees and other expenses. 

It's against TOS to raise funds for expenses created by violent crime, and they claim this heavily armed enormous man was in fear of his life against an unarmed woman attempting to drive away. 

So I reported it. Anyone can. 

And I got an acknowledgement. This is part of the email in the box this morning. It's possible this attempt is being made by some unauthorized person wanting to scam people, too. His name is spelled differently from news reports.

Either way, it needs to go away.  

And, this being a cleaning family day, I got a Lyft to the library.  Hasan arrived in three minutes, in a very new looking car, I like Lyft. Especially since I discovered Uber had donated $1m to the person in the Partial White House. 

Later edit:  the homeward-bound Lyft driver, not Hasan, another,  ran a red arrow and shouted at me when I protested. Several other issues. I've blocked him. But I don't think he's typical.

I finished the public puzzle which had a couple of pieces in wrong places, once they were moved, it was done.

I did this little corner of this

 joyful picture!

Outside not so joyful. The renovation they're doing on the square seems to be all about removing grass and paving everything in sight. 

This afternoon I'm going to get in touch with friend contractor Michael and see if he's interested in doing the bathtub using a kit we can get locally. I'd rather contract with him than unknown installers, wonderful as they may be. 

And here's the current state of the church gong bergamot boxes.  

Pro tip: oranges past their best are way easier to work with. They even turned themselves inside out while I was scooping out the pulp. They're willing to be molded on the glasses, too. This may explain Sally Pointer's success with windfalls.

Watch this space! Bergamot boxes and bathtubs, sounds like one of those carefree novels, beach reading, it's all go. 

An old idea resurfaces, and a new project

The $$$$ tub to shower idea isn't the only way to go. I checked into various versions, from complete tear out and rebuild, to prefab shower inserts, to revisiting an idea I had years ago.

I wondered if it was possible to just cut into the bathtub wall, remove a section leaving a step over, and cover and waterproof the raw edges. At that time Michael the Talented Artist Contractor was very dubious, and we didn't find anything available on the market to work for us.

Anyway now, years later,  there are quite a few companies doing this work and installing the kit, and I can get it locally, and will definitely investigate the best way to go. 

Like this 

And it's many $$$ cheaper than the reno. So I may be able to get the bathroom retiled and painted without going broke. Anyway that's where the thinking is right now. Old thinking not as impractical as it sounded at the time.

And the current making project consists of continuing one of the items that arrived yesterday.  

If there's enough yarn for a cowl, that's what it will be. If not I'll think again. I also repaired and rebuilt underwear but you probably aren't eager for pictures of that.

Thank you whoever recommended this book

I think it's been made into a movie which I don't plan to see because I've got the characters vividly in mind and I bet the movie won't correspond.

It's a book that's wonderful mostly, a bit chick lit here and there but who cares, it grips, that follows interesting people occupied in and around books, writing, selling, reviewing. 

The action is mainly on Alice Island in New England, hard to get to, largely a summer resort place but the characters live there. Not one of those affluent-family-at-summer-home tropes.  

The literary background is second to their lives, hearts, connections, births and deaths. I really encourage you to read it if like me, you hadn't even heard of it when it was a bestseller.

Happy day everyone, and let me know if you have any info, or experience, on the potential mayhem of the bathtub.

I have deleted the coverage of the nomadic textile presentation after finding the presenter doesn't permit recording. I took that to cover screenshots, too.  Just in case you notice.

About politics -- I don't come to blogland for armchair political opining. So I limit my coverage to a few pertinent actions we can take, and  acknowledgment of what blogistas are doing. I'm involved, not trying to ignore our situation, but not wanting to make more noise.  

I have taken to scrolling past blog posts, nothing personal, that include complete cut and paste of the newsletters I already follow.  Just sayin'.