Quiet Fourth, with diversions

Yesterday's weather was perfect for outdoor reading and plant watering. In the eighties, low humidity, wispy clouds. A long, sad day all the same, lonely.

I usually have fun Bad Food for the Fourth, hot dogs, potato chips, things I don't go for usually. This year not much heart for fun, but thinking I'd be better tending my health right now.

Salmon baked 20 minutes at 400°f, then five more at 385 . Sprig of thyme, black pepper, lemon juice, seasalt, very good, just right. With local butter crunch lettuce. Blueberries for dessert, sprinkle of raw cane sugar. Same again today with the rest of the salmon. 

I alternated between a bit of knitting on the current sock, nearly done,

some stitching on the vest, now only needs armholes and hem, no picture because it looks exactly like last time I showed you, and had a good time stitching linen squares.

These are sample small squares a friend got with an order of fabric, couldn't think what to do with them, and passed on to me to figure out

So for starters I'm making strips, then I'll decide whether it's another pillow top, or maybe a trim on the linen curtain in the bathroom replacing cabinet doors, currently just plain white. 

Second picture shows wrong side on left, with the pressed flat seams. After pressing I used the rotary cutter to make the strips even, the sample squares varying a bit in size. 

This sounds simple, but of course involved finding the rotary blade was blunt, a search for the new blades, a fumbling series of attempts to unscrew the blade without losing the gasket, nut, screw, plate etc then to reassemble in the right order with a new sharp blade, without getting cut.

This accomplished, it's a good feeling to stitch linen, and to lay the strips together in different combos. The colors are subtle and intense. No need to know their destination yet.

Outside I lounged on the lounger and read

A history of psychedelics and their ancient ritual uses, then to the present when the authorities can't decide what to do about them. 

One hilarious passage is the account of the one hundredth birthday celebration with speeches and papers, of the modern discoverer of LSD 25, Swiss researcher for Sandoz, Albert Hofmann, in 1938. 

I'm guessing quite a few of the gathered researchers were surprised to find it wasn't a memorial, because he was present, on the platform, and gave a paper about the discovery!

Not many bird sightings yesterday, couple of cardinals, bunch of crows wheeling and dashing overhead, one white butterfly. 

I notice neither the butterfly bush next door, nor my marigolds nor morning glory are budding up at all. This might account in part for the lack of wildlife.

Since art will save us all, I am stepping up on the soapbox briefly with a couple of terms. 

The bits of art I've been posting here are drawings, not sketches, no matter how quickly they were made. That's because they're freestanding, finished small works. 

Strictly speaking a sketch is a preparation for another artwork, a painting usually, or a 3D project. Some artists also call those prep works drawings. 

It's better to refer to works as drawings rather than sketches, because it's dismissive to imply it's nice but unfinished, a preparation for something more significant. 

Similarly, to ask, as I've been asked, if I'm going to "color in" black and white drawings. If you're using color it's integral to the idea, not an add-on.  Color has power, shape and meaning in its own right.

Anyway I understand perfectly that these terms may not be familiar and nobody means any offense by using them or asking questions. None taken!  Just seizing the passing thought.

Happy day everyone. Today I'm going to try to navigate the patient portal to give the required information to the surgical center before next week's eye work.

Tomorrow is the rheumatologist consult about the hip bone loss. Not that I'm having any hip problems at all. It's all go around here!

Exciting news about chairs.

This title sounds like a Monty Python sketch about BBC news.

Yesterday Gary presented me with two garden chairs surplus to requirement, after cleaning them up with Borax. 

At his suggestion, the other chair, the weird greenish one, is now lodged in the clump of trees outside, where the kids play clubhouse. They'll like it.

So now it's four chairs, back to an even number.. but three are grouped, to satisfy aesthetic sensibility. Also the space available.

I followed up on Mary's comment to Steve and I'm now deep in this

It's about the legal confusion around growing poppies, and the potential fallout on innocent people just experimenting with gardening poppies.

The section about seeds may explain why there were suddenly several years when I couldn't get poppyseeds to put on my bread, after buying them easily in the baking section of the supermarket. I just checked and now they seem to be available again.

I remember knowing enough about poppyseeds to warn the students we worked with in a work co-op project at the local college, to avoid eating poppyseed bagels for a few days before drug testing. Evidently it tests like heroin in the fairly crude testing process, and would fail a drug test.

Talk about living dangerously, Pollan, such a great name for his work, innocently growing poppies to maybe make tea, found he could have lost everything to forfeiture.

Yesterday exhaustion took over, and I slept all afternoon, then supper, shower and slept all night. This medical stuff isn't for wimps. Too bad I'm a wimp..

Ink and brush today.

Also rain and cool weather, more like spring than the first days of summer. I'm liking it. 

Happy day everyone.