Handsome Partner's birthday thoughts

 Yesterday we had our chocolate walnut cake dessert with cherry sauce, and chatted about many things including the life of Handsome Partner, the supreme court finally making good decisions, peppermint plants, John Tradescant and others.

 The tiny bouquet, picked between storms, included spiderwort, aka tradescantia virginiana, hence the Tradescant chat.

Anyway, we remembered Handsome Partner on his 91st birthday, and here are a few thoughts from earlier birthdays on this blog

I didn't know when I wrote the first one here, that it would be his last. It's a long post that acknowledges blogistas, too, and.  you might like to check it out 

Happy day, everyone, storms outside, but it's peaceful indoors, in every sense.

New starts, health update, skirt pattern

 Yesterday I put some sprigs of lemon balm into the rooting teapot, and noticed it has tiny flowers I'd never spotted before.

Why, you wonder, do you want to start a plant that currently runs wild, choking everything in its path, escaping the supposedly restraining pots? Because like the other mint relatives, it vanishes completely over Fall and winter, and I fancy trying to keep it as a houseplant, to have some available in winter.

Also I'm just starting to see improvement in my neck issues, where I can think about eventually starting with my fiber projects again. Not yet.

So I needed to create a paper pattern for the woven/knitted skirt. This meant tracking down a newspaper, which I don't have. Gary promised me some ready for recycling, and I went next door to collect.

There followed a lovely chat with a visiting family member I'd met before, where we established we: both alter thrifted clothes to suit, both add pockets where needed, both make clothes without patterns, both use newspaper where we need to make a pattern. Nice convo, punctuated by Gary exclaiming I don't know what you're talking about!

Home again, ready to measure, make paper pieces to try on 

Here's the Notebook Of Thinking, which was also the Notebook of Learning Hindi

The Hindi was an ill-fated local adult school class where the somewhat inept teacher went back to India after three weeks, and we all got refunds.

Anyway the notebook being one I'd made, it's gone on being useful, and here's the current project with math.

The original idea was to weave straight panels (note that panel means vertical strip, horizontal pieces having different names), and knit wedge shaped pieces to alternate with the woven panels, to create an A line effect.

This involves figuring out the measurements of the wedges,  top and bottom and doing some tricky decreasing to get a smooth narrowing. Hm 

Then a rush of brains to the head! Why not just knit straight pieces, the width of  the hem end, here 2.5", and do the adjustment when I stitch the parts together, slanting the woven sections together at the top to create the wedge shapes. This will increase the bulk at the waist and I have an idea how to fix that. 

So here's the nyt, more useful than usual

I've tried this around me, and it seems to work. The two sides come around to meet. One big advantage of weaving and knitting to size is; all selvedges, almost no seam allowance needed.

So much easier. Now all I need is the neck to calm down -- it's already buzzing and jabbing from yesterday's pattern making -- and I'll be off. This feels so great, to be making again. Everything else feels like treading water.

Today's Handsome Partner birthday celebration will be an indoor event, owing to endless thunderstorms and inches of rain. We did escape the local tornado warning.

Happy day everyone, whatever the weather.

I have some Handsome Partner birthday thoughts which I'll save till tomorrow, there being a limit to how much I can stuff into one post. I marvel at bloggers who comment that they have to look for material. Mine's like the lemon balm of ideas, escaping all over.

Bunnies, apricot stuff, chocolate cherry dessert

 Yesterday this little guy hopped in front of me for a couple of blocks, just keeping out from underfoot

before he made a right turn to join his friends. There's two or three babies, tumbling about and chasing each other, not quite old enough to run when they see a human.

And I made what I expected to be apricot jam, using dried apricots I'd soaked overnight.

When suddenly after boiling just a couple of minutes, just starting to gel, it seized. I now have a kind of apricot version of hard sauce. It tastes just fine, but isn't jam 

I've noticed this kind of weird result before with using unrefined cane sugar rather than the white refined kind. I think the chemistry's different in some way. It's edible but not the consistency I had in mind.

Here's how it looks today.

 I transferred it to a plastic tub to make it easier to access.

And since tomorrow's Handsome Partner's 91st birthday, Handsome Son is coming over for a little celebration.

 

I made a dessert involving chocolate walnut cake, cherry sauce and chocolate icing 

And since it involved cutting a well in one slice of the cake for the cherry sauce, the cook got an afternoon tea preview taste of the cut out parts of dessert with added cherry sauce  

We celebrate his birthday as a memory, because he died on the evening of Handsome Son's birthday in August, so we keep that day for handsome Son.

I've been reading about language lately and thought I'd mention why you see me using the word nice fairly often. 

I had a dogmatic high school English teacher who tormented anyone who  used the word. It was LAZY, STUPID, CHEAP!  And we suspected she meant the user as much as the word. 

So I was traumatized out of using it. Then a few years ago I realized I didn't have to listen to Mrs. Butler any more, and I could say nice if I wanted to. Nice, nice, nice. It felt free. And nice! Neener! 

Too funny, since she no doubt went to the great English class in the sky decades ago. Despite this quirk, she was a great English teacher and a nice woman (!)

Happy day everyone, use the words you want, you're entitled!

Handsome Partner's birthday

A drawing I did of him sleeping, with his cat, in 2005. Sepia ink. 

This would have been his 90th birthday. I usually celebrate him today rather than the day he died, in 2011, since that was on our son's birthday in August, and I thought it should be kept as a happy day for Handsome Son .

Happy day everyone.

Photo AC.