World's Best Cat Toy

Day 48: Are you looking for the perfect gift for your feline friend? My resident expert assures me that there is no better toy than a Pink Spring! It bounces, it rolls, it behaves unpredictably, and it can provide hours of fun (or at least until Mama wears out of tossing it). And yes, it must be pink. The green ones, blue ones and yellow ones from the same package aren't nearly as interesting.

Such has been the story with several of my companions over the years, and I'm sure that with cats at least, that the preference for pink has something to do with their vision. On the other hand, my Cockatoo had pink feathers in his crest and around his beak, and birds' colour vision is much better than our own. I could understand "like attracts like" as it related to his preference, although it meant that he had a pink blanket and pink toys despite my aversion to the colour. Science tells us that cats can see blue and yellow wavelengths, but not red. Why, then, does Tippy prefer pink, as Skunk did as well? Given a pile of toys in the kitty toy box, the pink ones were those my cats would select for play. In any event, I still have trouble finding the pink springs when he swats them around the room. At least they don't break easily when I step on them.

Split-Ring Tatting

Day 47: When you say "tatting," most people (at least those who don't think it's the same as crocheting) will picture rings and chains with lots of lacy, single-thread loops called picots in between the stitches, but it doesn't have to be that way. Quite frankly, trying to press hundreds of picots on a doily is similar to climbing a mountain. You take two steps, slide back one. In the case of picots, it's "flatten two, have the first one turn the wrong way while you're trying to flatten the third one." I usually pin picots to starch my pieces, but that's another story. Today, we're talking about split-ring tatting, and the only picots we're going to make are going to be extremely small: just big enough to insert a #13 crochet hook to make joins. Now of those people who understood what I meant when I said "tatting" (the ones who realize it's not crochet), only about one in ten will know what split-ring tatting is. See? We're narrowing this down to a very select group! Split-ring tatting can be done with either a shuttle or with tatting needles, and one way or the other, by the time you've made a few rings, you'll see that you can't leave one thread attached to the ball as you'd do in regular tatting. You're going to be working with two long tails, and you'll be making part of the ring going clockwise, and the other part going counter-clockwise. It's not always half-and-half, either. It all depends on where the next ring begins. I won't explain the whole process. There are plenty of books out there if you're curious. Personally, I like the look of tatting without picots, and split-ring tatting opens up a new dimension on the art.

Picotee Beauty

Day 46: Every year at this time, I'm faced with a problem. I don't think it's proper to play favourites in any event, but when my Christmas cacti start blooming, I lean toward whichever one is flowering at the moment. Yellow has gone through its cycle now, and White is still open. Picotee just popped and...well, there's that dilemma I was talking about. Certainly, Picotee is the showiest of the three, but Yellow is the rarest, and White is both unusual and dramatic. And, if I want to be perfectly honest here, I do have a couple of the standard colours which, although they're brought out to the living room for show, never draw quite the same admiration as my three "best kids."

Pot Pies

Day 45: Here's something else you can do with turkey leftovers: make pot pies. No, not THAT kind of "pot" (you should know me better than that!) Pot pies are are a single-serving dish, and don't really need any other accompaniments. You'll find a commercial variety in the freezer case of your grocery store, and tend to be a little on the skint side when it comes to the protein in the filling. Make them yourself, and put in as much meat as you'd like. You'll need six four-inch pie tins for the amount of dough in the recipe.

The crusts are a hot-water pastry. I use John Kirkwood's recipe (below), which I will repeat here. You can find more of his recipes on YouTube. You will need the following:

400 g all-purpose flour
170 ml hot water (almost boiling)
90 g butter
100 g shortening or lard
1 tsp salt

Melt the butter and shortening in hot water. Combine the flour and salt, and ake a well in the middle. Add the water and melted butter/shortening, and stir in with the handle of a wooden spoon until the pastry comes together. Scrape down the sides of the bowl and be sure that all the flour is incorporated. Form the dough into a ball, divide into two parts (2/3 to line the pans and 1/3 for the lids), cover closely with plastic wrap and refrigerate for about an hour and a half. You want the dough to be cool, but not so cold that it's difficult to handle. Divide each dough ball into six pieces. Roll them out to a bit under 1/8" thick to line the tins and trim the edges. After you've added the filling, dampen the rims of the crusts, and add the lids, pressing the dough together all the way around. Crimp the edges for a nice look, and poke a hole in the center to vent steam. Brush the tops with a wash made from one egg yolk and a little water.

The filling isn't rocket science. It can be ad-libbed at your discretion. I used turkey, partially thawed frozen mixed veg and a dollop of chicken-flavoured cream gravy. You need to put about 1 Tbsp of gravy in each pie (not too much, or the crusts will go soggy), but make plenty. You'll want it to pour over the pies when you serve them. Bake the pies at 350 degrees for 40 minutes, or until the tops are nicely browned. They freeze well, and can be reheated in the oven or microwave.

Moon Over The Mountain

Day 44: You have to understand that in the Pacific Northwest, you don't usually get opportunities to view celestial events or, for that matter, to observe a blue sky, so when this spectacular combination presented itself through my living room window, I grabbed the camera without thinking twice. Plunging through a tangle of chest-high snowberry bushes intermixed with dry blackberry vines, I picked up a few thorns en route to a position which avoided power lines, poles, fence posts and a significantly ugly display of political statement mounted on a truck parked mid-pasture, and managed to make it in and out of the maze without tripping on the frost-slick ground. It was at great hazard to life and limb that I made this photograph for you when I could just as easily have generated it with open-source AI. Apparently, there's a lot of that going on right now. It will never happen here. I promise you that.

Wedged In Wisteria

Day 43: Over the course of years, I have attempted to identify the crustose lichens growing on the trunk of my wisteria, but have not been able to nail them down. I rather doubt I'd have any better luck putting a name to the wisteria's newest accessory, an LBM of medium size which has sprouted in several locations about a foot and a half up from ground level. Since 'shrooms are decomposers, I'm inclined to believe that this means my wisteria isn't as healthy as it appears. Fungus generally appears on weakened wood. The wisteria has never been particularly happy with its northside location, producing only a few flower clusters over its thirty-year life span. It may be time to change up the front yard landscape.

Ruffed Grouse

Day 42: Boy, Mr. Grouse! You picked a bad day to come strolling through the neighbourhood! The guy next door to me wouldn't think twice about adding you to his Thanksgiving dinner menu, so it's a good thing that you were hiding in the woods on my side of the fence late Wednesday evening. That said, I am beginning to wonder if the Game Dept. has started releasing farm-raised fowl up here. Just this year, the first California Quail appeared (at least two), and this is the first Ruffed Grouse (Bonasa umbellus) I've seen locally, and this one doesn't look like he's missed any meals. It's always a treat to see new species in my yard.

Happy Thanksgiving!

Day 41: Well, I got a head start on Thanksgiving because my turkey thawed out faster than I'd planned, but because it did, today I will be enjoying what I consider to be the ultimate "comfort food," Carcass Soup. The recipe is dead simple, although it takes several hours to prepare the broth. Quite honestly, the only reason I bother with a turkey is so that I can have Carcass Soup.

Personally, I don't care for drumsticks, and wings just don't have much meat on them, so those are the parts I use for my first batch of broth, along with the neck. Put them in a big saucepan, bones and all, cover them with water and boil them for...oh, about three hours or until there's no flavour left in the meat at all. You may need to add a little more water from time to time, but the idea is to make a rich broth, so don't add too much. When the meat has turned to cardboard, strain it out and feed it to your local mob of crows. If you'd like, you can use the broth immediately, but I usually refrigerate mine overnight so that I can peel the fat layer off the surface before I start cooking the soup (the fat gets poured onto dog food for another meal for the crows). Heat the broth to boiling, add a generous amount of shell macaroni, and cook until almost all the broth has soaked into the pasta. Add some salt and pepper, and you're done! That's all there is to Carcass Soup.

When you're done nibbling at the rest of the turkey, repeat the process with the remaining meat and bones to make another batch. The broth freezes well for later use, like during that January snowstorm you know is coming.

Who You Callin' Blue?

Day 40: Although this bird is a blue jay, it is not a Bluejay. It's a Steller's Jay, and it's not blue. Neither is a Bluejay, for that matter. The colour blue only occurs in birds as a refraction of light through the cellular structure of their feathers. It makes them appear blue to human eyes, but in fact, no birds' feathers truly carry blue pigment. Turacos come close with a unique copper-based green pigmentation not found in any other species, but Bluejays, Bluebirds, Blue Tits, Blue Grosbeaks, Blue Herons, Lazuli Buntings, Indigo Buntings and other "blue" birds are actually brown. I find that this explanation is frequently met with skepticism or outright disbelief whenever I present it, proving that people believe what they want to believe whether it goes against the science or not. Some will come around after they do a little research. Others will remain forever obstinate, insistent that Santa Claus, UFOs and blue birds are real.

It's Just An Arbitrary Date

Day 39: When you live alone, holidays don't have a lot of significance, but even so, when my turkey thawed out two days before I had expected it to, I was in a bit of a quandary. Should I try to hold it until Thanksgiving? The USDA and other sources made it perfectly clear that to do so would be to risk my health. Forty-eight hours was the limit, and my bird was already twenty-four into that time frame. With two more days to go, I'd be begging for trouble. And then I got to thinking about the holiday. It's just an arbitrary date like all the others people tend to celebrate. Was there any good reason I should wait? I couldn't come up with one, so I made my turkey today with candied yams to go along with. Tippy had a couple of tiny pieces (the only "people food" he ever is allowed) and then, our systems full of tryptophan, we both fell asleep in the recliner.

Good For...Something

Day 38: They have to be good for something. As an inveterate "re-purposer," I have not yet been able to come up with a reasonable use for the plastic cones on which weaving thread is wound. I generate a lot of them, and when you consider that each one originally held 3360 yards of 8/2 cotton (that's 1.9 miles of thread per cone), weaving takes on a whole new dimension. Cones weren't always plastic. The white thread resting horizontally on the warping board is on a hard paper cone. When empty, it will go in the recycling bin, but those plastic ones disturb me. The recycling center doesn't want them. They are not heavy enough to make a gutter "rain chain," and they are not at all musical when struck together, so a wind chime is out. I seldom need a megaphone, and in any event, could only use one at a time for the purpose. Single-use plastics are a plague, and I hate to think that I am contributing to it, but I'm fresh out of ideas for re-purposing cones.

Starring Huernia Zebrina

Day 37: Both of my Huernias frequently drop growth segments, but if I put every one of them down in soil to root (which they do quite readily), the limited space on my plant shelf would soon be overwhelmed. However, I feel such pangs of guilt at throwing away a perfectly viable section that I occasionally give in to the impulse to start a cutting. Over the years, I've given a dozen or so to friends, and recently one of those friends posted a photo of his in bloom. It reminded me that I had nearly missed the first flowers on my Christmas cacti because they had been on the window-facing side, so I checked Huernia. Sure enough, there was a star fully open, hiding in a nest of soft-spined stems. The raised disk in the center of the flower is what gives the species its nickname of "Lifesaver Plant," and the stripes on the bloom's pale yellow lobes supply the latter portion of its Latin appellation, Huernia zebrina.

Conk

Day 36: As a collector of words, I'm not sure how "conk" eluded me until I was well past fifty, at least insofar as it refers to a bracket/shelf fungus. "A conk on the head" was part of my lexicon, as was the game of "conkers," but both imply a certain degree of injury to one's person. How it could apply to a fungus was beyond me, so I consulted Webster's Third New International, the three-volume reference which holds my desk to the floor. Webster, bless his little heart, suggests that "conk" was probably derived from "conch" (the shell), although he expresses some doubt about the validity of that etymology. It makes sense, certainly, but not all derivations are as simple as they appear on the surface. That said, I have never been conked by a conk, nor have I seen a conk employed in conkers. Even so, the word has conquered my vocabulary in such a fashion that I never pass one without mentally saying, "Conk!" "Bracket" just doesn't have the same ring.

Shaft Of Light

Day 35: The forests of the Pacific Northwest tend to be rather dark, especially at this time of the year, and it is that very absence of light which makes our understory so singular. Rich in ferns and mosses, the deep woods hosts a rich variety of "sun-fleck" species, i.e., those vascular plants which, although requiring light to initiate the photosynthetic processes, nevertheless cannot endure it for protracted periods. Relying on only fleeting, momentary exposure to sun, plants like Oxalis (Oxalis oregana) and Pathfinder (Adenocaulon bicolor) would wither under direct rays. Piercing gaps between branches and trunks, shafts of light touch the undergrowth but briefly and then move on, having bestowed their ephemeral gift on those who will make the most of it through their unique genetic adaptations.

The Woman Who Held Birds

Day 34: This is another first, and I'm not sure who was more surprised, me or the Dark-eyed Junco at finding that his new "feeder" was warm to the touch. This photo is actually the second one I took, and is possibly a second bird. I had the first shot framed to fit a Chickadee, and when the first Junco landed, the top of its head was off the edge of the image. This bird sat there for some time before choosing a seed, unlike the Chickadees who I call "sorters." The sorters tend to scatter seed until they've found one to their liking, but Junco was very thoughtful about the process. Now I have to say that while Chickadees are known for being friendly, not all birds are as accepting of humans, and Juncos are not a bird you'd expect to have come to your hand. I think that by observing the 'dees eating safely from my palm, the Juncos finally accepted that I was not a serious threat. Even so, I never expected one to go this far.

For the record, I would like to enumerate the wild bird species which have come to my hand: Canada Jays (hard to avoid contact in the backcountry!), a Clark's Nutcracker, a Rufous Hummingbird, Red-breasted Nuthatch, Pine Siskins, Black-capped and Chestnut-backed Chickadees, Dark-eyed Junco and perhaps the most emotional contact of all, an injured Evening Grosbeak who I nursed back to health and returned to the wild. On the day before his release, he held hands with me for a good thirty seconds. I told Kevin yesterday, "This is how I want you to remember me: the woman who held birds." He even took photos of me with a Pine Siskin friend.

What is the measure of wealth? Maybe you made a million dollars before you were forty. I barely scrape by, spending more on birdseed than I do on "people food." I would not trade this for your millions even if I was starving. I am rich beyond measure, because I am the Woman Who Held Birds.

Stripping

Day 33: Thanks to a generous donation of over a dozen t-shirts by a friend, I'm almost ready to weave more rag rugs again. This is the most laborious part of the process, i.e., cutting them into one-inch strips. It has been made easier by the invention of the rotary cutter, but there was a time when it had to be done with scissors (t-shirt fabric can't be torn because it is a knit). The rotary cutter also creates much neater edges which, of course, in the weaving are left raw. They curl in on themselves by their very nature and are unnoticeable in the finished rug. This is an excellent way to "re-purpose" old tees. Even if the fronts are stained, the backs are almost always usable. To weave, simply overlap the strip ends by an inch or so. The few tails which invariably stick up add a rustic look to the rug. Best of all, rag rugs are heavy enough that they don't need a backing.

Spot The Differences

 

Day 32: We have another milestone! The birders among my readership will have a distinct advantage over the rest of you in this game of "Spot the Differences" when I say that two of these objects are not like the others. Yes, today I made inroads with the Black-capped Chickadees after a trip to the grocery store meant that second breakfast was late. They mobbed me when I got home, trying to get at the seed in the coffee can I was carrying, attaching themselves to the front of my shirt and my sleeves, dive-bombing my hair. It had been a cold night, and they were convinced they were starving. The bulk of the welcoming committee was of course Chestnut-backed, but I was pleasantly surprised when two Black-cappeds, one right after the other, also accepted food from my fingers despite the fact that I was holding the shiny silver scary thing in my other hand. Even so, I got the requisite documentation. Can you spot the Black-cappeds in the crowd?

Skinned Lobsters

Day 31: Given that it requires equal weights of dyestuff to wool, I probably won't be doing any dyeing with lobster skins until next year. "Lobster skins?" I hear someone ask with a degree of horror and revulsion in their words. Yes, lobster skins, as in Hypomyces lactifluorum, the fungal overgrowth which is commonly found on Russula species mushrooms here in the Pacific Northwest. I gathered two batches this year with a project in mind, pared the Hypomyces layer off with a pocket knife and dried it in the dehydrator until it was crisp. The yield measured about two-thirds of a quart and probably weighs less than an ounce, definitely not enough to dye sufficient wool to make a me-sized pair of socks. I have already spun the wool (soft, silky Corriedale) and am working on more. By using different mordants, this dyestuff will yield orange, yellow or purple. Now comes the question: Do I want to wear lobster skins on my feet? Well, you'll have to admit that would be one helluva conversation starter!

Sneaky Bloomers

Day 30: Sneaky! That's what these two are. The fault was purely mine, though. I didn't rotate them as regularly as I should have during the summer, so when they came into bloom, it was on the sides facing the window. You can also see that Yellow got a little more sun exposure than usual, hence the pink tinge to part of the flower. My "Christmas" cacti live in the Loom Room, the only window space I have for them, and it's a small one. They're all crammed together on one shelf, so it's easy to miss burgeoning buds on the light-coloured ones. When I do notice that they're ready to bloom, they're moved to the place of honour on the fireplace mantel, but the body of the house is too warm for them to remain there for the rest of the year. For the best blooms, these plants require cooler nights, especially during the winter.

Getting Into Hand

Day 29: When the Evening Grosbeaks are here, they routinely come 'round to the shepherd's-hook in the front flower bed to glare at me when I'm on the computer and the feeder has gone empty. The hummers and 'dee-dees have also mastered getting my attention in the same way, and some of them will go so far as to tap on the window with their beaks if I don't happen to notice them in a timely manner. Late yesterday afternoon, one of the Nuthatches perched there for several minutes, and when I failed to respond promptly, he began a pattern of flying gently from the hook to beat his wings against the glass. It didn't matter that I was busy with something I didn't want to leave. No, I got up and filled the feeder. But it didn't end there. The bird didn't see that I'd put out more seed. When I sat back down at the computer, he again began fluttering against the window. This time, I went out, walked around to the front of the house with a handful of seed, stuck it right under his little beaky and then went and put it in the feeder. He followed me, now aware that I was doing my job. Just a few minutes ago, he (or another Nuthatch...I can't tell them apart) was at it again. "This is getting out of hand," I said, but I was wrong. I was very wrong. It wasn't getting OUT of hand. It was getting IN hand when I stepped out with the food. Nuthatch, for the first time ever, perched on my fingers and accepted seed from my palm. We've been working toward this for a long time, and I have to tell you, it brought tears to my eyes to be gifted with such trust.

In Case I Forget

Day 28: You know how it is with little old ladies. Just in case I forget where I am, I thought I needed a sign to remind me. Seriously, though...I have been thoroughly enjoying weaving false damask and had a little bit left over at the end of a project which I didn't want to go to waste. I've often thought about making a needlework sign for the Loom Room just because...well, because it would be somewhere else I could hang a piece of fiberart. Actually, I have very little of my own work on display. There are functional items in service, to be sure, like the runner on the harpsichord and a tablecloth in the kitchen, but most of the things I create go as gifts. Since I designed this piece over Día de los Muertos, the top will be finished off with a simple simulated (i.e., woven) papel picado.

'Dee-dee Season

 

Day 27: Although most of them are still shy about taking food from my hand, I strongly suspect that this 'dee-dee (Chestnut-backed Chickadee, Poecile rufescens) is a returnee with a good memory. He was perfectly content to sit there cracking seeds, and in fact wedged one in the crack between my fingers and proceeded to try to pound it open with his beak. It was all I could do not to wince or laugh as he drove the seed further and further into the gap. I can't say for sure whether he pushed it all the way through or not because I had my eyes averted (most critters view eye contact as a threat). As a sidebar here, I will say that I'm making progress with the Nuthatch. He is not yet confident, but flew to the hand close enough that a wing brushed my fingers. I've also had one Black-Capped Chickadee take food from my palm this fall. They are somewhat more shy than the Chessies about making contact.

I Heart Asarum Caudatum

Day 26: It's been two and a half years since I "lifted" a Wild Ginger plant from the vacant property adjacent to mine, and I am happy to say that it is doing very well and has spread much more than I had expected. It seems to like the spot I chose for it on the west side of the house, close to the foundation where it has a little additional warmth. The spot receives direct sunlight for several hours at mid-day, but is shaded in the afternoon by the tall trees on the same lot. Now, you might think it would be nice to have ginger on demand, but Wild Ginger (Asarum caudatum) is not related to culinary ginger (Zingiber). The name is derived from the scent of its leaves and roots when crushed.

Where's The Float?

Day 25: If you heard a loud boom and your seismometer registed a 6.7 about 8:30 last night, that was just me. I had gone in the Loom Room to put a few more rows on the current piece of false damask and had in fact added about twenty on top of the sixteen pattern throws I'd already woven when I spotted a pesky float back at the very beginning of the design. I check very carefully each time I make a pass with the shuttle to be sure this doesn't occur, but every now and then, one will slip past me. I usually spot them before it becomes a major undertaking to pick back my work to repair the error, but this time...this time, my attention had wandered. They're hard to see in any event, but if the light is a little slanted or dim, they can sneak in. So, given that mistakes are not allowed in this house, I began unweaving. I got about halfway before I began making mistakes in my corrections (it was bedtime, after all), so I retired for the night and finished the repair this morning. Now I'm back to the point when I discovered the error. The float has been expunged.

Happy As A Wet Lichen

Day 24: You've heard the phrase, "mad as a wet hen." How about "happy as a wet lichen?" Lichens have a variety of strategies for gathering moisture, and can survive for protracted periods of dry weather by being able to maximize what little is available as dew and in the form of humidity. Many lichens have rough or scaly cortices which increase their surface area substantially. Others like Lettuce Lung (Lobaria pulmonaria) have dimpled foliage in which water pools and is subsequently absorbed into their tissues. Had you seen this specimen in late summer, you would have thought it was dead. The lobes were brown and so crisp that they could easily be crumbled between probing fingers. However, once the autumn rains began, this lichen quickly came back to life and greenness.

King's Flower

Day 23: I've flipped this image over so that the emphasis is on the right side of the fabric (lower portion), although the reverse is also attractive. It's called "King's Flower" in Marguerite Porter Davidson's green book, and I had intended to weave it entirely in 8/2 cotton. However, once I actually began weaving, I felt that the floats were too long for the fineness of the thread. In a fit of, "How do I salvage this?" I cut the initial sixteen or so inches off the loom, re-tied the warp and changed up to the 3/2 blue cotton you see here. It was a less than optimum solution (the thread is lumpy), but it will yield roughly five yards of usable fabric, even though it's not the Christmas tablecloth I had in mind. As Murphy would have predicted, once I washed and dried the section I had cut off, it wasn't as airy as I'd expected it to be, even though the floats were still a little longer than I would have liked. I'm chalking this up to a learning experience, and now I know what the design demands. I love the pattern, and I will warp it again at a closer sett of 20 epi instead of 15, which will shorten the float length by 25 percent. Weaving sometimes requires you to think on your feet in order to tame an uncooperative project.

Alligator In The Sink

Day 22: Every now and then, a Northern Alligator Lizard (Elgaria coerulea) manages to get in my house. How? I have no idea. They generally wind up in one of two places, either on the stone fireplace hearth or in the kitchen sink. Over the years, Skunk managed to catch a couple, or I should say caught the tail, leaving me to rescue rest of the lizard and return it safely to the yard. I don't recall that Tippy has ever caught one, although there was one amusing episode where the three of us were running a foot race with Liz in the lead. During the summer, I find them hanging out under the garbage bin, beneath pieces of wood, under flower pots and such in the yard, but as colder weather approaches, they sneak indoors. I was rather startled when I went to put a dirty coffee mug in the sink and nearly set it on this little critter. The lizard was understandably upset and was not easy to capture, trying to run up the sleeve of my sweater as I tried to grab it gently around the body instead of by the tail. After several minutes of frantic fumbling, a rescue was effected, and Liz was returned to the great outdoors.

Dear Little Bean Sprouts!

Day 21: Dear little bean sprouts! I was afraid they were gone for good. Every year about this time, I start checking one of Pack Forest's lesser-known trails for Clavaria vermicularis, aka "Fairy Fingers." To me, this member of the club fungi carries the apellation "bean sprouts" because that's what they look like in both size and colour. I am quite fond of them simply because they're unusual, and I'd become quite attached to this lot. I saw them last in 2019. In 2020 when I visited the site, I was shocked to see that it had been disturbed. What was peculiar about the disturbance was that it was limited to the exact 12" square of moss where the "bean sprouts" had always grown. The moss had been lifted as a neat rectangle, leaving the soil bare below, and had been dropped a foot away. Evidence pointed toward human interference, not that of an animal. I replaced the moss in its original location and then spent the rest of the day and some time thereafter puzzling over why anyone would have done such a thing, or indeed would have even known where they grew. They are neither edible nor hallucinogenic, so I concluded that they had been harvested as a specimen. It was the only logical justification I could imagine. The following two years were "sproutless" as well, so I almost didn't stop today, but I thought, "It's quick. I might as well check." And there they were...not in the original site, but on the spot where the clump of moss had been dropped by a person/creature unknown! Apparently, it had been full of spores because there are now more "bean sprouts" than ever before. It doesn't take much to make me happy. This made my day.

Twill Gamp Patterns

Day 20: Nothing annoys me as much as a mistake, particularly if it's mine, and even more particularly, if it's one firmly installed in posterity. My first twill gamp had one, and I didn't spot it until it had been hanging up for several days. Obviously, it was minor, but the sheer fact of its existence offended my sensibilities. Fortunately, I had strung enough warp initially to make at least two, so I started again with the same sequencing. The photos overlap a bit, but they show twelve different treadling patterns worked over four threadings. When I reached the end of the gamp, I still had enough warp left for one towel/placemat, so I changed to emerald green and wove it entirely in my favourite combination (sixth up from the fringe, i.e., second full panel from the bottom of the center image). This one does not have any mistakes (or at least I haven't spotted any).

Forever Birbs

Day 19: There is going to be a major shake-up in the birding world. Yesterday, the American Ornithological Society announced that it would be revising up to 80 names of North American birds to alter those which reference "enslavers, white supremacists and robbers of Indigenous graves." James Audubon tops the list, a blow likewise impacting the Audubon Society. Nevertheless, I want to take you there for a moment for the official definition of a "birb," a sub-classification to which Nut (above) belongs. "Birb," says the Society, "is affectionate internet-speak for birds." It refers to a vague category of birds which are funny, cute, silly, round, small or otherwise adorable. Eagles and hawks are not birbs. Neither are gulls, geese or storks (I might argue that last one). The Society goes on to query, "Now, one might reasonably ask why it matters which birds qualify as birbs. Strictly speaking, of course, it doesn’t. But viewed sidelong, it becomes a taxonomic game, akin to 'is a hot dog a sandwich.' These sorts of debates are fun partially because they reveal real fault-lines in our operational definitions. It’s a chance to take stock, not just of what we think about birds, but how we think about them. Defining 'birb' also means interrogating our impressions. It’s not only about rating them: It's about reminding us that—regardless of birb-status—all birds are good." Given this revelation, I now ask you to re-read the first two sentences of this essay in order to better understand why the name changes are necessary.