On Again, Off Again

Day 79: Snow in the Pacific Northwest isn't light and fluffy as a general rule. It's soggy, sloppy, and it clings to evergreen branches until the sheer weight of its accumulation causes it to fall. "Stopping by woods on a snowy evening" isn't the Frostian idyll one might suppose, not here. Linger too long under a tree, and you might be crowned by an icy widow-maker. While humans can exercise certain precautions to protect themselves against assault by snow bombs, overhead power lines are possessed of no such means, and thus it was that I have spent much of this last week without electricity. Duration of the outages ranged from an hour to eight hours with just enough space in between to bring the house back up to a liveable temperature and cook a postponed meal. When during an outage it gets too cold indoors, I light the propane fireplace, never turning it up to a great roaring blaze, but rather keeping it at the lowest setting; an aboriginal fire, just enough to take the edge off, conserving the scant resource. Hovering by the flames, my thoughts run to the days of winter duty in a backcountry cabin without heat or light and buried in snow up to the roof. I marvel now at how I survived and even enjoyed that experience. Ah, the invincibility of youth! Those were good days, forty winters gone.

Coming Down Sideways

Day 78: Quite literally, it is coming down sideways. We had another power outage overnight, but fortunately, the temperature had risen from 22 at 9 PM to 26 by 2 AM, giving me less cause for concern that my pipes might freeze. There are a lot of factors involved in the "worry threshold," but if daytime highs approach 32 degrees, the plumbing is generally secure to a low of 19 as long as it doesn't occur before midnight. Over thirty years of living here, my judgment call is now made largely on instinct based in a subconscious evaluation of conditions. That said, I've been wrong a couple of times and have paid for my error. Only once have the pipes frozen to the breaking point, and that was in my first year here when we had record-breaking cold over a prolonged period. For an introductory winter, though, it compelled me to question the wisdom of being a homeowner at the foot of a heavily glaciated Mountain. Don't get me wrong. I love the snow, even when it's piling up against my doorframes as it is this morning. It's the cold I find myself unable to appreciate.

Chicken If You Don't

Day 77: This one is for my botany partner Joe, a tradition we established to acknowledge any relatively substantial snowfall in western Washington: the (ideally) annual Snow Angel Contest. Now it must be said that I've been a lot colder for a lot longer than the few seconds it took to make this photo. After all, I was an alpinist in my younger years. Nevertheless, at 24 degrees, I wasn't going to make repeated tries for the best possible image. You get what you get, okay? I didn't sink in nearly as far as I'd expected to because the bottom layer has compacted after several days of being on the ground. My imprint only goes as deep as the overnight and early morning accumulation on top of a 12-16 inch base of almost-ice. We're to get quite a bit more white stuff on Thursday, so I'm asking you: are you up for the challenge? You're chicken if you don't! And don't make me up my game!

Ixoreus Naevius, Varied Thrush

Day 76: If he had his druthers, this fellow would be eating insects, spiders and berries, a diet which is severely curtailed when there's two feet of snow on the ground, but he'll accept seeds, fruit and small nuts if they're offered. Oh, back up a minute...I need to translate for my non-American readers, don't I? "Druthers" is a shortened form of "I'd rather" or "would rather" and first came into use in the late 1800s. It was popularized later in a comic strip called "Li'l Abner" and is so much a part of the American vocabulary that we tend to forget that our Kiwi, Aussie and Brit cousins might fail to understand it. Anyway, back to Mr. Thrush. Yes, "Mr." This is a male, as evidenced by his bright colours. Females are more drab, as are juveniles. Native to the West Coast, this species is a unit unto itself. Once erroneously thought to be related to robins, even now, it is often mistaken for one. The second half of Varied Thrush's Latin binomial means "spotted," so if you see a "spotted robin," it's undoubtedly a thrush. And like "fish," the word "thrush" is either singular or plural, i.e., one thrush, two thrush, a dozen thrush. If I had my druthers, they'd be "thrushes."

Warming Up

Day 75: Perhaps I shouldn't have sung quite so many choruses of my snow song. Maybe I shouldn't have put "Let it snow!" in the mini-marquee in the hopes that it would induce a white Christmas. "Be careful what you wish for," they say. My neighbours have given up shovelling, and I've only swept paths to the various bird feeders. Sometimes, there's just no way to keep ahead in the game. Another big dump of snow is possible on Thursday, but temperatures should be rising to give us nights in the mid-teens. On the up side, I predict a drop in daily covid numbers. Ma Nature is doing what government can't: keeping the covey-spreaders home, at least here in the Pacific Northwest.

The Bird Whisperer

Day 74: Friends call me the "Bird Whisperer." Whispering is important. If you must speak, speak softly. And it's hard not to holler "Ow!" when somebody pinches up good finger meat in a beak. These are just a few of my Pine Siskin friends. Enjoy! (I was unable to upload a longer version of the video. Here's 30 seconds of the action.)

Merry Siskinmas!

Day 73: It's Siskinmas at my house! Six inches of snow have fallen since I took this photo yesterday, and the number of Pine Siskins has increased proportionately. They knock on the window when the feeders go empty, and when I open the back door to go feed them, the ones sitting on the step try to get between my feet to go in the house. "Hey! You don't want to do that! There's a CAT in there!"

While I am enjoying this white Christmas, it has its down side. At some point between 4:13 AM when I looked at the clock to see if it was time to get up and 4:45 when I got out of bed, we'd had a brief power failure. I'd been up about 45 minutes when a second one left me in the dark. The crews were already in the area repairing some other "small outages" (per the Dispatch recording), and my service was restored an hour later. My custom is to sit in the living room on Christmas morning with only the tree, candles and other decorative lights lit until the sun comes up, enjoying the silence. Then I open my gifts, and the other preparations for the day begin. If power permits, this afternoon, Tippy and I will be enjoying a figgy-glazed ham and Brussels sprouts, and the Siskins will be indulging in a continuous supply of black-oil sunflower seed.

White Christmas Eve

Day 72: Happy Christmas Eve/Christmas to my readers in various time zones around the world and from top to bottom! My power is back on now after a brief outage this morning when I suspect a branch laden with wet snow shorted out a transformer somewhere. Better now than in a few days when our nighttime temperatures may fall into the single digits (speaking in Fahrenheit degrees, mind you). Yes, the Pacific Northwest is due for a cold snap, the likes of which we haven't seen in decades, dangerously cold when a mere six months ago, we experienced a dangerous heat wave. Trying to explain how this is a symptom of global warming/climate change to someone who doesn't comprehend the difference between "weather" and "climate" is not an easy task, but anyone should be able to understand that when the planet warms up, more moisture is driven into the atmosphere just like steam rises from a pan of water as it is brought to a boil. Then, as seasonal weather cycles into its cooler periods, the moisture falls back to earth as rain or snow. Hot summers are not necessarily followed by wet, cold winters (that's "weather"), but in the long term (decades or centuries), a correllation can be shown (that's "climate"). That aside, it is a white Christmas Eve here today with even more snow in the forecast for Christmas Day and beyond. As long as my lights stay on, I'll be able to enjoy it from the comfort of my living room.

Rollin' Right Along

Day 71: Compared to an inkle loom which can only be warped to the length governed by its pegs, the "bonker loom" (Swedish band loom) can hold a much longer warp. The maximum length I can weave on my inkle is roughly nine yards. Here, I have almost fifteen yards of completed band on the cloth beam of the bonker. It would easily hold double or even triple that amount, were I possessed of masochistic tendencies. Admittedly, weaving on the bonker is much faster than weaving on an inkle loom. I only started this piece shortly before Thanksgiving and will be taking it off some time in the next few days. That said, weaving the same pattern gets old, and unless I have a pressing need for an unbroken length of decorative band, I think I'll stick to shorter projects from here on out.

The Last O' Th' Leicester

Day 70: The basket holds the only batts remaining to be spun of a pound of Blue-faced Leicester wool, i.e., that's the last o' th' Leicester which, if pronounced correctly is "the last o' th' lester." One skein is already plied, and I should be able to have the rest done before Christmas. For the most part, this was a delicious wool to spin, very long in the staple (up to six inches!) and quite soft. A few nepps (nasty little knots of tangled fibers) unavoidably escaped the carders and my fingers, but these will be easily picked out during the plying process or when the yarn is knit up. I managed the raw fleece quite differently this time around, removing most of the lanolin with hot water and detergent before spinning as opposed to spinning it "in the grease." Although I was initially nervous about sinking wool in hot water, the procedure was surprisingly effective and made for a much more pleasant spinning experience. Gentle handling of the wool is the key to preventing matting of the locks. Simply soak for fifteen minutes, drain and lightly squeeze, and then repeat until the wash/rinse water is clear. Subsequent baths should use water at the same temperature as that drained from the wool. After rinsing, I spread the fleece to dry on an old window screen suspended across my bathtub. Over the next two or three days, I flipped it several times so that it would dry throughout. When the spinning is done and when I have finished a piece of band weaving on the bonker loom (probably before Christmas), I'll be ready to start an entire new batch of projects!

Solstice Greetings!

Day 69: Dance the Holly! Dance the Mistletoe! The Light is now returning, and dark nights swiftly go!

How long will it be before you first remark, "Hmmm...the days must be getting longer?" Even though the length of day will only gain five minutes by January 1, something about the quality of the light registers in the primitive portion of my brain by that date. Like most Pacific Northwesterners, I suffer from Seasonal Affective Disorder to some degree (some years are rougher than others), and even that slight change is enough to lift my spirits. Although today Winter is preparing to throw its white mantle around our shoulders, the knowledge that we are beginning our climb out of the pit of seasonal gloom can focus our eyes towards Spring. For many of us, this manifests as a renewed interest in seed catalogs with their bright, cheery pictures of rosy-red tomatoes, bouquets of lettuce, nosegays of broccoli and cauliflower. Life, green life, is waiting to leap up from the earth from tiny seeds. My pussywillows know it. Their buds are beginning to swell in joyous celebration of the Light. Join them and me for a happy Solstice, dear readers!

Three Sisters

 

Day 68: This post has been scheduled since August 12, but since the little critters shown here were destined to be Christmas presents for my sisters-of-the-heart, I couldn't reveal them before this. Their creation began when Patty, aka Goldfinch, showed me a photo of a darling little amigurumi wren, and although I couldn't find the exactly pattern for it, I was able to locate a European Robin which was similar. I made a couple of them for practice and then thought, "I've got to make a finchy for Finchy!" I simply changed up the colours and adjusted the pattern to accommodate a Goldfinch's most distinctive field markings, and then the thought occurred to make a Crow. That required creating a broader tail and a longer, heavier beak. I sat my completed Crow down next to the Goldfinch and said, "Well, dang. Where's Alison? I gotta make a Mouse for Mousie." I couldn't find a pattern I liked, so Mouse is entirely original. And there you have them: the three sisters-of-the-heart, born of different parents, separated by as much as 3000 miles, but sisters nonetheless.

Footnote: the three of us have a tradition we call "the Twelve Days of Christmas." Each of us sends twelve gifts to the other two, and then starting on December 14, we gather on line to open one prezzie from each of our two counterparts every night through Christmas Eve. The last present is opened on Christmas morning, but not simultaneously. Last night was Day #6, and the Three Sisters made their appearance.

Siskin In The Hand

Day 67: Nothing says "Thank you for the gift" quite as eloquently as the trust of a wild bird eating out of the palm of your hand. The Pine Siskins were back this morning, three dozen strong and again following a light snow. They swarmed me as I filled the feeders, so I went back inside and got my pocket Sony camera (as opposed to the big black, scary Canon) and had no problem lifting a Siskin up from the tray to sit on my fingers. I seldom use that little camera, and predictably, the battery went flat after only one snap. In the hopes that there was still some charge left on the spare, I gently reinstalled Siskin back on the feeder (he was not particularly inclined to leave the seeds in my palm) and made another trip into the house.

By the time I got back outside, all three feeders were full of Siskins. Again, there was no problem finding one who was willing to pose. In fact, there were a few disputes over prime position, and at one point, I had three in hand, one on my wrist and another trying to entangle itself in my hair. Then a Chickadee swooped in and the Siskins flew off. A few minutes later, they were back, coming at me from all sides. Now if these photos don't make you feel all warm and glowy with Christmas spirit, nothing will.

Baroque

Day 66: With rain coming down and no sign of a break from unpleasant weather, I'm getting a little desperate for material here, so today I'm going for baroque and will bore you with a glimpse of my back-story. In the long-ago, I trained as a keyboardist, and it was then that I first became interested in the harpsichord and the music of its era. Although I had only a piano on which to play, I began tucking away my figurative pennies in the hopes that some day, I could purchase the instrument of my dreams. Evenutally, I saved up enough for the double-voice rosewood Sabathil you see in this photo. As has been said of harpists, harpsichordists also "spend half their time tuning and the other half playing out-of-tune." Fortunately, my husband was possessed of perfect pitch and kept it on key. For me, though, tuning is a struggle, especially when two strings serve two different notes, and each single note is served by two strings (one for each voice). It takes me hours to tune it up, and one humid afternoon to knock it out of whack. As a result, I don't play as often as I used to (or as I'd like), and although my electric piano has a harpsichord voice, the artificial generation of the sound simply doesn't have the character of plucked strings. That said, although I don't play many carols, various instruments seem to come out of hiding during the holiday season even though I can only play one at a time.

Summer-and-Winter Coverlet

Day 65: It occurred to me a few days ago that I had put the summer-and-winter coverlet away without taking a photo of the completed project. This was one of the most enjoyable pieces of weaving I've done in a long time, and I finished it much quicker than I'd expected. It consists of two panels stitched together for a total dimension of 60" x 48" (not counting fringe). Although summer-and-winter is usually woven with a heavier pattern weft (the coloured thread), I used 8/2 cotton throughout. It looked a little sparse until it had been put through the wash to "full" the fiber, but in the end, it turned out exactly the way I had envisioned it. If any of my readers are also weavers, they will vouch for how rarely that occurs! The weight and hand-feel of this throw match my memory of the summer-and-winter blankets I had as a child which, I must admit, fall a bit closer to summer than winter.

They Came Upon...

Day 64: The holiday guests are beginning to arrive. Roughly half a dozen showed up with the first snowflakes a few days ago, and made themselves right at home. They haven't made their plans clear, and I don't know if they'll only be staying a few days, or if some of them will remain to set the stage for the rest of the flock who will arrive some time in the spring. That some of these birds are return customers is obvious: they know the layout, know that perching on one of the shepherd's-hooks just outside the window is the way to indicate that the table is nearly bare. They've trained me well over the years.

They came upon a morning grey,
The Parrots in a flock
And of my feeders, they did take
A very thorough stock.
"Hey, look, you guys!
There are sunflower seeds
In great abundance here!"
And up I get to fill the tray
When the first "CHURP!" I hear.

The Holly And The Ivy

Day 63: Some songs just beg to be rewritten. In this case, I've found myself singing a Crow-ized version of "The Holly and the Ivy" many, many times during the summer months. A Christmas carol in summer? Yep, and I think my faithful readership will understand why. It took a little bit of work to get this one to scan correctly, but it can be sung to either of the two traditional melodies.

The holly and the ivy,
Both as invasives cursed,
Of all the shrubbery in our woods,
These two are just the worst.
The rising of the tansy and
The growing of the weeds!
A little bit of herbicide
And removal of the seeds!
(Removal of the seeds!)

43,716 Siskins

Day 62: It's time to play "Name That Carol!" This was the scene (well, a small portion of the scene) which greeted me when I stepped out to fill the bird feeders at sunrise this morning. The mountain-ash tree was full. The contorted filbert was full. They were hopping around in two inches of snow on the ground, and the chatter was incredible. Even more came when I laid out the seed. If Pine Siskins are on the decline elsewhere, it's not happening at my house! So...have you guessed it yet?

On the first day of Christmas, my true love gave to me
Forty-three thousand, seven hundred sixteen
Siskins in an ash tree.

I counted (she said with tongue firmly in cheek).

Snowy Towhee

Day 61: For three seasons, I have "Screwy Towhees," the two words rhyming. In winter, however, a new species sometimes emerges: the "Snowy Towhee," distinguished by a long O in the pronunciation of the latter word. Webster's Third New International acknowledges another breed with strongest emphasis on the last "-ee," i.e., "tuh-WEE." And wowie! There is also a fourth pronunciation, "TAU-ee," although I understand that subspecies is only found in Greece. The Snowy Towhee is a more active bird than the Screwy Towhee, its feet quite sensitive to temperatures of branch and soil and therefore more anxious to move from one perch to another. It is also more birb-like in characteristics: rounder, fluffier, sillier. It expresses indignity more frequently than the Screwy Towhee, taking affront at almost every white flake which falls past its widened red eye. In number, it is as common as the Screwy Towhee here in the Pacific Northwest, although its population is packed into the shorter time span covering the months of winter. It therefore may appear more numerous when in fact, its census is simply more concentrated. Like its three-season counterpart, it feeds largely on the ground and prefers black-oil sunflower seed, and will reward observers with its scrabbling, scraping antics as it searches for food.

Nonconformists

Day 60: Sometimes they does and sometimes they doesn't. I have been puzzling over my "Anna's" hummingbirds for some time now (note well the quotation marks) because they haven't all conformed to type. An Anna's female should look like the one in the main photo here, with a small white dot behind the eye, but in Costa's, it becomes a "postocular stripe" which extends further down the side of the neck. I've had birds which presented in both manners, but more notably, some male birds have displayed red gorget feathers projecting well beyond the back of the neck (the inset shows a bird with a short to medium-length gorget). That distinctive characteristic which made me wonder if they were Costa's. Some exhibited a blurry postocular stripe, and one notable gentleman's head and throat were amethyst purple. Others seemed to fall halfway between the described morphology of either species. When I finally got around to it, a little research took me to a paper published in 1977 by Shirley Wells et al. detailing the discovery of a hybrid between the two in California. Further digging provided the current known range of the hybrids and confirmed that they have been documented on numerous occasions in southwest Washington. Of course, there is a lot of room for variation when you're talking about hybrids based in the genetics of the parent birds and dominant/recessive traits, which explains the crazy, mixed-up morphology dancing around my feeders.

Hearth And Home

Day 59: What little snow we had disappeared overnight as temperatures rose slightly and rain moved in. I should have known what was coming next. Yep, power outage. A month or so ago, our little rural PUD sent out a letter of apology to every single one of its customers for the number of outages we've had recently. The fault lies primarily with aging infrastructure which they're working on replacing, but they also promised to be more aggressive with tree-trimming and keeping power lines clear. What happened today might not have been preventable even so. As I understand it, a tree fell on the substation and knocked out power up the whole valley, and all 1600 of us were left in the dark from 7:15 AM to 4 PM as the crews worked to repair the damage. It must have been bad, considering that not too long ago, they rebuilt a whole transmission tower in a shorter period of time. At any rate, it was yet another day of camping out in the living room and a "hearth and home" day of weaving at the bonker loom and reading. When I finally did resort to turning on the gas fireplace, the Heat Sink was grateful and moved off my lap to rest his head on the warm slates.

Belly Of The Beast

Day 58: I'm not as young as I used to be, and nothing drives that home quite as firmly as having to crawl around on my hands and knees in a tight space. However, it was time a postponed task was taken in hand, to wit, changing out the stretched and fraying tie-up cords on my big loom. I had only recently become aware of Texsolv cords and heddles and decided to upgrade, but while I was at it, I also wanted to balance the treadle/jack/harness setup so that all sheds lifted equally. Hindsight being ever so much clearer than foresight, I should have taken care of that twenty-five years ago when I first assembled the loom, but I was anxious to get started with weaving and did a "close enough for gov'mint work" job of it. It never really bothered me that the #2 harness raised an inch more than #1, #3 and #4 until working on the summer-and-winter coverlet. It didn't cause any mistakes, but it was bothersome and I swore I'd fix it once the piece was done. The "bonker loom" (Swedish band loom, my newest aquisition and Christmas-present-to-self) was rigged with Texsolv cord. "Hmmm," said I. "This looks like a good idea." Yesterday evening, I spent an hour under the loom, getting cramps in places I didn't know you could get cramps, pinching my fingers in the jacks, breaking my nails on old chain, fiddling and fussing until I had it just right. And if some minor tweaks need to be made, it's ever so much easier to do with the Texsolv peg system. Scratch one resolution, and it's not even the New Year yet!

Mother Goose's Featherbed

Day 57: "Mother Goose is shaking out her featherbed." That's what my mother would say when I was a child and the snow began to fall. Although I imagine that few people know what a featherbed is these days, I knew. We had my great-grandmother's, stuffed with down from her own fowl, and it lived in a box which undoubtedly contained a washing machine or kitchen range originally, the enormous heirloom featherbed filling it almost to capacity. "Almost," I say. The box was labelled "Keep" for reasons which should be obvious, and I called it "Keep" as if that was its proper name. On more than one occasion, my mother found me curled up and asleep inside Keep, buried in the folds of the featherbed in the remaining space which was just large enough to hold a seven year old child. But all good things come to an end eventually, and after my father died and we were forced to move, Keep and the featherbed disappeared. I never learned what happened to them, but I hope that some other small child might have found the same refuge and comfort in the embrace of that ancient precursor to the duvet as I did all those years ago. Today, Mother Goose is shaking out her featherbed, and although it chills this old body, it warms my heart with memories of Keep and contents.

A Whole Lot O' Shakin'

Day 56: There's a whole lot o' shakin' goin' on. In the last 24 hours, over sixty earthquakes measuring at magnitude 3.5 or higher have occurred in the same area some 300 miles off the Oregon Coast. This particular location has a long history of activity, however when clusters of quakes include several 5.5 or above (two of the most recent registered at 5.8), I get just a wee bit nervous. In 2019, the Juan de Fuca Plate was discovered to have a deep tear along a known weakened zone, and volcanic/earthquake activity along it is believed to be deforming the plate itself. It is further theorized that the plate may eventually fragment with its unsubducted portions merging with the larger, adjacent plates. The phrase "geologic time" conjures up mental images of the distant past and events which occur infrequently, but there's no saying that we couldn't be living in a notable geologic period. After all, we've already had one volcano blow up in our back yard. (graphic courtesy of USGS)

But No Grey

Day 55: All but one of my looms stand empty, the last being the bonker loom which I warped with something to the tune of fifteen yards which is going to keep me occupied for a while in that regard. Now the question is: what's next? I have a cupboard full of 8/2 cotton, bins and bins of yarn, specialty threads, bouclé, even a small amount of silk which was handed down to me by another weaver. I know what I want to make, but there is no grey among the two dozen colours represented here: no dove, no slate, no pewter, birch or battleship, no grey at all to make the wool of little sheepies in a field of blue flowers. It is hard for me to think about other possibilities when a particular one is in the forefront of my mind. The lack of grey is a plug in my mental plumbing, through which no creative juices can pass. I valiantly try to counsel myself to restraint. My supplier's annual sale is coming up in January or February. I must hold out until then. Somewhere, a small voice suggests another summer-and-winter project with yarn instead of thread, a scarf or shawl instead of a coverlet, but the yarns in the bins do not inspire me. I need grey. In the gloom of a Pacific Northwest winter, I want grey. As Mr. Spock would say, "Illogical."

Magic And Mystery

Day 54: Seein' as how I already broke with tradition and made the St. Nicholas' Day cookies several days ahead of time, I chose to celebrate by putting up the Solstice Shrub today instead of on the 10th. The world could use more Light right now, both literally and metaphorically. I wasn't sure I'd get beyond erecting the tree, but by noon, all the birds were in their roosts, nestled among the boughs alongside snowflakes, icicles, a few frogs, a cat or two and the occasional sheep. Easily 80% of my ornaments are avian, probably closer to 85%. There are jays and nuthatches, goldfinches, parrots and penguins, cardinals galore, as well as dozens of purely whimsical, stylized birds but front and center is a Cockatoo representing the love of my life, gone now some twenty years though always close in my heart. His is always the first ornament to go on the tree and last to come down (unless there's a stray hiding somewhere). So many memories hang on my Solstice Shrub in caricature! Today, it shines in anticipation of the returning Light, illuminated by warm recollections of seasons past.

Sheep In The Daisies

Day 53: I can't help it. I love sheep, and couldn't resist doing yet another variation on this inkle-woven krokbragd design, this time putting daisies in their field. In hindsight, I wish I'd made the stems a little longer and darker green, but that just means that I have an excuse to make more. Krokbragd on the inkle loom is fun to do, but it does not lend itself to complicated designs. Creating a pattern could be likened to designing a font for a nine-pin printer (remember those?), because although it can be made as wide as you like, the actual pattern must develop over four rows, two of which are identical and alternate. In this case, row one separates the sheep and is also the center and stem of the daisy, then row two creates a leg and a leaf, row three is the sheep's body and face, and also the space between the daisies, followed by row four which is a repeat of row two (i.e., the second leg and leaf). Krokbragd is not reversible. Solid blocks of colour appear on the reverse, visible here where the ribbon turns back on itself. Inkle weaving of any type (krokbragd or otherwise) is limited by the size of the loom. Three yards is the biggest flock I can manage.

Cookie!

Day 52: The world is a pretty grim place right now, so I decided to get a tiny little head start on the holidays by making spritz. Normally, I wouldn't start my holiday baking until St. Nicholas' Day when spritz or sandies would kick off the season. However, I'd run myself out of cookies, and since I am the original Cookie Monster, I had a good excuse. There was just one hitch: margarine. The recipe calls for three sticks, leaving it up to the cook to decide whether they want to use butter, margarine. or a combination of the two. For decades...decades!...I've made spritz using one cube of margarine and two of butter. I seldom use margarine anywhere else, except in my chocolate chip cookies. And now, stick margarine has all but disappeared from grocery store shelves, with the exception of that branded Imperial.

I don't know what they put in Imperial, but a few months ago when I made my first batch of chocolate chip cookies using it, they flattened out to wafers with little chocolate mountains poking up. Not only were they flat, they didn't taste like they should have done. I tried to find another brand of stick margarine, and that's when I realized there was a problem. Apparently, no one is making it now. Several experiments later, I found that by adding almost a full cup extra of flour, they were at least edible. So why did I dive right into spritz without thinking about that?

I thought the dough looked and felt off in the mixer bowl, but when I tried to put it through the cookie press, it became obvious that it was just too gooey. I put it back on the mixer and added flour...roughly an additional 3/4 cup to the 4 cups specified in the recipe...until it reached the right consistency. Perhaps I could have added another 1/4 cup of sugar as well (I'll do that next time). Imperial margarine is a royal disaster.

Anything But Blah

Day 51: Whatever it was, it certainly wasn't Blah because Blah Coral (Ramaria acrisiccescens) has straight branches. I discovered a dozen or so very curly specimens of this fungus growing in the moss within a yard or so of an asphalt road in a small community of houses. I did not take a specimen, but its general morphology ruled out Ramaria and guided me toward the Clavulinas. It would require microscopic examination to completely eliminate the less common contenders, but I suspect that it is Clavulina coralloides, which is most frequently observed in the Pacific Northwest. I'l content myself with that for now. In any event, I thought they were quite pretty, a purely subjective and artistic appraisal as opposed to a scientific one. "Beauty is in the eye of the beholder," they say.

The Funkiest Fruit

Day 50: One of my personal mottoes is this: life is too short not to try new foods. I've eaten some strange things in my time (commercially-produced deep-fried caterpillar larvae, for example, which were actually quite good), and when the opportunity arises to sample something new, I'm nearly always game. When a friend first offered me medlars, I had no idea what she was talking about. I began researching the subject and found out that this unusual fruit may well have been one of the first cultivated as a foodstuff. It is a member of the Rose family and native to Europe, hence the scientific name Mespilus germanica. But the more I read, the more I wondered why anyone ever put one in their mouth in the first place. You see, medlars are only ready for use when they're rotten.

Unripe, the medlar is hard and tart, but when they've been hit by a few frosts or have lain on the ground for a while, the interior goes soft and mushy. They can also be gathered when unripe and brought to this stage by a process called bletting in which they are allowed to ferment/rot in storage. This photo shows some being bletted on my dehydrator racks. I've already processed one batch with the intention of making medlar jelly, a purportedly delicious and honey-like concoction. Medlars can also be eaten out of hand, so I tried a thoroughly squishy one while I was sorting these according to ripeness. The texture was similar to that of persimmon, and the flavour carried notes of both persimmon and apple with a hint of pear in the background. You just don't want to look at what you're eating.

To make a clear jelly, whole medlars should be gently simmered for 1-1.5 hours undisturbed. Simply add enough water to barely cover and bring to a boil. Cool slightly, and filter the processed medlars through a jelly bag. You'll be throwing away a lot of pulp, skin and large seeds, but don't let that deter you. What you want is the beautiful, ruby-coloured liquor dripping from your jelly bag over the next 12  hours. Measure the liquid, add 1/2 as much sugar (by volume), and cook down as you would any other non-pectin jelly. Use a cold plate to check for consistency, and when your jelly is done, jar it up and process for 10 minutes in a boiling-water bath. It will be a week or more before all my medlars have been processed, so you'll have to stay tuned for a report on the flavour of the jelly.

Dacrymyces Palmatus

Day 49: It can be difficult to distinguish a specimen of Dacrymyces palmatus (Orange Jelly, above) from Tremella mesenterica (Witches' Butter) without a microscope, but if you are in the field, your best course of action is to examine the substrate on which they are growing. Dacrymyces grows on rotting conifer wood, Tremella on that of hardwoods (rarely on conifer). As Dacrymyces dry out, they tend to collapse in on themselves and deteriorate. On the other hand, Tremella shrinks and hardens. Neither species is poisonous, but neither are they considered edible (a term which implies some desirability as a food).