New Year's Weave

Day 79: Happy New Year's Weave! This demented little project is something I've thought about doing for a long time, i.e., making a band using sewing thread for the ground. The red pattern threads and white border are 10/2 cotton (single), and I chose to hang it on Pippin because I'd just taken a band off her. Jutta, my Leksand loom, would probably have served this exercise better. The distance between the heddles and Pippin's breast beam makes picking up the pattern threads in this method rather awkward since they are suspended between the upper and lower layers. I could have used a different system, specifically threading them through heddles rather than between them, but besides utilizing sewing thread, I also wanted to test the method. Some of you will spot the pitfall in the scientific protocol here: never change more than one variable in an experiment. "Eh," I said as I was pulling threads through heddles, "what's the worst that can happen? So maybe I have to cut it off and try again. It's just sewing thread." Now that I've confessed, I have to say that it's working out okay, not perfectly, but okay. I simply have to be a little more careful that I am picking up the proper threads from the free-floating layer.

Warping Into 2024

Day 78: As far as I'm concerned, Warp 10 isn't fast enough to get out of 2023. Of course there are no guarantees 2024 will be any better, but we can hope so. That said, I'm weaving my way toward the limits of several current warps, and have two measured and waiting in the wings to replace Pippin's band (top right, will be done by evening) and the King's Flower overshot (bottom left, still about three feet to go). Jutta's band (top left) is going much faster than anticipated, given the finer threads, and I'm enjoying weaving it so much that I really wished I'd hung a longer warp. The wildly colourful "log cabin" runner on the rigid heddle (lower right) is also nearly done, but I have nothing planned to replace it at the moment, so I'm dragging my feet a little until inspiration strikes me. Pippin's next project will be a real challenge because the pattern will be worked on a ground of sewing thread. While that's not the finest thread I've ever used in a weaving (I once wove fine linen napkins at 52 ends per inch), it will be the finest I've ever used for a band. With the projects I have lined up, I'm heading into 2024 at warp speed.

The Grand Medlar Experiment

Day 77: It will be a few days before I can give a complete report on the results of the Grand Medlar Experiment 2023, but indications are that it was at least more successful than my 2021 attempt. This time, I used commercial pectin and Certo's recipe for apple/crabapple jelly, adding a quarter cup of lemon juice to give the pectin a nudge in the right direction. Prior to decanting it into jars for processing in a hot-water bath, I skimmed the foam off the top and placed it in a small bowl. By the time canning was complete, it had cooled sufficiently for me to see that it was going to set, although how firm the jelly will be after a week or two remains to be seen. Some jams and marmalades take up to two weeks to fully set; others soften. In any event, the foam was delicious, licked straight off the spoon, albeit rather sweeter than expected. There is a note of rose in the flavour, a hint of citrus, overall much like a fragrant, light honey. Even if it goes "soupy," it will make an excellent glaze for ham or a pork roast, but I am expecting it to set this time around.

Open Season

Day 76: Christmas is done and dusted, and now it's open season on light bulbs. Scoff if you will, I've lived with the phenomenon for...well, way longer than I want to admit. When a certain type of mood affects me, no light bulb in the house is safe. They wink out if I flip the switch, touch the fixture or sometimes even if I just walk past, and over the next two weeks or so, I will probably have to replace half a dozen or more of various types and ages. And that brings us to one particular thing which constitutes a major lament, one thing I miss most grievously: incandescent bulbs. I am working my way through my stash of them at a rate which will mean I don't have enough last through my remaining lifetime despite using curly ones and LEDs in less critical areas than my work space. No modern bulb gives as much or as good light, no matter what the manufacturer claims. Today, a 3-way LED gave up the ghost and I had to replace it with one of my precious 100-watt incandescents, and I swear the 100-watt bulb casts more light than the 150-watt equivalent LED ever did. This is an important thing to those of us whose vision is less than optimal. And worse, that hideously expensive 3-way LED was purported to have a longer life expectancy than the antiquated incandescents. That, in my vast experience, is a bald-faced lie, patently false advertising. Here's hoping I get through Light Bulb Season without too many more fatalities.

Vegemite On Toast

Day 75: One of my personal mottos came up in discussion yesterday: Life is too short not to try new foods. Indeed, I will try anything once. I may never eat it again, but on the other hand, I may decide I like it. Many years ago, I decided to try that Down-Under classic, Vegemite on toast. None of the local grocers carried the Vegemite brand, but they did have Marmite. I bought a jar for my experiment. I'm not sure what I was expecting. I knew it was a savoury topping as opposed to a sweet one, but that did not prepare me for the strong salty taste and a flavour reminiscent of beef bouillon. It might have gone better at a different hour of the day: breakfast fare, it was not. If memory serves, I wound up using the remainder in soups. Even then, its merits were dubious. Still, I could not conclude the test until I found some real Vegemite which, thanks to my Kiwi friend Rob, arrived as part of his Christmas gift. At lunchtime, I spread one packet on a slice of homemade sourdough and hesitantly took a bite. By the time I had finished the toast, I had decided it was edible, although in that first moment, there had been some doubt in my mind. It is less salty than Marmite, less "beefy" (there is no beef in it, or in Marmite), and I think I will probably grow to like it by the time I've used the other three packets, allowing for a hefty serving of cultural difference on the side.

Scale - Upping My Game

Day 74: I am always looking to "up my game" with new challenges, particularly in fiberarts, so when I had devised a new and hopefully foolproof way of warping my Leksand loom, I also decided to change the scale of the weaving to one using much finer threads. The band on Pippin (right) uses 8/2 throughout, doubled for the red pattern. Jutta's band (left) is made over a 16/2 white ground with single strands of 10/2 in the border and single 8/2 for the pattern. Obviously, Jutta's delicate band is more suitable for clothing than the 8/2 bands I apply to bags and straps, and is progressing rather more quickly than I'd expected, given the weight of the weft thread (also white 16/2). Many traditional Leksand bands used even finer threads for the ground, something closer to the weight of modern sewing thread which, in fact, present-day Leksand weavers frequently employ. Given the success of this experiment, I may graduate to sewing thread next.

Christmas 2023

Day 73: I think I have perfected the lyrics after several years of trying to get the last line of the chorus to scan properly.

The Holly and the Ivy,
Both as invasives curs'd,
Of all the shrubbery in our woods,
These two are just the worst.

Oh, the rising of the sap and
The spreading of the seeds!
A little bit of herbicide
Is all a person needs.

And a Merry Christmas to you and yours from your friendly neighbourhood naturalist and her small Tippy-child!

And A Bird Flock In A Fir Tree

Day 72: It's not a pear tree, and there isn't a single partridge in it. It is a fir tree (artificial), and it has at least a hundred and fifty birds in its branches. I haven't counted, but I can confirm that three dozen of them were originally toppers for swizzle sticks, scored at Pier One Imports and repurposed by means of glue and paint to become ornaments some forty years ago. Most of them are wooden, although the census includes ceramic, resin, feathers, metal, glass, shell and felt. Many have particular personal significance, such as Cocoa's ornament (center) which represents my Cockatoo, the love of my life, gone now over twenty years. His avatar is always the first to go on the tree...always. Carlo, my husband's parrot, is also represented, as is Friend, a special Evening Grosbeak who shared my home for a little over a month as he healed a broken wing. There are a few other creatures among the flock of birds: sheep, a caterpillar, cats, a beehive, but anyone who comes to my home knows immediately that birds have a special place in my heart.

Hericium Coralloides

Day 71: Three species of Hericium are known to occur in Washington, with the most common type being H. abietis. The other two have only been documented in a few counties, and I am pleased to say that one of the records is my own observation of H. coralloides (above) from 2020. I had not seen it in the intervening years, so was rather surprised when I found it again a few days ago in the same location which, of course, I never pass without checking for it since it is relatively rare. This particular specimen is well-protected by brush and brambles, and had I not known exactly where to look, I would have passed it by without noticing it. As it was, when I came to the tree, I thought I could see a glimpse of pinkish white in the tangle and, at hazard to life, limb and eyeglasses, pushed my way through to an unobstructed view. I could barely crouch down without spiking some portion of anatomy on thorns, and once the requisite photo had been taken, extricating myself from the cage of branches and bristles was another challenge since I'd bent them all down one direction as I'd made my way in. For a brief moment, I felt much as a lobster must feel when it enters a trap. Botany is not a bed of rose petals, my friends. It can be a very dangerous sport.

A Good Sign

Day 70: In observation of the Solstice and a rare day of decent weather, I went for a little hike yesterday. Six weeks ago, my plans for a walk on this old road were foiled by a sign reading, "Trail closed for road repair." I said to myself, "Bet that clay bank slipped." As it turned out, I was half right. It hadn't slipped, but it had subsided to such a point that they laid a new gravel road bed over a a stretch roughly 500' long. I was in for another surprise when I reached the bottom: much of the river bank was taped off and marked with signs indicating that revegetation work was in progress. I was pleased to see it, even though it cut me off from my goal by a hundred yards, particularly since the signs had obviously been put up by Washington State Parks. The area is one of very few along the river which is not protected by the Nisqually Land Trust or the tribe, both of which have been engaged in restoring the shoreline for years. Seeing that State Parks has finally joined the effort to protect the river was the perfect topping on the Solstice "cake."

Solstice

Day 69: We're turning the corner. The nights may be colder for a month or so, but daylight is stretching its fingers into the darkness of morning and evening. As a morning person, I am always up well before the sun, having my first cup of coffee sometimes three hours before it's time to throw back the drapes. In summer, I often rise even earlier per the clock, to enjoy the quiet time before the sun climbs above the limb of the world. However, the tail of the day arrives far too soon in winter, and I find myself  checking to see if it's time for bed at 3:30 PM when old Sol has sunk behind the tall Douglas-firs to the west of me and the sky has begun to dim. Although I will not consciously be aware of each additional second in the days following Solstice until a week has passed, I know that my mood will begin to lift with each one. Celebrate the Solstice with me: Dance the Holly! Dance the Mistletoe! The Light is now returning, and dark nights swiftly go!

Log Cabin Gone Mad

Day 68: I'd bet good money that at least 90% of all veteran rigid-heddle users have at some point in their weaving careers woven Log Cabin. It is certainly one of the most well-known patterns for rigid heddle loom, to such an extent that it could be called "traditional." The mysterious stacking of the "logs," vertical and horizontal, is purely an effect of colour. The weaving itself is simple over-and-under tabby. That said, the creator of this design set it on a much larger scale than is most often employed, and used a warping system which was unlike anything I'd seen before. Her instructions confused me. The math for the doubled threads didn't tally, no matter how I tried to add them up. I kept saying, "Two times any digit is an even number. How the bloody hell did she figure this at 213 ends?" The problem was that she was considering some doubled threads as a single thread because they came through their appointed slot/hole together. Others...those which would be threaded double and later divided to fill two separate holes/slots...she counted as two. Since I wanted to cut the pattern down to fit my 16" loom, I needed the math to work. After struggling with numbers for several days, I finally asked another rigid-heddle weaver for advice. It took several messages to sort out what I was misinterpreting, i.e., that there would be empty slots and holes when the threading was complete. Once the light dawned, the instructions made better sense, although I'm still of the mind that they could have been written much more clearly. Even so, I miscalculated how many ends I'd have if I removed one repeat from each block. That's why there are a few more empty slots/holes on the right end of the heddle than on the left. Because both the warp and weft in this pattern are doubled, this piece is working up very quickly, and I have to admit that the unusual warping system for this piece made the task much easier. Despite having been so frustrated at times that I was tempted to throw the instructions away, in the end, I learned something new...and now I understand how to interpret her overly complicated directions.

Medlars, Phase Two

Day 67: I have now processed four small batches of medlars (10-13 at a time) into juice, and the house is scented with a strangely rose-like fragrance. Another two dozen will be ready to process over the next few days. I am determined to create a jelly from this fruit which uses commercial pectin, as opposed to boiling it down. The taste of medlar jelly is reminiscent of honey, citrus and rose combined. I am hoping that by using commercial pectin, it will not lose too much of its flavour. Striking the proper balance between juice, sugar and acid (lemon) is critical, and so far, I have been unable to find any helpful formulae or tests to determine the ratio. My kitchen has become a laboratory, albeit a deliciously aromatic one, and the one saving factor here is that even the mistakes are usable. If my jelly winds up as glaze for my Christmas ham, I won't mind a bit.

Up, Down Or Both

Day 66: When weaving a Scandinavian-style band, pattern threads must be manipulated with the fingers or a pickup stick to bring the design to the surface. In the simplest form, these threads will either be lifted from the lower layer or pushed down from the upper, but in more complex bands, the pattern requires both "selecting" and "deselecting." In this band, the pattern threads are red. The border design in lavender, green and yellow is entirely loom-controlled, i.e., the threads were brought through the heddles in a manner which places them in the proper position in the two different sheds. They take care of themselves. These are doubled to give more volume to the pattern. Treating each pair as a single thread for simplicity of explanation, they are separated from one another by two dark blue ground threads ("ground" as in "background"). The ground threads must be kept in their natural shed, lifted or lowered as the case may be. We are only concerned with the red threads, of which there are 11 in this design. When Shed 1 is opened, pattern threads 2, 4, 6, 8 and 10 are on top. However, in this step, I need to select threads 1 and 11 from the lower layer, and to deselect thread 6 from the upper layer in order to have a shed containing 1, 2, 4, 8, 10 and 11. Threads 3, 5, 7 and 9 are already in the lower layer. Inserting my fingers in the newly created shed, I can then pass the shuttle through the gap. In this manner, intricate patterns and even lettering can be made with the pattern threads, with the caveat that each one must be tied down by the weft every seventh throw (preferably every fifth) to eliminate long floats which might snag if applied to a garment.

Lambing Season

Day 65: It certainly isn't the first lambing season I've experienced in December, but the three new additions to my flock arrived without peril to life and limb. There was no leaky roof to pool rain in the tarp above my head, only to dump it down my back in a flood while I knelt down beside a ewe who had no idea what to do with her lamb. There were no falling timbers to crack me on the head when my husband's pallet-built sheep shed came apart at the seams. My fingers and toes stayed nicely warm as I opened the gift marked "Happy Solstice," early and at the encouragement of the giver. How she managed to guess the scale correctly from my photo amazed me, but within minutes, two new fat-tail lambs were kneeling in the straw and the ram (the only bobbed tail in the lot) was bellowing at his keepers. Oh, if only all lambing times had been so easy!

Meddling With Medlars

Day 64: Between us, the person who owns the medlar tree and I are going to figure out a way to make jelly which is neither too watery or too firm. The last batch I made set up like concrete and I had to add water and reheat each jar to get it to a spreadable consistency. The issue seems to lie in the pectin content of this peculiar fruit. Some growers claim it has none, while others say the exact opposite. In my digging in the deepest caverns of the Google mine, I discovered the reason for the disparity. Unripe medlars are high in pectin, but as they soften and become mushy, the pectin content drops dramatically. One recipe suggested adding a few hard medlars when boiling to extract the juice, or alternately, adding an apple if using only soft medlars. This year, I'm trying something different. I've already rendered one cup of juice from ten squishy fruits. The others are bletting on racks in a corner of my kitchen. Once they have begun to deteriorate (the proper point for processing, believe it or not), I will boil them in batches until I have enough juice to substitute into a recipe for apple jelly which uses commercial pectin. Medlar jelly is fragrant and delicious, and makes a wonderful glaze for ham.

Warping With Murphy

Day 63: I finished weaving Pippin's first band this morning (borders), three yards of a simple design using only five doubled pattern threads (the lavender "broken S" running up the center). The borders were loom-generated, i.e., I just had to thread them through the right heddles and the loom did the rest as I changed sheds. It went very quickly. I had already measured a longer warp (four yards this time), and as soon as I took the finished band off, I began winding it on. I had just reached the point where I was going to divide the threads as they passed through the raddle (a spacing device), but I seemed to be one short. Sure enough, I'd missed one when I was measuring. Because I wasn't very far in, this was an easy fix: just pull the warp back through, tie on the necessary thread and begin winding again, and it would have been just that simple if Murphy hadn't been paying a visit. "POP!" Suddenly, I had a slack thread, and it was the one I'd just tied on. I knew exactly what had happened. I'd tied it around one of the lease sticks as well as the warp rod. Fortunately, I'd allowed extra when I cut the thread. Murphy vanquished, I finished winding the warp and am now ready to get serious with the threading.

Feathered Family

Day 62: I hope that you, dear readers, never tire of bird-in-the-hand, because I certainly won't. It has taken many years to come to this point, first to create enough enticing habitat in my yard to lure the Chickadees over from the brush line across the road, and second, to establish the degree of trust necessary to have them accept food from my hand. These days when I step off the back porch, it's not uncommon to have a Chestnut-backed Chickadee (left) skim my hair or land on my shoulder as I walk out to the feeders. The Black-capped Chickadees (right) are more wary and wait until I'm in position, standing as still as a statue with my pal outstretched. I can maintain the pose up to twenty minutes, as I often did when we were first becoming acquainted, but now neither species is particularly disturbed by slight motion. Talk about your "feathered friends" if you will. I have feathered family.

Christmas Party

Day 61: It's party time! The winter Porch Parrots showed up a few days ago and made short work of the seeds I'd laid out for breakfast. You might think that they'd have flown south by now, but once they'd pinned a seemingly endless source of black-oil sunflower seed on their mental maps, they've been here every winter. The census appears to have grown somewhat, increasing until there is now no longer space for everyone on the trays. Inevitably, there will be some pushing and shoving, the occasional beak battle and a lot of bad language, apparently the social standard for Parrot parties. In the end, though, everyone gets a fair share of the goodies, and no one goes home feeling like they were left out of the door prize drawing.

Corn Cob Birds

Day 60: Many of the ornaments on my Solstice Shrub are at least partly hand-made. In this case, the birds were store-bought, but I designed and created the corn cobs by beading them over a felt core tightly rolled around real cornhusks using #6 beads. Later, I took the process to extremes and made tiny end-of-thumb sized baskets, each holding three corn cobs made with #13 beads, so small that a standard beading needle wouldn't pass through the hole. Now as you might have guessed, my tree is full of birds of all sorts: resin, wood, felt, terra cotta, ceramic, metal. It's no wonder the chickadees sit on the shepherd's-hook outside the window looking at them. I'm sure they'd love to come inside to join the flock.

Aroma Therapy

Day 59: The holidays are a stressful time, and right now, I'm grouchy as an old bear. Things are just not going smoothly. They're not going particularly badly, but multiple small annoyances are piling up in drifts, and the feeling of impending avalanche hangs over my head like the Sword of Damocles. I haven't been able to get out into the woods for what feels like weeks, so I decided it was time for some indoor aroma therapy. Go ahead, try to top the fragrance of freshly baked bread, I dare ya! You can keep your evergreen boughs, your scented candles, even the smell of cookies straight out of the oven. Nothing beats the fragrance of bread. Bread, of course, is not holiday-specific, at least not around here. It happens once a fortnight at the very least, generally every ten days, but somehow I had gotten ahead of myself and wound up with a freezer full of sourdough. I just thawed the last batch yesterday, so it was time to make more bread. This no-knead Dutch-oven loaf has become my favourite. Will it chase the grumps away? Maybe I should eat a slice while it's still warm, you know, like for good measure?

Pippin Weaves!

Day 58: Pippin weaves! By the time I finished hanging the warp last night, I only had a few minutes to weave a header before it was bedtime. This morning, I settled in shortly after breakfast, and was delighted with how quick it was to make progress on a simple band. The borders are loom-controlled, and the center section only has five doubled pattern threads, so there isn't a lot of pickup to be done. I wish I'd used a darker colour for the broken S, but hey, I only warped six feet for this first run. There was a little trial-and-error as I worked out the best point at which to snug up the weft to keep the selvedges even, since when the new shed was fully open, it made it hard to draw it through. I saw that it was not mandatory to open the new shed to the maximum, and by allowing the warp to be very slightly relaxed (operative word, "very"), it allowed the thread to be gently pulled through without danger of breaking it. I see potential experiments here, possibly even extending to weaving turned krokbragd, one of my favourite techniques. Pippin is a winner!

Introducing Pippin

Day 57: Every year, I buy myself a Christmas prezzie. This year, I splurged a bit more than usual after falling in love with a delightful and beautifully made small band loom of an entirely different style. Although it weaves warp-faced bands like an inkle loom, it functions in much the same way as a regular loom, i.e., the sheds (two) are opened by raising or lowering shafts/heddles. Warp is held on the back beam, finished band wound onto the front. And it holds a phenomenal amount of warp for its compact size! It stands a little over a foot and a half tall, and could in a pinch be rested on a lap. It will make bands up to four inches wide. Many weavers name their looms, and of course I have named my "floor model" band looms Jutta and Nelda respectively. This little darling is Pippin!

Fontanini Nativity Scene

Day 56: It pains me to admit it, but I am guilty of counting my chickens before they were hatched. I was so convinced that something specifically bloggable was going to happen yesterday that I neglected to make my daily post. I'm backdating this one for consistency's sake, and I do hope the Post Office follows through with its portion today.

You might think it's unusual that I, non-Christian and firm unbeliever, would erect a nativity scene. However, like the Bubble Tree, the practice is a holdover from my childhood, and in a way, it honours my father, who was a faithful Catholic. That said, the nativity scene of my childhood disappeared at some point after I left home at age 12 and, unlike the Bubble Tree, was never seen again. It was my husband's choice to gather the figures for a new one when the Fontanini line was introduced. I insisted on sheep, and I wanted Gloria (my favourite when I was a kid), but we couldn't find a satisfactory manger. I built this one, a from-memory clone of the one from my youth. It's been refurbished a few times to add new moss and wood shavings. I wish I could find a few more fat-tailed sheep to add to the herd!

Bubble Tree

Day 55: The Bubble Tree is older than I am, and that's saying a lot. It doesn't look much like it did when we were first introduced, but then, neither do I. Initially, its boughs were white, made of paper (presumably fireproof) and its lights were about two-thirds the size they are now and, if the truth be told, the only original portions are the armature and base. After having been stored in a trunk in an unheated outbuilding for at least twenty-five years, it needed a serious rebuild. My mother said I should just throw it out, but I was determined to save this one precious relic of my childhood's Christmases, so I stripped it down, rewired it to accept modern lights, wrapped the metal branches with garland (I couldn't find a white one), and there you have it: the Bubble Tree began a new life some thirty years ago and has been one of the major features of my decorating scheme ever since.

St. Nicholas' Day

Day 54: For me, the holiday season begins on St. Nicholas' Day, December 6, and it is observed by baking one of two types of cookie, usually spritz. Sometimes, I start off with sandies (aka Russian tea cakes), but they are something that I occasionally make at other times in the year. Spritz are only made for the holidays. While other people make spritz (and usually for Christmas parties), I happen to think mine are the best. Why? Because I don't skimp on those sugar sparkles. My mother used to say that a thing worth doing ws worth doing well, and I firmly believe that applies to dipping buttery, rich spritz in crystalline sugar. Go whole hog, or don't bother going! Otherwise, today also marks when I start decorating the house...but first I think I'll have a nap to sleep off all that sugar.

Dacrymyces Chrysospermus

Day 53: Well, those blasted taxonomists have apparently had another beer party, meaning that now I'm going to have to remind myself that this Dacrymyces species is no longer "palmatus," but Dacrymyces chrysospermus. I have no idea when or why the name was changed, but I'm sure there was a good reason. Seriously. I mean, there had to be a good reason, right? They don't just go around arbitrarily renaming things to keep us confused. That said, there are days when I really wish genetic sequencing hadn't been discovered for at least one more generation, but there ya go: it's our problem, and we have to deal with it. Aside from that, Dacrymyces pa... dammit ...chrysospermus can be distinguished from remarkably similar but unrelated Tremella mesenterica ("Witches' butter") by examining the substrate on which it is growing. Tremella grows on hardwoods, Dacrymyces on conifer wood. Both are relatively common in the Pacific Northwe't.

Pacific Northwe't

Day 52: Don't get me wrong. I wouldn't want to live anywhere else, but when people ask if I like the Pacific Northwest, the first thing I do is correct their spelling. It's "Pacific Northwe't," folks. I don't know how that S got in there, but it doesn't belong. Historically, November and March are our wet months. We were close to average in November 2023 with 6.23" of rain (that's 15.8cm to you metric types), not enough to float a battleship but definitely enough to drown a duck. Even so, it's not the wet which sends us natives mad. It's the gloom. I doubt there's one person in a hundred, maybe in a thousand or ten thousand who doesn't suffer some degree of Seasonal Affective Disorder here (that's aptly abbreviated to "SAD"). I have to tell you, I'm anxiously awaiting the solstice. My mind won't register those first few extra seconds of daylight, but my body will. I'll be cheerier by Christmas than I was on the 20th, and by New Year's Day, I'll begin to consciously note that it isn't quite as pitch-bloomin'-bloody-black-dark at 4:15 PM as it was two weeks earlier. Mornings don't bother me. I'm up well before the sun at any time of year, but when it starts feeling like bedtime before I've had dinner, I get a little grumpy. Still, I kinda wish it would dry out just a little, if you know what I mean.

Lichenscape

Day 51: In between downpours, I dashed out into the yard to hunt for something "blog-worthy," and only came up with this delightful lichenscape which was growing on a fallen branch under Big Doug. Douglas-fir supports a wide variety of lichens with some species only occurring in the upper canopy, so I carefull inspect any "donations" following windstorms. We haven't had a lot of bluster yet this fall, but the rain also contributes to the downfall of fragile or damaged limbs when bark and lichen colonies become sodden. In this case, there's nothing unusual here, just Parmelia, Platismatia, perhaps a little Usnea, and lurking in amongst the foliose bits, two tiny mushrooms of indeterminate species, not exactly something you'd expect to find on a branch from forty feet up. Aside from the other questions this raises, I am compelled to ask: How much space do fungi require? The answer is simple: As mushroom as possible. Okay, I'll go away now.

Leaves, Nuts And Berries

Day 50: When I finished up the "Loom Room" damask and advanced the warp, I discovered I had wound on substantially more than I remembered. There was at least enough for two more short projects or perhaps one long one (possibly even more), and since I had nothing particular in mind, I dragged out a book of traditional cross-stitch designs and began looking for something which was under fifty squares wide. I wasn't having much luck until the little light bulb came on over my head with the realization that I could take a narrow pattern and turn it 90 degrees. The one I liked best wasn't quite wide enough, so I added a second skinny one on either side, and I was back in business. Weaving false damask is time-consuming and attention-demanding, just the sort of thing I need to fill out the spaces between easier projects. At this width, it takes roughly ten minutes to weave the four passes required for one line on the graph. As I cast about for a title for this photo, I was reminded of the book on comma usage, "Eats, Shoots and Leaves." This is "Leaves, Nuts and Berries," and no, I don't know where they were left.

Ready To Be Festive

Day 49: I don't know about you, dear readers, but I am ready to be festive. 2023 has been a tough year. Normally, I'd wait until St. Nicholas' Day (December 6) to start decorating, and although I did move the quilt frame out of the living room preparatory to putting up the tree between the 6th and 10th, today seemed like as good a time as any to pull a few things out of storage. As you could probably have guessed, most of my accessories are bird-themed, and even though Washington doesn't have native Cardinals, a large flock appears here every December, released from 11 months' captivity within the linen cupboard. I've been given to understand that their favourite food is cookies, so I guess that's the next thing on my agenda.