Warping The Big Inkle

Day 48: Nothing preys on my mind quite so much as an empty loom. For some months now, the big inkle has been serving as a cat-baffle in a location forbidden to Merry, its pegs sufficient to render access almost impossible. It's been driving me nuts to have it sitting unused, so now that he's bigger, I was able to replace it with something else, and spent yesterday warping it to its full capacity of 110". So anxious was I to start inkling on it again that I didn't consider how difficult it was going to be for my old eyes to see the threads of a rich blue 10/2 cotton ground. I keep getting them on the wrong side of the nine 8/2 white pattern threads as I do Baltic pickup.And that's not the only woopsie I keep making. The last band I wove contained seven pattern threads, so my verbal shorthand of "3-1-3" means something different with nine threads, namely that the first and last are ignored in this case. Had I chosen to use 11, 15, 21...anything with more than just one more thread on each side...I wouldn't have confused myself quite so thoroughly. That said, now that I'm a few motifs into the band, my thinker is beginning to readjust. Better lighting is helping with the thread pickup issues as well. As I've mentioned a few times recently, I currently have the attention span of a gerbil, working on any one project until I've completed a single motif, then moving over to the spinning wheel to spin up a six-inch chunk of wool, then knitting five rounds on a sock. I suppose it doesn't matter because my hands are always busy, and I complete every project, usually bringing three or four to fruition within days of each other. Now Inky-Dinky Inkle is empty, giving me baleful glances from the shelf. I have to do something about that fairly soon.

Do You Ever Have The Feeling...

Day 47: This was not the picture I intended to post today, but when it came out of the camera, I laughed so hard, the tears were rolling down my cheeks. My little "weaver's cat" is being so good about resisting the temptation of all those fascinating strings, especially the one curling off the cone as I wind warps. And I realize that's an awful lot to ask of an eight-month old kitten, but he is coming to understand that this is something Mama does, and that if he interferes or gets rowdy, he's likely to get stuffed in the Time-Out box until I'm done. There were a few times as I began warping my big inkle loom that I had to speak sharply to him, but after a couple of reprimands, he hopped up onto the harpsichord and curled up on his blanket for a nap. Such a good little kid!

Spinning Salt-and-Pepper

Day 46: Much of my life went on hold when Tippy died, partly because Merry came to live with me and demanded almost all my attention, but also because I just couldn't find the motivation to do any of the things I normally enjoy. Merry has settled down now (not completely, by any means!) and once again, I'm able to do things like weave and spin without having to hop up every minute and a half to extract him from whatever trouble he's found to get in. At last, I was able to finish the singles for a mixed bag of wool in green shades, and after perusing my stash, decided to spin "salt-and-pepper" from a blended top. To get the salt-and-pepper effect, I am tearing off chunks roughly six inches long, then separating black lengths from white as best I can. Some bits refuse to divide nicely, so they become shades of grey. When two singles are plied, this will become a delightully heathered yarn. I know it sounds strange to separate a blended wool, but my experience with spinning the fleece of a Jacob's sheep (naturally black and white) was a good example of optical blending. The Jacob's fleece yarn was just grey.

Tunnel Vision Action Sequence

Day 45: "Where's that silly little cat?" Merry can hide better than any cat I've ever met. His grey colour blends into any background, making him harder to locate than black Tippy ever was. I can usually draw him out of hiding by getting Stick for some interactive playtime, but not always. In this particular instance, I stood up from weaving, didn't see him in any of his customary haunts, so I said, "Where's that silly little Merry-cat?" Then I heard the Tunnel crackle as he shifted his weight ever so slightly. I picked up the camera before getting down on my knees to play the Staring Game, knowing that the "eye" of the lens was even more likely to get a reaction than even my own staring eyes, and sure enough, he launched as soon as it winked. The Staring Game has developed a new wrinkle. Instead of rushing past me in a faux attack, now he often jumps onto my back while I'm on my knees and rides me like a horse. I don't think he understands that his mama is an old lady. To him, I'm just a big kitten playmate.

Nelda's Tablecloth Band

Day 44: This band was designed to go around the border of a crackle-weave tablecloth. There are over two dozen individual motifs which appear somewhat randomly along its 26-foot length, each spaced by a repeating design. Mixed motifs are found in some Scandinavian trims, and the element of chaos just seemed to appeal to me. I warped Nelda (my Glimakra band loom) with what I thought was plenty of extra length, and partway through the weaving process, I said to myself, "Maybe there will be enough to put over the seams where I've sewed the panels together."** Wouldn't you know it? I'm about a foot short. At this point, I have three choices: leave the seams exposed (not really an option I'm considering), re-warp Nelda with enough to make five more feet of the same trim, or warp her with enough to make 11 feet of a different, narrower band to cover the two seams. I'll have to give this a chunk of think. Right now, I'm pretty tired of working on this particular project.

**That's a painful admission: I did not care for the way the tablecloth panels joined. I should have broken the tablecloth draft at a different point for the selvedges.

A Whole Band Of Bands

Day 43: I love bandweaving. I think that goes without saying. I have a Leksand band loom (Jutta), a Glimakra Swedish-style band loom (Nelda), two inkle looms (Inky-Dinky and his big brother), a lap-sized two-shaft loom (Pippin), card-weaving tablets, a Stoorstalka heddle and a backstrap, all of which are more or less dedicated to the process of making bands. What do I do with them? I've used them as trim on garments, applied them to handmade canvas shopping bags, made hatbands, turned them into guitar straps, tied Christmas gifts up with them, and two of the ones I'm almost done with will be the border of a handwoven tablecloth and the upright portion of a small cushion for making ñandutí (a needlewoven craft also known as "sol lace," akin to Teneriffe). You just never know where you'll want to use a decorative handwoven band! You may notice a preponderance of sheep in this collection (only part of my hoard). That's because I also love sheep, and miss being able to have my own flock. The sheepie bands are all turned krokbragd, woven either on an inkle loom or the Glimakra. I had planned to weave more sheep with a finer thread as soon as Nelda is empty, but I realized last night that I'm almost done with the three tablecloth panels on Max (my Bergman floor loom), and the tablecloth will want a matching band for its border. That means my next flock of sheep will have to go on the larger of the two inkle looms. It's all about prioritizing.

Bandweaving

Day 42: I am at the point where several projects are all going to finish up within a few days of each other, which means that my mind is racing. I am so taken with the 10/2 cotton on Inky-Dinky Inkle (as opposed to the 8/2 I usually use) that I really want to use it to weave krokbragd sheep on Nelda (my Glimakra band loom) when I'm done with the last two feet of tablecloth trim (30' worth!), but I'm waiting for a cone of thread to arrive. I think I will use 10/2 on a ground of 16/2 for Jutta (my Leksand band loom, made by Ed Stevens), which is the same combination as what you see mounted on her here. I intend to make a wider band this time, perhaps with 13 pattern threads (there are 7 in the current band, forming the green diamonds in the middle section). Nelda's tablecloth trim (not shown) is 11 pattern threads, which allows for much more detailed designs. Planning, planning! I'm always thinking at least one project ahead per loom, and usually more than I'll ever have time to weave.

My Greybies

Day 41: Perisoreus canadensis will always be Grey Jay to me, or rather "Greybies," and one of my favourite birds. I have many fond memories of backpacking trips where these delightful moochers talked me out of my breakfast oatmeal or part of a granola snack, one even going so far as to fly through a three-inch gap between my hand and lips to snatch a graham cracker. I have scores of photos of them sitting on my hand or my husband's head, soliciting the bird-friendly food we often carried specifically for them. Consequently, I was overjoyed when the first one came to my feeders. It only stayed a day or two, but over the next few years, it kept returning and staying longer, and even brought a friend. Although I couldn't say which was male and which was female, it was apparently one of each, because three came together later, one obviously a juvenile. Even later, the family unit grew to five, and they began coming around in both summer and winter. I have only counted three at once so far this year, and none is sufficiently acclimated to my presence to permit contact, although I'm hopeful. I love my Greybies!

Refining A Recipe

Day 40: When can you call a recipe "original?" I've heard it said that you have to change at least three ingredients, but with basic breads, that's nearly impossible. I found a recipe for Dutch oven raisin bread on line, and when I made it, I wasn't fully satisfied with the results. With over 50 years of bread-baking experience behind me (I've made all my own bread since I was in my early 20s), I was confident that I could make adaptations which would yield the loaf I wanted. I changed proportions, used regular yeast instead of instant, revised the number and length of rise times. My version is slightly less hydrated which makes the dough easier to handle, although it's still quite sticky. I know some of you were waiting for this adaptation, so here ya go! If you don't have a banneton, simply shape your loaf by hand.

Crow's Dutch Oven Raisin Bread

400 g bread flour
1 tablespoon white sugar
1 ½ teaspoons ground cinnamon
1 teaspoon table salt
½ teaspoon yeast
1/4 cup warm water for yeast
1 1/4 cups warm water (110 degrees F)
1/2 cup raisins

Soften yeast in 1/4 cup warm water for 10 minutes. Stir together flour, sugar, cinnamon and salt. Pour in warm water and yeast. Stir until a shaggy, wet dough forms. Stir in raisins and mix until evenly distributed. Cover the bowl with plastic wrap and set in a warm place to raise for 45 minutes.

Sprinkle a clean work surface with a little flour. Scrape dough out onto the prepared surface and use a bench scraper knead and fold for a few minutes, adding only enough flour to keep it from sticking to your hands. Let rise for an additional 45 minutes.

Scrape dough out onto a floured surace and knead for several minutes. Place a piece of parchment paper in a banneton, folding so that it sits flat against the bowl. Place dough onto the parchment paper in the banneton and cover with plastic wrap. Let rise for another hour. Halfway through this third rise, begin heating a Dutch oven to 400 degrees.

At the end of the final rise time, remove the dough from the banneton on its parchment paper and slash in a few places. Transfer dough with the parchment liner into the Dutch oven. Cover with a lid. Bake on center rack.

Bake in the preheated oven for 30 minutes. Uncover and bake for 5 minutes more. Remove from the oven and carefully transfer bread onto a wire rack to cool completely before slicing.

Storm Debris

Day 39: Yeah, it's going to take a while to get this mess cleaned up, and there's another storm coming in tonight. It shouldn't be as bad as the last one, and maybe it will actually help by bringing down some of the "widow-makers" which are hung up in the branches above me. It was pretty scary listening to these big branches fall in the night. Big Doug (the Douglas-fir at the right edge of the top photo) is right outside my bedroom. He has a girth at eye height of almost 14 feet, and is split about sixty feet up into two "schoolmarms." (The etymology of that bit of argot is -cough- not exactly family-friendly, so I'll leave it to your imaginations.) Either one of them could crush both the house and carport if it came down. I've thought about having Big Doug cut, but he helps block traffic noise and keeps the yard cooler during the summer months. The property to the west of me is wooded, and although the trees aren't as substantial as Big Doug, they're still at least 150 feet tall, and any one of them could also take out the house, but being grouped fairly tightly together, they protect each other from catching the wind. The bottom picture shows the branches which fell from trees which are not on my property. In any event, Doug-firs are pretty resilient insofar as surviving storms are concerned. They are deeply rooted, and although they shed branches, they seldom go completely over. The practice of limbing the lower branches may sound like a good idea, but in fact it is not. Removing the "skirt" eliminates its support for the branches above it, making the upper branches more vulnerable to breakage from wind or the weight of snow. A Doug-fir with a healthy skirt will generally only shed small branches from its upper portion. Big Doug's skirt had been removed before I bought this place. Yep, I have a mess to clean up, and more to come. The up side to all this is that I'll have fun looking for canopy lichens on those branches, and I might even find some kidneys if I'm lucky.

A Simple Wide Band

Day 38: Inky-Dinky Inkle is just about maxed out insofar as how wide a band he can hold. At this point, I have vinyl bolt covers and/or rubber bands around the tips of almost every dowel to prevent losing threads off the ends. But for all of how complex this wide band is, it's actually a very simple pattern. The checkerboard effect is all done with the threading. Only the seven green pattern threads need to be manipulated in the Baltic style. What does that mean, exactly? Since all threads are either heddled or unheddled, one shed raises three pattern threads and the other one raises four. That means that in order to create a design, some pattern threads will need to be lifted out of the lower shed and brought into the upper shed, or some in the upper shed will need to be pushed down so they don't appear on the surface. Sometimes it's necessary to do both on a given throw. For example, if I have four pattern threads in the natural shed (that would be numbers 1, 3, 5 and 7) and my pattern calls for only the three middle pattern threads to appear on the surface, I have to suppress 1 and 7 to get them out of my way, and I need to raise 4 so that it floats on top. Numbers 2 and 6 are already in the lower shed, so I don't need to do anything with them. The green diamonds are formed in eight passes, with a final pass to close the last one made. Balltic-style inkle weaving is really quite simple, although the notation for it can be very confusing to the beginner. Sometimes it's better to think about which threads need to be on top, and just make it happen.

My Chair Is Occupied

Day 37: You must never, ever laugh at a cat. Cats are very serious beings. But sometimes you just can't help it. Merry often sleeps on his back like this, whether he's in his little nest on top of the harpsichord, in a chair like this, even on the hard windowsill, and sometimes when I wake up in the night and turn on the light, this is what I'll see beside me. And he's sleeping so soundly that even when I burst out laughing, he doesn't move a muscle. Yesterday, he had a new experience. It snowed, and he was utterly entranced by the big, floppy flakes coming down outside the window. He got so excited by the newness that he took a major fit of the zoomies and ricocheted off all four walls at high speed for several hours. And then this. Zonk. I wonder if he was dreaming about snowflakes.

Ways To Weave

Day 36: A weaving group I participate in on line is celebrating their anniversary today, and we were asked to take pictures of our various looms. This is my collection. From top left, they are Max (Bergman countermarch floor loom), Pippin (a "Weave Ahoy" 2-shaft) ... and Merry helping; Schacht table loom; Jutta (Leksand made by my weaving partner Ed) and Nelda (Glimakra band loom); two rigid heddles and a frame loom; inkle looms big and small; assorted manual looms, including three pin looms, a backstrap, a bandgrind and two types of tablet weaving cards. I usually have at least one of the two rigid heddles loaded, but since I direct-warp them (which is to say I stretch the threads from one end of the living room to the other) and have a Small Helper who loves to play with/eat strings, I haven't set either one up. Inky-Dinky Inkle's band was finished before bedtime last night, and I'll be putting a new warp on it today. Max's project is nearing completion, as are the bands on Jutta and Nelda. Time to reload!

Flannel Vs. Fleece

Day 35: I would be willing to bet that almost anyone in my readership knows the difference between flannel and fleece. However, Joann Fabrics' search engine apparently does not, because when I requested "fleece," flannel was mixed in with it. I will accept some responsibility here because I did not read carefully. After all, both words begin with "fl-" and my cursory glance did not catch the difference because I had asked specifically for "fleece" and expected that's what I'd see. Consequently, when my order arrived, I thought there had been a mistake, so I checked the receipt. Damn. Yep, I'd ordered the flannel. I sent Joann a note, hoping that they might allow me to return the fabric. I explained that the search engine was at least partly to blame, and suggested that they fine-tune it to actually give the results the customer requested. Joann's response? "What a wonderful idea! We'll pass that along to management." And that was it, no "Here's a return authorization" or even an apology.

Does it occur to anyone else that technology has failed miserably at making our lives easier and more convenient? Search engines bring up flower arranging when you've asked to see cat food. Customer service has been depersonalized with AI, giving the customer no chance to explain extenuating circumstances. Web pages show only a few products at a time, so we waste precious hours advancing to the next screen and having to backtrack to the products we might want to compare. Paging through a paper catalog was so much easier: just dog-ear the pages and flip back to them. Technology has added annoyances to our growing list of gripes instead of helping us get through our days with some semblance of ease. Now as to what I'm going to do with two yards of flANNEL I didn't want, I don't really know. However, my re-order of the flEECE will become another blanket, one I hope Merry will share with me.

Tools Of The Trade

Day 34: Every discipline has its jargon. If you were unfamiliar with spinning and weaving, you might be able to infer which of these three objects is a warping board because the green thread is an obvious clue. However, could you say which of the other two is a niddy-noddy and which is a lazy kate? Perhaps not, although you'd stand a 50% chance of getting it right with a guess. The warping board is used to measure out the warp for a weaving project. Threads are wound over a sequence of pegs until the desired length is reached, and then the path is reversed (well, not quite exactly reversed, but we'll save that explanation for another time). A niddy-noddy (here shown in dark wood) is used in spinning to wind finished yarn off the bobbin. Niddy-noddies are usually constructed to measure a specific length per pass, i.e., a yard, a meter, etc. The ends of the device are T-shaped, and one can be turned at 90 degrees when in use. The yarn is wrapped over each end, and if you like, you can sing a little ditty to keep track of where you are: "Niddy-noddy, niddy-noddy, Two heads, one body. Here's one, t'aint one, 'Twill be one by and by" (or any of several regional variations). A lazy kate (here shown in a tensionable version, left) is also a spinner's implement, and is used to hold bobbins of single-ply yarn so that they can be plied together. The tensioning spring keeps the bobbins from running away with themselves as they build up speed. Due to a significant lack of space in my Loom Room, these three tools have to share the same hanger until called into service. The warp currently on the warping board is waiting patiently for me to empty the floor loom. It's a good idea to measure it and leave it stretched for a few days before mounting, but I always like to have a "warp in waiting" all prepped and ready to go.

Names

Day 33: At this time of year, you might hear a strange thumping sound coming from the vicinity of Mount Rainier. Don't worry, it's not an eruption, not a lahar. It's me, banging my head on the wall because all my field guides have let me down again as I try to identify the wonderful variety of mushrooms which sprout in my yard. Some I can nail down as to genus, i.e., "Yeah, that's a Suillus. Those are...yes, they are Psilocybe." Others may even be easy or fairly so, like Russula emetica or Stropharia ambigua. Then there are the LBMs which go under the heading "Don't even bother trying." And then there are the pretties, the ones I'd dearly love to address by name and can't, despite my best efforts. I might do better if I actually picked one, brought it in the house to analyze, maybe even to take a spore print or put spores under the microscope, but "pretty" is the operative word in that sentence. My conscience would nag me if I ever plucked one from its habitat. Silly? Probably, but that's me. Respect the fungus, mate.

Inky-Dinky Inkle

Day 32: I seem to be on a teal jag lately. Since I already had a cone of teal 8/2 cotton out to work closed blanket stitch around Merry's new bed, I decided to use it as the ground colour for an inkle band on my inky-dinky inkle. The Ashford Inklette is a tiny little thing, but it holds enough warp to make a band almost two yards long when it's fully loaded as it is here. It takes up about as much space in my lap as Merry does, and doesn't have to be set on the piano bench or a table like my full-sized inkle loom. That said, there are smaller ones out there, but for as fussy as Inky-Dinky is to warp, what with cracking knuckles on the pegs and all too often missing one out, I can't imagine that a smaller inkle loom would be practical (but some of 'em are awfully cute!). When my lap isn't needed by Small Cat (who misses the definition of "small" by a wide margin now), Inky-Dinky can take his place until he needs another mama-cuddle.

Squirrelly

Day 31: Squirrelly. Because it's that kind of day. I'm at a friend's house because my internet is down. My cell service is also down. And my heat pump...under warranty, mind you...is still not fixed, and there's no word on when the parts will arrive. The manufacturer refuses to replace the entire unit even though the company says that a unit replacement is possible when it takes more than 10 days to get parts, and even if they would honour that, the only available replacement unit is in Anchorage AK. The first repairman they sent out didn't know his butt from a hole in the ground, failed to diagnose a faulty compressor. Needless to say, I am livid, and now with internet and cell down, the steam coming out my ears might make you think Mount Rainier was erupting if you happened to look this direction. On the up side, I did manage to clear out space in my freezer, and a 16-pound turkey fit neatly into the niche.

Crow At The Loom

Day 30: Substantial progress is being made! My little helper was content yesterday to relax in his box (a USPS medium flat-rate into which he barely fits now) while I completed the fifth of seven colours on the last of three 68" tablecloth panels. Each colour consists of 9.5 small motifs, and Merry allowed me to work almost a full colour before my shoulders gave out. Sometimes he watched as the jacks rose and fell, intrigued by the motion but knowing he'd be exiled if he got too curious, but mostly, he was lulled to sleep by the gentle sounds of loom operation. Max (a countermarch) is so much quieter than my old loom! Weaving for me in any event is akin to meditation, especially when I get a good rhythm going. Likewise, Merry seemed to find it hypnotic. His eyelids grew heavier and heavier and his chin slid off the edge of the box, and then he curled up in a ball and began to snore, the very epitome of the weaver's cat in historic art. My next warp is already measured out, stretched on the warping board and ready to mount when the tablecloth is done. I don't know how much extra I'll have at the end of these panels (I always warp more than I need for a particular project), but it won't go to waste.

Voluntary Time-Out

Day 29: Merry seldom gets put in the slammer these days because he's learned most of the rules. There are some exceptions, like when he will not leave the bread dough alone when I'm trying to knead it, or when I'm worried that he's too bouncy for me to risk opening the door of a hot oven. Most of the time, he's a good kid. That said, there are also times when he seems to know that if he gets too rowdy, his mama is going to be displeased. As if in anticipation of the inevitable, he voluntarily goes in the Time-Out Box and has a nap. This morning, he took Squirrelly in with him for company after being told three times to leave the toaster alone. "Oh, well, if I'm going to get yelled at, I might as well just go back to bed." Such a funny little cat!

Next In Line - Friend Evelyn

Day 28: My time for weaving the tablecloth currently on Max has been somewhat limited by a Small Rowdy Cat, but now that he's settling down a bit and seems to be content to watch from a polite remove, I've been making progress. I'm over halfway done with the last of three panels, and that meant it was time to start lining up my next project. If all goes as planned, a coverlet woven on the "Friend Evelyn" draft (HPB, green book, p. 142) will be my entry in the Washington State Fair next September. The pattern lends itself nicely to being joined in three panels. The ground and tabby are 8/2 in lime, with an overshot of forest green 5/2. I thought it would be fun to go with a heavier overshot thread this time around, although my experience with "King's Flower" taught me that 3/2 is too heavy. 5/2 should be just perfect for a weightier throw. Today, I am measuring off a warp of 412 ends of 24 feet each. I've had a little more help than I really wanted, but most of the time, Merry is willing to sit under the chair to watch the tempting "string" uncoil from the cone. But I'm no fool. The warping board and thread goes in the closet in between stints of winding. The first item on a kitten's position description is "Get into mischief."

But Weaving Helps

Day 27: My mother was in her early thirties when my uncle gave her this coffee mug, appropriate to a sentiment she frequently expressed, and whether you can fault "nature" or "nurture," it's an opinion I have long shared. Never have I felt it so deeply as this week. My first reactions were horror and disgust, but this morning, they have given over to hopelessness and deep-seated fear for myself and for friends. I can't think. I can't sleep. I don't want to do anything other than hold Merry close (which he resists, being a rowdy little feller). I have the attention span of a gerbil: two small rings and a chain made in tatting, a paragraph and a half read in a Terry Pratchett novel, fifteen stitches made on Merry's blanket, half a row done on a knit hat for a friend before I have to get up and move, fidgety, to pace out to the kitchen, maybe check the refrigerator to see if there's something else I can eat to give myself some small comfort. Today, the tears spring unbidden, my hands shake, but I find some measure of peace in weaving, in the repetition of passing the shuttle to and fro, watching the pattern develop under my hands.

High Hydration Loaf

Day 26: Since discovering the joys of baking no-knead sourdough in a Dutch oven, I've been wanting to expand my repertoire of breads. I finally got around to hunting for recipes, and found one for a high-hydration loaf (85%) raisin bread from a reputable source. This is not a sourdough recipe, mind you. It's good old-fashioned raisin bread. It uses instant yeast, and at first I blamed the low amount of oven spring on the fact that it is added dry to the flour, but then I realized I had forgotten to slash the top of the dough to let the steam escape. Setting that small oversight aside, it is delicious! I'm going to do some fine tuning of the recipe, though, using part of the water to activate the yeast ahead of time, before adding it to the flour. I like to see my yeast working before committing it to a dough. I may also give the dough an additional rise (it only had two of half an hour each), which also means one additional round of stretching and folding. This bread is worth perfecting!

Merry's New Blanket

Day 25: He knows it's his, and that doesn't make finishing it any easier for me. Every time I lay Merry's new blanket aside, he takes possession of it. Oh, sure, I could put it somewhere else, hide it from him, but how could I ever be so mean when it gives him so much pleasure? I'll get the hem done eventually, even though I'm only managing about eight inches per sitting before my fingers give out. I'm working closed blanket stitch around the edge (see inset), and considering that the fleece is roughly 54" x 68" (big enough to cover a double bed), it's going to take a while anyway. And yes, I could have just turned a hem and stitched it up on the sewing machine, but that wouldn't have been as much fun for me as finishing it by hand. Besides, a special little kit-cat deserves the very best his mama can provide.

The Fall

Day 24: It has been said that democracies have a life expectancy of around 200 years. America did pretty well by comparison, although I had really hoped its demise would not occur in my lifetime. The major flaw in a democratic government is the very thing it prides itself on nurturing: the voice of the people. Yesterday, we witnessed what happens when a society has been dumbed down by the combination of a wishy-washy educational system which insists that "no child be left behind," the entertaiment field and its promulgation of violence and sex, and the bloody effing internet which has removed almost all filters from our social interactions and supplies more misinformation than it does facts. In the end, these factors have rendered a majority of our population stupid, immoral, gullible, and worse, manipulable. According to Natural History magazine, "27 percent of Americans believe in astrology, while in recent years, colleges and universities have graduated fewer than 1,000 Astronomy majors a year." That and other similar exhibitions of an unenlightened mindset are what has brought us to this sorry pass. Our American democracy has proved to be its own worst enemy.

Banding Together

Day 23: I feel like I have been working on these two bands for ages. Rowdy little cats get very curious about moving feet as well as dangling threads and bobbins, and tempting webs of warp entice little paws into all sorts of mischief. That said, I've made enormous progress on both bands over the last few days as I fidget and fuss over situations beyond my control. I don't recall how much warp I put on Jutta (the band on the left) other than that it stretched all the way across my living room. Nelda's is at least thirty feet long, the measure determined by the crackle-weave tablecloth it will eventually adorn. The thread is twice the weight of Jutta's ground thread. As long as I wait until Small Cat is having a nap, I think there's hope that I may finish these up fairly soon.

Half A Tat

Day 22: As if this election wasn't enough to fray my nerves, it has been compounded by having to have the repairman out to take another look at my heat pump which recently stopped working properly. The good news is that it is still under warranty. The bad news is that I will have to keep using the Cadet heater while an extensive parts list is ordered and filled. That list includes the compressor. It will probably be at least a week, maybe more for the work can be scheduled. Even at the best of times, I tend to have the attention span of a gerbil, becoming bored with whatever I've picked up to work on within five to ten minutes and then moving on to something else. Consequently, projects demanding focus and/or time have been back-burnered for the duration. Today was spent hopping between tatting, weaving on two band looms, knitting, working puzzles (anagrams and sudoku), reading and fidgeting. I'm getting a lot done. I'm just doing it in fits and starts. I'm not the only member of the household who was nervous about having a repairman in the house. Merry had to be locked in the bathroom for the duration, and once the technician had left, my poor little catty kept winding himself around my ankles, wanting hugs and love and reassurance. He has worse ahead of him. It's going to take about four hours for the heat pump to be repaired.

In Sync

Day 21: If there was an Olympic competition for synchronized blooming, my cacti would have taken silver, only missing gold because Picotee didn't quite stick the landing. Evidently a little fatigued by putting on a spectacular show, the pink-edged flowers were already starting to fade a little by the time White was in peak form. All three are sitting in my kitchen window at this point, perhaps not completely safe from prying paws, but Somebody has gotten so lardy, I can hear when he jumps up on the counter. He doesn't do it often now, but for a while, I thought I was going to have to find homes for my houseplants. At any rate, my team of cacti are performing excellently this year, albeit a bit early for the holidays.

Baklava

Day 20: I don't make it often, but I keep phyllo pastry on hand (commercial, frozen) for those emergencies when nothing will do but baklava. The question was whether or not there were any walnuts in the freezer as well, although I could have used pecans (another staple) to make it even richer. Digging past pine nuts, the aforementioned pecans and hazelnuts, I found a 12-ounce bag of walnut pieces, just perfect for my 13 x 9 pan and half a box of phyllo. Baklava is so decadent, it's hard to believe how simple it is to make. You don't really even have to stick to a recipe, unless you're aiming for specific proportions. Just mix up some sugar with cinnamon and cloves, and stir in the walnut bits. Have lots of melted butter on hand, and coat the bottom of a pan before layering on the first two leaves of phyllo. After each two, brush butter on the pastry and add two more. Do this a couple of times until you have 6-8 leaves of phyllo on the first layer. Sprinkle on part of the walnut mixture, and then add another 6-8 sheets of phyllo. You'll want at least two layers of walnuts (I usually make three) before adding the last 6-8 phyllo leaves. Butter the top layer, and score the pastry into serving-sized pieces. Bake at 350 until golden brown. In the meantime, make a syrup of 1 part sugar, 1 part water, 1/2 part honey. Mix together, bring to a boil and simmer for 10 minutes or so. Allow the syrup to cool a bit, although you'll want it to still be warm. When the pastry is done, let it cool for about 10 minutes before pouring the warm syrup over the top. Let it set for at least six hours so the syrup can soak into the phyllo. And then...enjoy!

La Ofrenda

Day 19: In lieu of a physical ofrenda which would undoubtedly prove to be way too much temptation for a seven month old, rowdy kitten to resist, I decided to create a digital version. Of course it doesn't include every member of my family who is no longer with us simply because space does not allow, but they are in my heart on this Día de Muertos. Top to bottom, left to right: Cocoa, my Cockatoo, my soul and the love of my life; my father and mother, shortly after their marriage; Skunk, my old grandma-cat, cussedness and love in one furry bundle; Bruce, my husband, who had the best nose for mushrooms of any person I've ever known; Tippy, precious Boy, Spaghetti Monster, my sweetheart; my fishing buddy and his wife, dear friends who "adopted" me into their family; Harry Dickens, brilliant and brief flame; my grandmother, who taught me many forms of needlecraft; Carlo, who would insist that he was "Papa's Parrot!" if he were here to ask. When Memory lives, Spirit endures, for what are we but how we are remembered, alive or dead?